Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It would’ve been a gross understatement to suggest Hawke’s appearance in Skyhold had created a stir. The advisors had all kept Varric’s mention of ‘a friend’ paying them a visit close to their chests, but their concern was palpable and stormy (none more so than Cullen’s and Cassandra’s), and whether or not the people of the Inquisition knew why, there was no denying the tense energy crackling in the chilly air. They were all still so raw from their losses, so shaken by the destruction of Haven, that it was simple enough to attribute the tension to grief. To fear.

But then Hawke had made her grand entry, materializing from the shadows of the battlements as though by magic, and the Inquisitor herself had felt a moment of that same apprehension, that same dread, she’d seen haunting the lines of her advisors’ faces since Varric had mentioned her.

There she was, Hawke—the Hawke—the storied Champion of Kirkwall; the young Fereldan refugee who had crawled her way up through the mud and grime of the underground to carve out a place for herself and her family in the face of the city’s cliffs; the woman who had slayed the Arishok in single combat, avenging the murder of the Viscount with nothing but the anger pulsing strong in her blood and the fearsome cunning in her bones; the onetime smuggler who had used her knowledge of the undercity to aid and abet escaping apostates; friend of murderers and thieves, cutthroats and liars, defender and mouthpiece of the mad mage who had destroyed the Chantry and set the world afire. She stood there on the walkway before the Inquisitor, her gaze thoughtful, the bridge of her nose smeared with something that could’ve been blood, could’ve been kaddis, and for a terrible, wonderful, peculiar moment, she was a storybook character come to life. And then she took a step forward, and another, and another, and just as quickly, the spell was broken.

She was…

Shit.

She was short. Not startlingly so, nothing to write home about, but…but this was…this was Hawke, and Hawke was supposed to be…something…else.

From the stories she’d heard, she’d always imagined Hawke to be some great, looming presence, statuesque and formidable. In her mind, she’d imagined walking out onto the battlements to find Hawke standing there in her Champion’s regalia, the brutal angles of her armor cleaving the air itself, as was befitting such a ferocious force of nature. Even as she stood perfectly still, arms thatched in thick, white scars and folded far from the staff strapped to her back, she would feel dangerous…charged, almost, like the sky moments before lightning struck. There would be something in the contrast of her dark hair and cold blue eyes that made the reds and blacks of her plate somehow deeper, the points of her gauntlets somehow crueler.

Only she wasn’t wearing her Champion’s regalia. She’d opted instead, it seemed, for clothes more appropriate for travel, her leathers scuffed but otherwise in unremarkable shape.

And her arms weren’t marked by any scars, at least none that she could see, and where she had imagined a staff crackling with arcane energy, she saw instead a pair of mismatched dagger hilts.

Her hair was dark, though, that much she’d gotten right…save, of course, for the faint wisps of silver here and there, catching the sun like gossamer threads of unspun silk. And yes, true, her eyes were blue, but there was nothing cold about them. They were bright and welcoming, possessing a depth and a warmth she never could’ve imagined.

This was Hawke? This was Hawke?

No matter how she twisted or turned it in her head, she simply couldn’t make the idea fit. There was no sign of the remorseless maleficar she’d pictured, the image cobbled together from hushed whispers and tavern gossip and (possibly most damning of all) the dog-eared pages of a paperback; Hawke hadn’t strolled into Skyhold with the scent of blood heavy on her hands and chunks of the Chantry’s plaster still caught in her hair. She was…she was a person. Just a person.

Honestly, the thought made her a bit dizzy, as though she’d put her foot down on a stair she’d expected, but that hadn’t been there after all.

“Inquisitor.” The address was accompanied by a dip of her chin and a flaring of her hands as if to curtsy with an invisible skirt. Flippant, but not, the Inquisitor thought, meant to mock her. It felt more like an affectation than anything else, a habit she’d picked up along the way and had merely chosen to keep and polish to a shine, something that would either tickle or prickle whosoever was on the receiving end of it—which would, in turn, be invaluable information for someone like Hawke to use, should she need it further down the line.

She tried to keep her face impassive. “Champion.”

“Oh please,” Hawke sighed, breezing past her with a roll of her eyes, “The only people who call me that anymore are the ones who want something.” The corner of her mouth quirked up and she turned to the Inquisitor more fully. “I can’t imagine you’d fall into that category.” And her tone! There was no deference, no hesitation, no uncertainty, no stiffness, none of the things she’d expected. Hawke didn’t speak as though they had only just met, two soldiers unlucky enough to have stared into the eyes of the same ancient horror; she spoke as though over cups of steaming tea, the two of them old friends catching up after only a brief holiday apart.

It was, to be entirely frank, more than a little baffling. …and likely the reason she flubbed her own introduction so horribly.

‘I’ve heard so much about you,’ she’d practiced saying that morning, trying to find an expression that fit. ‘I know I speak for the whole of the Inquisition when I say we’re grateful for your aid,’ had been another one, though she hadn’t been able to get the posture that went along with it just right.

What actually came out of her mouth as they stood there was, “I expected you to be taller.”

Behind them, Varric snorted.

Hawke, leaning over the battlement to survey what she could see of Skyhold, threw her head back and laughed. The sound was, in a word, delightful—clear and bright and contagious, as if her voice had been made specifically for laughter—and despite her embarrassment, the Inquisitor couldn’t help smiling in return.

“Mhm,” Hawke hummed after a moment, “I get that a lot.” She turned to glance over her shoulder, not at her, but Varric. “I do so wonder who could’ve given the world at large that impression.” Her voice was higher than she’d expected it would be, too, the more she thought on it, but the smirk she’d pictured was there in full force, curling her words into playful taunts.

