Chapter Text
"You know, Hawke, for a Fereldan, you throw a pretty tasty dinner party," said Varric, raising a sauce-slathered leg of pheasant into the air in informal salute to the hostess.
"Fereldans can't throw dinner parties?" rebuked Aveline, though with no real ire in her voice.
"Not ones where the food is any good," said Anders, reaching across the table for a salt shaker. "I bet it's Orana's doing. Say what you will about Tevinter, they make a mean spring pie."
"That's not made of the blood and tears of slaves, too, is it?" Hawke asked Fenris with a quirked lip.
"No, that's just the wine."
"Speaking of wine, Hawke darling, would you be a dear and go fetch another bottle from the cellar?"
(Hawke? Did her mother just call her Hawke?)
Everyone called her Hawke except her father. She called herself Hawke in her own head. What else would her mother call her?
"Adrian dear? Did you hear me? I said pour another glass of wine for me, darling."
Hawke blinked, then smiled and held out the bottle. "House full of servants and we still pour our own wine, what's the point of even being an Amell?"
Aveline laughed (but Aveline never laughs at her jokes), her cheeks flushed with drink (but Aveline never gets drunk). "Would you like someone to wipe your own ass for you while you're at it?"
"And pre-chew my food, and possibly open and close my eyes for me when I need to blink," agreed Hawke merrily.
"Oh, I wouldn't want that," said Merrill. "What if they poked you in the eye by mistake? You could lose an eye! That would hurt terribly!"
(No, not the eye, the shooting pain was in her temple, the faint drip of blood ran in front of her ear.)
Pain? What pain? She shook her head. Why couldn't she remember...?
"You're clearly thinking too hard, love," said Isabela, kneeling between her legs, pushing her backward onto the bed. (Bed? That wasn't right, hadn't she just been -- wait, "love"?) "Though I admit, that cute little furrow between your brows does give me ideas --"
Hawke caught Isabela's hand before it could slip under her shirt. "What's going on, Bela? Is... wasn't Mother just here?"
Isabela laughed, merry, delighted, just a little perverse. "Why Hawke, thinking of your mother at a time like this! I knew you were kinky but I had no idea!" She leaned in close, breath ghosting across Hawke's neck. "I think Sebastian is taking care of her. We could ask them to join us..."
Sebastian. It hit her like a brick between the eyes. "Sebastian has spoken of your deft handling of the demon that threatened the Harrimans, and those that tormented the elf boy Feynriel. And I fear the templars will have no more success with their next sortie than they have with the past three. Will you take on the burden of defeating this foe, child?"
With a furious snarl, she shoved the encroaching creature bodily away from her. It caught itself in a spiderlike crouch and smirked up at her.
"Hawke, love! Playing rough?"
But Hawke could hear it now, the faint hissing sibilance under that familiar voice; could see the strange superimposition of catlike purple eyes beneath Isabela's gold, like something flickering at the corner of her vision.
"Give it up, demon," she growled, and suddenly she was on her feet, clad in dark iron, the thick gold-bound hilt of a greatsword comfortingly snug in her fist. "I know where I am, and what you are, and I'm done with this trap."
For a moment, the demon regarded her, almost contemplatively, and then it rose up, the illusion of Isabela's form falling away, the voluptuous lilac nudity and cold-flickering fire of a desire demon in its natural shape taking its place.
"Very well," it purred, calm and conciliatory. "I can see you are a mighty champion, a strong will not to be trifled with. Perhaps, then, you would consider... a bargain?"
Hawke tightened her grip on the phantom sword.
"A bargain for what?"
The demon grinned, and leaned a little closer. The already-dim remnants of the bedroom around them shredded and tumbled away like wisps of colored cloth, the odd yellowish dreamscape of the Fade momentarily bold around them before it warped again and resolved into a woody forest. Golden light glinted through the canopy and the rich smell of autumn filled the air; the faint mingling scent of pine and peat marked this as the border between the Brecilian and the Korcari.