Still snickering, Varric raised his hands in defeat. “Hey, consider my perspective here: By dwarven standards? I feel fairly comfortable describing you as tall.”

Everything about the interaction had been a surprise, but it was only then, when Hawke let out another peal of laughter, that the Inquisitor truly began to understand how very, very little she knew. And not just about Hawke, but about either of them.

In the time they’d been working together, she’d never seen that look on Varric’s face—not even once. She thought she’d seen every manner of smile, grin, and sidelong smirk, but…that? That right there? As the corners of Hawke’s eyes crinkled with amusement? He was beaming. It made him look like an entirely different person.

It made her wonder whether he wasn’t.

“I feel you could’ve added a postscript or something of the sort,” Hawke was saying, and something about her voice suggested this was a path they’d traveled once or twice before. “Just a quick line after the ‘And they all lived happily ever after’ epilogue where you remind your adoring audience that you, yourself, stand about knee-high to a nug—”

“Watch it.”

“—and therefore, if and when they approach me in the marketplace asking that I wear their favor or autograph their favorite pair of bloomers, they shouldn’t be shocked to find I’m not two Qunari stacked atop one another wearing an especially convincing wig.”

Flicking the cap off of his flask, Varric muttered a jokingly beleaguered, “Everyone’s a critic…”

And then, just as quickly as they’d started, the repartee was over. Hawke flit from one topic to the next like, well, a bird riding the wind. “I should warn you upfront that I may be more trouble than I’m worth.” Leaning down against the battlement, she tilted her head just so, making it clear that though her smile was still meant for Varric, she spoke to the Inquisitor. “I’ve spent the better part of my life under the impression I’d found my calling in destroying things, so imagine the egg on my face when I woke up one morning to a letter telling me, in no uncertain terms, that one of my many, many, many gruesome killings simply hadn’t taken.” She breathed a light, exasperated sigh through her nose, and the illusion of her grandeur wavered just a bit more.

As she watched, Hawke became less and less the mythical figure of legend, instead appearing more and more human by the second. More tired. She had the hint of circles beneath her eyes, and there were bruises on her knuckles that had faded to an unpleasant yellow-green. It became painfully obvious then, her face tipped towards the light, that the two of them were nearly of an age, she and Hawke. Too young for wrinkles, too old for this shit.

Even so…the Inquisitor doubted entirely that Hawke was truly half as idle as her posture would suggest; now, she didn’t have the slightest scrap of proof to support that suspicion, save for perhaps something in the shape of her spine, or in the controlled stillness of her eyes, and yet it remained. She didn’t seem to be looking at anything in particular, instead simply keeping her line of sight on the horizon. The Inquisitor wondered distantly what Hawke could see in her periphery, how easily she could unsheathe those blades, whether she was truly as quick on her feet as the stories suggested.

Mostly, though, she found herself wondering how many others had stood where she was, watching Hawke and suspecting Hawke was watching back. How many of them had walked away without a limp.

How many of them had walked away, period.

And as though she could sense that line of thought, Hawke turned around again, favoring the both of them with a performer’s loose smile. “While on the topic, Varric…next time you begin a message with something along the lines of ‘You’ll never guess what disgusting monster magically returned from the dead this time,’ you really must give specifics faster than you did. Took me three whole lines to get to the part where it was Corypheus. There was a good minute or two there where I thought to myself, ‘Well shit, Meredith’s giving it another go, is she?’ Ruined my appetite. Breakfast went cold and everything.”

“I’ll keep that in mind for the next world-ending event,” he shot back without missing a beat. “Any other requests? One-syllable words only, maybe?”

It occurred to her then that, as far as introductory conversations went, she hadn’t done much talking. There seemed to be a sea between the three of them, a current of time and familiarity and old history that swept her up while Hawke and Varric were comfortable enough just to tread water. She thought it would’ve been the easiest thing in the world to stand there silently and be absorbed into the rhythm of their voices, to smile and laugh along with them, to nod when they let her in on the joke with a wink or a pointed look…

But then the wave of vertigo that meeting the storied Champion of Kirkwall had brought with it began to recede, and in its place the Inquisitor found her footing once more. Without a thought, her hand moved to surreptitiously check her coin purse—it was still there, still about as heavy as she remembered, but she couldn’t help imagining how many people back in Kirkwall had found themselves taken in by that charm in much the same way she had been, only to realize upon getting home that they were more than just a few sovereigns poorer for it. Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? Or (and this was where she felt a peculiar sort of sinking sensation in her stomach) none at all?

“Regardless, I’d like to extend my thanks.” And oh, what a relief to hear some measure of professionalism in her own voice after that initial slip. “We’re so grateful to have you here with us, Cham…Hawke.”

“Are you?” she asked with that same drawling amusement. Hawke’s eyes flicked from the Inquisitor’s face to the hand still resting on her coin purse and back again. “My advice? Give it a week. See how grateful you are then.” Then she turned back to the horizon, her elbows squared on the battlement, her gaze distant, nothing but another face among the tired, displaced, shivering crowd.

It was not how she had pictured their meeting, to be sure. And though it took the Inquisitor another moment to finally drop her hand from her pouch, she suspected it would be longer still before she could parse what had been tall tale and what had been truth, where Hawke the character ended and Hawke the person began.

All at once, the advisors’ apprehension made perfect, horrible sense. There was a stranger in Skyhold, one disarmingly sly and charming, one who knew everything that Varric knew—their names, their number, their strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, allies, enemies, the rooms they slept in, where they kept their food and watched over their sick. Hawke knew everything about them.

And there, high above the milling masses, the Inquisitor realized they knew nothing about her.

Or whether she was actually there to help.

Chapter Text

Their meeting on the battlements ended shortly after. The strangeness, however, did not.

Almost as though an invisible switch had been flipped or some silent call had gone out, they’d descended the stairs into the courtyard followed by wide eyes and open mouths, curious looks trailing them like shadows stitched to their feet. Hawke had made it past how many guards on her way in? How many of these very same citizens? How was it that she could’ve sauntered in like a ghost, nervous gossip preceding her but nary a whisper (or birdcall) harkening her actual arrival, yet once they’d been introduced, once they’d gotten past the drudgery of nicety and ceremony, all eyes were on her?

It was like…well, as impossible as it sounded, it seemed to the Inquisitor that Hawke had simply made the decision to be seen, and it had come to pass.

And oh.

Oh.

She was seen.

The three of them—she, Hawke, and Varric—crossed the courtyard amid a silence she knew only too well. It felt at once like her first walk of shame through Haven, half-limping, half-dragged by Cassandra’s steely grip as the people who would one day become the Inquisition tried burning holes through her flesh with nothing but their eyes…while somehow also feeling very much like her triumphant ascension of these very same stairs, the air thrumming with hope and awe and inspiration. The combination raised the fine hairs on the nape of her neck. Hawke and Varric just kept grinning their sly, matching smirks.

Still, even with every eye of the Inquisition on them, it wasn’t until they passed the threshold into Skyhold proper, standing in the wreckage of the foyer, that anyone actually approached them.

“Champion Hawke. A pleasure to see you again.” It was the use of the word ‘again’ more than her sudden appearance that caused the Inquisitor to turn towards Leliana.

Again? she thought to herself. The surprises just kept coming. She wasn’t especially reassured by the thought.

“Nightingale!” Hawke beamed, speaking in the bright, booming tones of a sideshow barker, bringing even more eyes onto them, were such a thing possible. “Look how far we’ve come, you and I, since last we met!” She set her arms akimbo and dramatically glanced from one side of the entryway to the other as though appraising the ancient, moldering tilework. “Not a single corpse between us this time…ah, but that does appear to be a throne there beneath the rubble, so perhaps I’ve spoken too soon.” She flashed a toothy grin that Leliana returned only in theory, the corners of her lips turning upwards into some secret simulacrum of a smile. “The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh? Dreadfully sorry to hear about Her Most Royal Holiness, by the bye, I’m sure you’re still reeling from that loss. First Elthina and now Justinia? Tut tut…the Maker certainly is a fickle father to His chosen, now, isn’t He?”

The Inquisitor was close enough to hear Varric’s sharp “Hawke,” but that was when the other advisors made their entrance, ending the conversation before it could go any further. Mercifully.

In a movement that felt improbably choreographed, Leliana took a polite step backwards just as Hawke folded herself forwards into a sweeping curtsy (the likes of which she had pantomimed on the battlements earlier), giving her hands a prim little flourish as she prostrated herself. “Lady Montilyet, I wouldn’t wonder?”

Josephine, having only just bustled over to them, stopped short and clutched her writing board to her chest, returning the gesture in a much more subtle manner. “Oh, Champion! I do hope your journey was an easy one. We are, of course, honored to—”

“Hawke.” Cassandra’s tone was a single stroke of a sword, the blow meant not to maim but to behead. She pushed past the others with a stride that smacked of determination, of intention, and of a fury running marrow-deep, her anger all but steaming the air between them. Had there been anyone in all of Skyhold not gawking at their procession up until her entrance, they certainly turned to look then. “You have the gall—” But then she was cut off as well.

Right until that moment, Hawke had held her ridiculous curtsy; when Cassandra approached her, though, she began to straighten, catching the Seeker’s hand with one of hers and bringing it gingerly to her lips. As the Inquisitor watched, Hawke pressed a lingering kiss to her knuckles and Cassandra stopped moving.

Really, it felt like a fair assessment to say Cassandra stopped breathing.

“Seeker Pentaghast,” Hawke said coolly as could be, standing back to her full height in one sinuous motion, her thumb all the while tracing the lines of Cassandra’s hand. “So lovely to finally have a face to put to the name. I’ve heard…so much about you.” There was something distinctly prickly in her eyes, something that didn’t match the tone of her voice, and that fact wasn’t lost on the Inquisitor.

It was, however, lost on Cassandra, whose face had gone the color of a freshly ripe plum. Her jaw worked the air for a moment, but it seemed the wind had been thoroughly knocked from her sails. It took her another second or two to jerk her hand from out of Hawke’s, and even then, she held it to her chest, fingers curled as if trying to trap the memory against her palm.

Hawke’s eyes flit over the Seeker’s shoulder for the barest of instants, and the curve of her lips became unmistakably barbed. “Knight-Captain.”

Cullen bristled beneath the heavy fabric of his mantle. “Commander,” he corrected, and none-too-gently at that.

“Ah, my apologies. Knight-Commander.”

“Hawke.”

“Please, allow me to congratulate you on the well earned promotion. It suits you! Suited Meredith too. But I’m sure you remember that.” That was the closest to a greeting Cullen was like to receive, it appeared, as Hawke immediately focused her attention back onto Josephine. “Terribly sorry for that interruption, milady—you know how reunions can get, what with all the warm, fuzzy feelings and whatnot, but please, the honor is all mine! Oh, I’ve only been here a day or so and already I feel as though nestled in the warm bosom of a family I can, perhaps one day, call my own.”

That was what did it; Cassandra managed to push through whatever block the feel of Hawke’s lips against her skin had caused. “A day?!”

“Contrary to popular belief,” Varric said, making what was likely the biggest mistake of his life by reminding Cassandra that he did, in fact, exist, “She is capable of sitting quietly when the situation calls for it.”