"Stay with me, here," purred the demon. "Let me indulge you. I can give you everything you desire. The comfort of the home you still long for, and the freedom to wander it at will." The landscape shifted again, now a bubbling stony brook through the rocky lowlands below Redcliffe, and again, now the emerald grasslands of Adderfield under a sapphire sky, and again, now the white beaches of Gwaren.
There was a smell in the air, that perfect cool dry breath of late autumn, the first caress of a soon-to-be-biting winter, so unlike the mild wet of Kirkwall's rainy months.
Hawke wrapped her best arrogant sneer across her face. "That's it? And what price are you expecting me to pay for empty landscapes?"
"None at all, if a return to Ferelden is not to your... tastes," the demon whispered, and familiar brown arms wrapped around Hawke from behind. The edges of fingerless gloves brushed her jaw as gentle nails whispered across her cheek.
"I can offer so much more, love," said the Not-Isabela, hot and throaty in her ear.
Hawke just raised an eyebrow. "We did this one already, remember?"
"But you haven't considered it, not really," said the demon reasonably, helpfully, laying a gentle hand on Hawke's sternum as the not-Isabela's lips brushed the back of her ear. "She'll never love you, you know. She'll never be faithful. Never prize you above all others. Never be trustworthy. It's not in her. She's lying to you even now.... out there." The demon waved a hand, lightly, dismissively, like the world beyond the Fade was a mere inconvenience. "But in here...."
"Won't you stay with me, love?" purred the Not-Isabela, throaty, thick with desire, and just a tiny, fleeting, unfamiliar note of need, of genuine pleading.
"... in here, she can feel for you as you do for her."
The hilt was loose and insubstantial in Hawke's hand.
"And what..." She gripped the metal against her palm until her skin burned from the friction, willing it to solidity. "What would that cost me?"
"Nothing difficult for one so deserving," the demon said. "Just the sword in your hand, and you can stay here forever. With her."
"The... sword?" Hawke looked down at the black and steel and golden blade, light and perfectly balanced, hanging alongside the demon's hip, its tip bobbing just above the dirt, edges so keen they were transparent as glass. A beautiful weapon.
Callused, knowing fingers slipped along her belt.
"It's not even real."
"Exactly," purred the demon. "So what have you to lose by giving it up? And think how much you have to gain."
Isabela -- the Not-Isabela -- stroked a hand up the linen cloth of her shirt -- where had her armor gone?
She looked down at the blade. It seemed to glow back at her. "I don't know. It's an awfully shiny sword. I've never even held a sword this nice before."
"I can sweeten the pot," said the demon with a grin.
Hawke turned without thinking, sensed them there before they spoke -- he, face open and smiling, still smooth and untouched by the Taint, she, hale and gentle, no pale shadows of imprisonment --
"Sister?"
-- and she would never know which had spoken, her body already spinning, her blade already buried in the demon's stomach, the dragon song boiling in her blood, the pale phantoms of temptation withering to rot and dissolving all around them.
"You would have had me," gasped Hawke, panting, kicking the demon off her blade with a heavy armored foot. "You stupid monster, you would have had me. If you'd had the sense to leave it at Bela, you would have won."
Broken and baffled, it looked up at her, cat eyes clouding over. "But... it's what you wanted... most...?"
"The Maker Himself cannot give me what I want most," snarled Hawke. "They were empty mockery, and now you die for it." Her blade fell hard and final against a lilac neck, and the demon's body convulsed once more, then went still.
Hawke collapsed onto her knees, the gold hilt falling from her nerveless fingers, and blinked against the sudden blurriness of the twisted yellow landscape around her as the demon's corpse, too, withered into nothingness before her.
She knelt, and choked, and trembled, and breathed the empty Fade.
And then she shook herself, and hefted her sword, and rolled to her feet. Eight people had walked into that sewer to cut down a demon. Eight people were going to have to wake up to finish the job. Feet set, eyes on the twisted shadow of the Black City far above, she went looking for a dream.