Catching Josephine’s eye, Hawke pretended to shudder. “Not a specialty of mine.”

“Hawke has been here for an entire day, and you hadn’t thought to—” Before Cassandra could get much further (either in her accusation or her charge forward to, ostensibly, wring Varric’s neck), Hawke looped one of her arms in hers, shocking her into sputtering silence once more.

“It really is an injustice, Seeker Pentaghast,” she nodded, “A whole day, and no one has thought to give me the grand tour.” In a move so brief, so surreptitious, that she may very well have imagined it, the Inquisitor saw Hawke turn towards her and wink. Then her attention was back on the advisors, split evenly between Josephine and Cassandra as she smiled that horribly fetching smile of hers, her feet moving and—unbelievably—bringing both of them along with her. “Come now, I’m all a’twitter! Someone ought to show me all the things I’m not allowed to touch, after all, lest I knock them over in some show of buffoonery. You can harangue me for all my misdeeds between rooms, Seeker, I’d never dream of taking that from you. Besides, I’m certain you and the good Knight-Commander have been up all night, comparing notes and running lines. I haven’t had a good, hard chastising in at least a fortnight, so you can imagine my excitement at the prospect!”

Only once the sound of her laughter faded, made no less melodic or charming by distance, did the Inquisitor finally manage to tear her eyes from the space. “Is she…” she began uncertainly, her eyes shifting from Cullen to Leliana—er, the spot where she could’ve sworn Leliana had been a moment ago, at least—and finally to Varric. “Is she always like that?”

“Loud?” Cullen tried. “Abrasive? Snide? You’ll really have to be more specific.”

“Y’know Curly, no one likes a sourpuss.” If Varric was affected by the exasperated sidelong look the Commander shot his way at that, he didn’t show it. “Honestly though, the answer is no, she isn’t always like that…genuinely I think she’s feeling a little shy right now, probably overwhelmed by all these people.” Hawke’s, she hadn’t been sure about, but there was no mistaking Varric’s wink. “She’s usually not half this quiet…or reserved, for that matter!”

Cullen groaned aloud. It was the sound of a man who’d bitten into an apple and found it rotted the whole way through. “Right. Well. I suppose one of us should go secure the valuables.”

“Maybe the virgins too, while you’re at it. Can never be too safe.”

She snorted so hard that her sinuses ached; only too late did she reach up to cover her face, quickly clearing her throat and straightening out again as though to make up for it. “Cullen, you were in Kirkwall, you must have plenty of stories about—”

“If it’s all the same to you, Inquisitor,” he said, already heading for the entryway, “I’d rather not.”

“Ah, don’t take that to heart.” As Cullen made his grand exit, Varric rolled his eyes and flapped a hand in his general direction, snickering quietly under his breath. “That actually went significantly better than I thought it was going to.”

The Inquisitor raised her eyebrows.

“No punching, no shouting…hell, no hair-pulling…” He laughed again, but that time around she thought she heard just enough tension hiding under the surface to suggest he was only half-joking. “So? First impressions?”

Ah, and so they’d come to it. The unavoidable truth of the matter.

Back in Haven, she’d made a point of not asking him too many questions about Hawke. It had been done for politeness’s sake, mostly, out of worry about treading on his toes or bringing up something he’d rather not get into. After the Conclave, she knew too well the sting of having to leave people behind, of friends being forcibly ripped away. But since meeting Hawke in the flesh, that was a decision she’d come to regret.

In her mind, there was no question about it: There was something going on here, something bigger than artistic license could account for. Varric had lied, that much was plain as day—Varric had lied, because everyone who was anyone knew that the Champion of Kirkwall was a blood mage of unspeakable power and terrifying wrath, a creature of vengeance with a pit in her heart where forgiveness was meant to go, scar tissue hardening all the parts of her that were supposed to be soft. And yet…she wasn’t.

So yes, Varric had lied, and there was no point in dwelling on that. It was obvious. Laughably so. He had lied, yes, and accusing him of doing as much would be nothing but a waste of both their time and energy.

Why he had lied, though…

Now that was something she’d very much like to get to the bottom of.  

Besides, not for nothing, but after the endless doom-and-gloom of very nearly being slaughtered by an unknowable and unfathomable abomination of an elder god, she thought she was owed a little distraction.

“She’s nothing like I expected,” she eventually settled on. “And I mean that, Varric. Nothing.”

He chuckled. “Ah, well, see? There’s your problem! Never expect anything when it comes to Hawke. It works out better that way.” It sounded much too casual to be anything but a well-rehearsed line.

The Inquisitor glanced towards the doorway Hawke had left through, taking Josephine and Cassandra (and possibly Leliana) along with her, and gnawed absently at her lower lip as she thought about her next steps. There was a part of her that considered asking him outright, jabbing a finger into his chest and insisting he explain himself…but if she was to believe the stories Cassandra had told her during their travels, it seemed much more likely she’d get little more than yet another tale spun whole-cloth from the ether. Maybe, just maybe, she’d get more answers by playing coy.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked after a beat, turning back to search Varric’s face for any sign of wariness.

There was none. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume this ‘something’ is going to pertain to Hawke in some way?”

“Why did you wait until now?” It wasn’t the wariness she’d expected, but something did flicker across his face for the briefest moment after she asked it. Surprise, perhaps, as though he’d anticipated being called a liar and hadn’t been prepared for anything else. “If you really did know where she was all along, why didn’t you say something sooner? Clearly you two are close—your time here probably would’ve been more enjoyable if you had a friend with you.”

“Hawke—” Varric began, only to stop himself immediately. He reached up to scrub at his face with one hand, clearly trying to find the best way to phrase whatever it was that had first occurred to him. When he spoke again, it wasn’t with his usual quick-witted panache; instead, he seemed to mete out his words carefully, like he was concerned saying the wrong thing at the wrong time would lead to yet another catastrophe. “Hawke isn’t a leader, Inquisitor. She’s a lot of things, but that’s just not one of them. She brings people together,” he added when her brow knit, “She knows how to join people to a cause, and there’s not a person in Thedas more skilled at raising spirits—metaphorically—but she’s not made for leading. And that’s…that’s what would’ve happened if the Seeker or Nightingale had gotten their hands on her before.”

Another unexpected wrinkle in the tapestry of her mind, eh? The words almost didn’t make sense when strung together like that: Hawke not being a leader? She had assumed it had been Hawke at the head of every charge, blazing the way for her companions through hell and high water, in control of every move they made and each job they took, so to hear that she’d been wrong again…it was fascinating, really. Intriguing.

“Before me, you mean.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to say that part out loud, but now that you mention it…”

“People know who she is, though.” It was out of her mouth before she could stop herself, and wow, that was a habit she was going to have to work on, wasn’t it? She made a mental note to thank Hawke at a later date—her appearance had certainly brought that shortcoming to light. “Don’t you think it would’ve been easier for everyone to come together under her than me? I was…and still am, honestly…no one. I was at the Conclave, but Hawke is…well, she’s—” She stopped, unsure of how to continue.

Varric was no help. He cocked his head to the side ever so slightly, folding his arms and raising his eyebrows, waiting. Waiting to see what Hawke was, in her mind.

A sliver of her tongue poked out to wet her lower lip as she thought. After another second or two she shook her head and shrugged. “She’s the Champion,” she finished lamely.

He mulled that over for a time, the fingers of one hand drumming against his arm, and for the second time that morning, the Inquisitor found herself entertaining the thought she’d never seen that particular look on his face before. It wasn’t as though the gears of his mind were turning over some new story to feed her…no, if anything, he appeared to be debating with himself, trying to decide whether or not he truly wanted to say whatever it was he was clenching so tightly behind his teeth. “Let me tell you something about what it means to be the Champion.”

Defensiveness, she decided. The expression that had crossed his face earlier hadn’t been surprise after all. It had been defensiveness, evasiveness, a desire to keep certain things in the past, where they belonged.

And now she was dredging them to the surface.

“After what happened with the Arishok—” she noted the ambiguity of the statement, the lack of concrete detail, “—do you know what the good people of Kirkwall did to thank the Champion? They built a statue in her honor. Put it right on the docks where everyone coming in or out would be forced to see it. It was this huge, hulking thing, so tall you had to tip your head all the way back and shield your eyes against the sun just to see where it met the sky. It was amazing, really, this hero cast in bronze for all eternity, one hand holding a blade towards the sun, one foot propped triumphantly on the decapitated head of the Arishok—it was a reminder to the city’s people, and a warning to its enemies, that the Champion had saved them before, and she would save them again, and again, and again, and again…as many times as it took.” He smiled.

It didn’t reach his eyes.

That was new, too.

“…I’m sensing that’s not all there is to the story.”

That smile tightened until it made her own cheeks ache just by looking at it. “Statue didn’t have a face,” Varric continued. “I mean, it was so tall, why bother, right? Not like anyone was going to be able to see that detail…come to think of it, there really weren’t a lot of details to it, none that were defining, at least. Looking at it, you didn’t think ‘Oh shit, there’s Hawke!’ you thought ‘Wow, that’s the Champion.’” Somewhere during the conversation, the title had taken on the cadence of a pejorative. A curse. “Not that everyone thought that, don’t let me paint the wrong picture, here. See, it had a nice little plaque too, would’ve been right about eye-level, if I’m remembering right. ‘In commemoration of Marian Hawke,’ it read, in part, of course, ‘The Champion of Kirkwall, vanquisher of the Qunari Menace,’ or something like that.

“It became sort of a good luck charm that whenever you passed that statue, you’d run your finger over her name. Sweet, right? All those people passing by, tracing the letters…in no time at all, her name was polished to this…gleaming shine. Caught the sun. Sparkled if you looked at it from the right angle.” Varric averted his eyes then, and the Inquisitor made no attempt to catch his gaze afterwards. “Only, here’s the thing about that. After a year, year and a half…if you went to read that plaque, know what you’d see?”

All at once, she did. “Her name was wearing away.”

“It was wearing away. Yeah. They adored her so much that slowly, surely, bit by bit and bite by bite, they were erasing her from her own story. Funny how that works.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose, and when he dropped his hand again, it was as though he’d slid a mask on while she’d been distracted. There was the usual smirk, the typical good humor. “So to answer your question, maybe it would’ve been easier for everyone to come together under her. Probably not, but maybe. At first, anyway, because like you’re saying, she’s the Champion, and everyone knows the Champion—hell, she’s a hero!” His smile didn’t falter that time, not even as he added, “So imagine how very upset they’d all be when they inevitably realized Hawke is just a person.”

It felt like the sort of moment where she was expected to say something, to react a certain way. But as hard as she tried, the Inquisitor couldn’t figure out what that story had made her feel…much less what Varric would’ve wanted to hear from her in reply.

He made the decision for her, shrugging and heaving a joking sigh that she didn’t buy in the slightest. “Ah well. She’s here now, that’s what matters. If you don’t mind, though, while she’s off, hmm, ‘entertaining’ the others, I should probably try and get a few letters out. There are certain concerned parties that I’m sure would be very relieved to hear she arrived in one piece.”

“Fenris?” she asked, wanting (inanely) to prove she knew something, anything, about Hawke.

“Certain concerned parties,” he echoed back. Neither a confirmation nor a denial. Effectively nothing.

She watched him turn, watched him head towards the makeshift writing table he’d put up near the as-yet-nonfunctioning fireplace, and before he could get out of earshot, she said the only thing she could think to say. “You could replace it, you know.” When he glanced back at her, she lifted her hands palms-up in a show of uncertainty. “The plaque? Once all of this is over and done with, once you’re able to go back to Kirkwall, you could have the plaque replaced.”

Yet another tired, tense almost-smile. “Not a bad idea, Your Inquisitorialness.” She wasn’t given time enough to congratulate herself on the last-minute save. “But no, I don’t think that would work, actually. See, when shit hit the fan—right at the start of the rebellion, I mean—that statue was the very first thing the fine people of the great city-state of Kirkwall tore from the foundation and threw into the sea.” He turned around and made his way towards the table before she could decide whether or not it was too hard to hold his gaze. “That’s the thing about this whole ‘hero’ business,” he added over his shoulder, “Everyone loves you right up until the second they don’t.”

Chapter Text

Something about that conversation with Varric sat low in her stomach with all the slick, slimy weight of a moss-pocked river boulder. The whole interaction had been strange, veering into territory that had been downright uncomfortable at times, but that wasn’t it—there was one thing in particular that had caught her like a hangnail in a silk shawl, tugging and tearing and worrying away at the fabric of her mind despite how small it seemed from the outside.

If Varric had been so torn up about people forgetting who Hawke was as a person, why would he lie about her in his writing? Wasn’t that just furthering the issue?

She felt as though she’d come in on this story ten pages from the end, too much of the plot having already unfolded, all of the key details left chapters and chapters behind her…and then it occurred to her that that was precisely the case. Maybe if she’d been in Kirkwall this would make sense, maybe she’d understand the purpose behind telling people that Hawke had been a mage when she obviously hadn’t, but she hadn’t been in Kirkwall, hadn’t experienced Hawke (or Varric, for that matter) in those halcyon days, hadn’t seen the Qunari or the rebellion plant their roots. And yes, she certainly knew someone who had, but she had a nagging suspicion that getting Cullen to sit down and talk about it would be about as easy or enjoyable as giving an ogre a pedicure. He’d all but turned grey when he’d first seen Hawke, saying nothing of how quickly he’d made his escape…she couldn’t imagine she’d be his favorite topic of conversation.

Luckily, Skyhold was an awfully big place, and those days they were near full to bursting with other people; there were plenty of other avenues she could pursue.

It was that line of thought she’d been turning over in her mind the past half-hour or so as she wandered the grounds, having found it impossible to remain in the dim foyer while the workers hammered away at supports and Varric wrote, her thoughts haunted by the image of that faceless, shapeless, nameless statue bobbing in the black waters of the Waking Sea. There was, she reflected, pausing long enough to savor the morning sun warm on her face, at least one person among their number who likely knew more than the others. Perhaps not more than Cullen, but maybe just enough to help ease some of the discomfort at the back of her mind…so her plan had been to find Cassandra next.

But as fate would have it, it was Cassandra who found her.

“Inquisitor!” The Seeker’s voice was sharp as she called over to her, sword sheathed but gait fit for the battlefield. “A word.”

“It appears the grand tour has come to an early end,” she murmured to herself, affecting a sympathetic smile. If Varric wanted to be evasive, if Cullen didn’t want to discuss Hawke with her, that was fine. As the person tasked with tracking her down and bringing her to the Divine, Cassandra might not know everything about Hawke, but she’d certainly be a valuable starting point. “Seeker Pentaghast?”

Cassandra was not the sort to waste her breath on preamble on the best of days. The time she’d spent with Hawke that morning only seemed to have further chipped away at what little patience she had. “Varric is a liar, Inquisitor—a liar who has been staring us in the face and laughing as he feeds us story after story, and now we’re simply expected to stand by and allow him to continue?!”

She lifted her hands in something of a shrug, pulling in a long breath. Yesterday she might’ve argued that point. Today? Today she could see where she was coming from. “Be that as it may, he’s the reason we have Hawke now. She’s already faced Corypheus once, she has an understanding of—”

“Hawke.” Cassandra averted her eyes, folding her arms stiffly across her chest. “Right now, I’m not even certain where to begin with the Champion.” Disgruntled wasn’t quite the right word to describe her at that moment, but it was close enough to suffice. “They are snakes, the both of them. How we can all sit idly by, knowing that from the beginning they’ve been conspiring…that as we stand here trying to decide how to proceed, they’re having their little…little…asides, smirking and laughing at our expense…” She whirled to throw a furious glance over her shoulder, and the Inquisitor craned her own head around to follow her line of sight.

No doubt about it: The grand tour had most certainly come to an end.

A short ways from the Herald’s Rest, a crowd had begun to gather around what seemed to be a spirited sparring match taking place on a clear patch of earth; how long it had been going on was anyone’s guess, but it seemed to be reaching something of a fever pitch. As the Inquisitor watched, Hawke pivoted on the balls of her feet, leaping out of the way just in time to avoid what would’ve most certainly been a devastating blow from Krem’s sword. The stunt sent the impromptu audience into cheers the likes of which again called her own triumphant march up Skyhold’s steps to mind. Krem righted himself almost immediately, but even so, Hawke found time enough to wave her hands towards the onlookers, goading them on for an even louder reaction. …and they seemed only too happy to oblige.

She smiled despite herself. “That strikes me as a particularly difficult way for Varric and Hawke to scheme,” she said, jerking her chin in the direction of the fight. Another chorus of shouts rang out as Krem blocked a brutal stab with his shield, forcibly pushing Hawke back amid a cloud of dirt and dust. "I'd imagine it'd be slightly easier for them, were Varric not wholly absent from the scene, as it were. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but...don't you think it's possible she's simply trying to get to know everyone? To be friendly? Must be jarring, plunging into all of this." Not that she'd know from experience or anything.

Cassandra exhaled a sound of disgust, favoring the scene with only one last cursory glance. “If there’s one thing Hawke excels at, Inquisitor, it’s convincing the people around her that she’s their friend. Their ally. Using her charms and guile until she has no further need for them.” Her scowl deepened as the thought dug its teeth in. “We will be no different. I sincerely hope you recognize that. She is loyal only to herself. Nothing and no one else.”

She watched the two spar for another long moment, her eyes following Hawke’s swift movements. There was something to what Cassandra was saying, of course…in her mind, she’d always imagined Hawke’s fighting style to be more, well, brutish. Bloody palms outstretched towards her foe, the smell of ozone and burning copper filling the air as she tore the flesh from their very bones. A fury of sorts, a vengeful, spiteful shadow haunting Kirkwall’s alleys. This was nothing like that, obviously, and yet…and yet she couldn’t help but notice how easy it was to lose track of Hawke’s daggers as she dodged and rolled, the blades only really becoming apparent after a blow had been struck. Each move was followed by something else, too—a quick bow, a joking flourish, a flip of her hair—an appeal to the audience. There they were, jeering and shouting, treating the scrap like a prizefight.

Was this what it had been like in Kirkwall?

Had the faces gathered ‘round the Viscount’s throne been sallow with terror as they watched Hawke and the Arishok circle one another? Or had they been bedecked with wide, hungry grins as they braced for a show?

Had their complexions been sick and pale as clotted cream? Or had they been flushed and rosy with exhilaration?

Had they gasped and screamed and swooned each time blood was drawn? Or had they been like this, shouting and whistling and leaning over the barriers with mad, flailing hands in hopes of even briefly brushing against the combatants?

Had they cheered?

The boulder in her stomach rocked one way and then the other, making her feel vaguely nauseous. She didn’t want to think about that, actually, and neither did she want to think about what Hawke must’ve been like before that, way back when she’d had no clout, no name, no wealth…when it had just been her cunning and charisma and the bite of her blades.

The hangnail-itch at the back of her head kindly pointed out that denial made her part of the problem.

“Can I ask you something?” Turning back to Cassandra, she let her head tilt curiously. No time like the present, eh? She suspected the Seeker would be happy enough to rattle off all the reasons they shouldn’t trust Varric for the rest of the afternoon, and she feared her own mind would tangle itself in knots trying to unravel the mystery he’d set before them unless someone changed the topic, so change the topic she did, praying it would do them both more good than harm. “About Hawke, I mean? It’s been suggested to me that you’re something of an expert on the subject.”

Snorting out a derisive laugh, Cassandra rolled her eyes. “Expert. Most of what I know of her has been abruptly called into question.”

It was a feeling she could empathize with. Perhaps they needed to start some sort of social club—a way to mourn the loss of the Hawke that lived in their minds while finding a way to make room for the real one.

She kept that thought to herself.

“Between the Chantry’s reports and…” another scowl, “What other information I was given, I’m quickly realizing I have no way of parsing fact from fiction. Cullen was in Kirkwall at the time, perhaps you should—”

“Cullen…” the Inquisitor paused, internally debating how to best continue. There was no question in her mind that she couldn’t be half so direct as she’d been with Varric (a terrifying prospect, considering she hadn’t been all that direct with him to start with). No, no, no, she’d have to find a better way, a subtler way, to ask Cassandra what she wanted to know. If there’d ever been any question of that, the flush on her face when Hawke had stooped to kiss her hand had erased it—Cassandra was perhaps a touch too invested in Hawke’s story. Brute force would not be the way to go. “The commander felt he wasn’t able to give me an, er, adequate response at this time.”

Her attention appeared piqued even from behind the mask of her displeasure. “Is that so?”

She nodded, humming in the affirmative.

Beside her, Cassandra’s posture shifted. It would’ve been wrong to say she assumed a more comfortable stance, since most days she doubted Cassandra knew the meaning of the word, but her spine eased from the ramrod soldier’s edge it so often carried, and that was a start. “I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. From what I understand, she and her associates made his time in Kirkwall a hellish experience.”

Blood mages and Templars rarely get along, the Inquisitor thought to herself, and then just as quickly shook it from her head. Hawke wasn’t a blood mage—Hawke wasn’t a mage at all. Whatever had transpired between her and Cullen, it hadn’t been down to something as simple as that.

“More or less the impression I had,” she agreed. “But regardless, where do you think she’s been all this time? It strikes me as odd that she’d be able to remain hidden from your people for so long, even with Varric’s help…” Slowly, she peeked through the corner of her eye, trying to determine whether anyone was eavesdropping. Not that it much mattered. The cheers coming from the makeshift fighting grounds made it difficult to hear Cassandra, close as she was, so anyone who managed to listen in on their strained conversation was probably working at it hard enough to deserve whatever snatches of information they gleaned from it. “I figured you of all people would have theories.”

“As I just finished saying, I cannot say with any certainty—”

It was with a fair amount of effort that she kept her eyes on Cassandra; the bout going on behind them was gathering a larger crowd by the moment, suggesting quite a spectacle to behold. “I would be perfectly satisfied with conjecture.”

“Conjecture,” Cassandra repeated, growing thoughtful as she tested the weight of the word in her mouth. “Yes. Well. It should go without saying that her early movements were simple enough to track. After the destruction of Kirkwall’s Chantry, reports of Circles being…‘liberated’ began flooding in from all across the Free Marches. Those who witnessed the events very consistently reported two individuals featuring prominently in the chaos.”

Saying nothing, she simply listened. It was easy enough to imagine where the Seeker was going with this…though it in no way resembled the story she’d worked up in her own mind.

“Hawke.” As her gaze quickly zipped over to the ring where, by the looks of it, Sera and Rocky had joined the fray (to the thunderous approval of the crowd), the lines around Cassandra’s mouth grew more noticeable. “And Anders.” Her upper lip curled into a grimace, as though she’d just been forced to taste something bitter.

Hawke and Anders.

Hawke and…Anders?

Anders.

Her mind flashed back to their brief chat with Leliana—if it could be said that tense exchange had constituted conversation. Hawke had spoken the Grand Cleric’s and the Divine’s names as Varric had said the word ‘Champion,’ as Cassandra had just named Anders: She had spat them at her feet, only stopping short of grinding their remnants into the dust with the sole of her boot.

“Do you think that’s what really happened?” she asked, unable to stop herself. The more she thought on it, the more Hawke’s behavior seemed to slot into that narrative. Had her disdain for the Chantry been enough to justify leading a charge of apostates and beleaguered Circle mages through the Free Marches, Anders by her side, nothing but smoking, ashen piles of rubble remaining where the towers had been burned in retribution?   

For someone who’d made such fuss over her beliefs being called into question, Cassandra appeared terribly certain as she nodded. “I do. But of course, by the time those reports began coming in, there was too much confusion. Too much fighting. It became impossible to determine where the two of them had run off to. If I had to guess, I’ve always been of the opinion they fled to some secret cache in Ferelden. Both called the place home, once, and Maker knows there’s enough empty country out there for anyone to disappear, should they choose to.” She exhaled deeply through her nose, sounding more than just slightly put off by the whole ordeal. “It could explain how she was able to arrive here so quickly after being summoned.”

Hmm.

Hmm, indeed.

Had Cassandra felt that same moment of doubt, of unsteadiness, that she had when she’d first seen Hawke in the flesh? She’d said she had, but she wasn’t speaking as though that were the case. The Hawke that lived in her head, perhaps, had been strong enough to weather that storm after all; Hawke the vengeful wraith, Hawke the liberator of mages, Hawke the unrepentant, Hawke the devoted lover of the mad mage who’d brought Kirkwall and the Chantry to their knees. It made sense that it would be the Chantry’s view of her, the Inquisitor supposed.

It made sense, but it didn’t pass her smell test.

There was something about the image of Hawke—this Hawke—standing side-by-side with Anders, her hands clasped in his, fire reflecting in those bright blue eyes that…just didn’t fit. Not even a little. People were surprising, of course, and Hawke had already proved that once or twice since arriving, but…much like her earlier conversation with Varric had left her feeling as though she’d missed something important, some cipher needed to understand what was happening, so too did Cassandra’s story leave her wanting.

Mostly because of how little Fenris factored into it. If she was being entirely honest with herself, that was the detail she couldn’t move past. Since when had Hawke and Anders been able to stand in the same room as each other, much less flee the country together? It didn’t make sense!

“You think she would’ve remained with him? Anders? After all that time?”

Cassandra scoffed, “From what I understand, they—” She stopped, blinking before turning more fully to her. “Inquisitor?” she asked, having to raise her voice to be heard over the racket coming from the fight.

“Mmm?”

“Have you not read The Tale of the Champion?”

Now there was a complicated question if she’d ever heard one. Had she read the book? Yes. Hadn’t been able to put it down, really. Say what you wanted about the rougher edges of Varric’s personality or his proclivity for lying to your face as he saw fit, the guy knew how to write a story.

The problem was, she’d long-since come to realize she’d read a very, very, very different book than Cassandra had.

Again the question of Varric’s motives blazed bright as veilfire in her mind. What was the purpose of writing a second version of The Tale of the Champion, if not to buff away the memory of Hawke, the true Hawke, like so many fingers on a statue’s plaque? She couldn’t fathom an answer to that…so instead of stumbling her way through that explanation, she made an executive decision. Not to lie, not exactly, but to omit.

As such, she seesawed her hand in the air and made a quiet little noise. A noncommittal one. One she didn’t feel bad calling ‘ambiguous.’

The news seemed to bowl Cassandra over like a stampeding bronco. “I—truly?” Frowning, she took a moment to absorb the revelation. “Yes, they…Hawke and Anders, I mean, by all accounts, it’s said the two of them were madly in love from the moment they met. They were inseparable, made for each other. It was history repeating itself…Hawke’s mother, after all, had also been born into a noble family but had chosen to shirk her responsibilities and her duties to elope with a troubled apostate somewhere in the mires of Ferelden, the two of them constantly running from the Templars, their love a rebellion of its own sort, clinging to one another as if in h—” She cut herself off abruptly and cleared her throat.

The Inquisitor pretended as though she didn’t see the way the tips of her ears and the hollows of her cheeks began to darken. It was the least she could do.

“Regardless. I find it doubtful they would willingly go their separate ways, as it would mean endlessly worrying about the other, wondering if they’d been hurt, or whether they could’ve prevented any—” She appeared to catch herself again, making a disgruntled noise low in her throat before shaking her head. “No. Hawke knows where Anders is, I’m certain of it. And if Hawke knows, then Varric knows. Which brings me back to my original point, Inquisitor. They are liars. And while I cannot say I fully understand what they’re up to, I know it cannot be anything good. The longer we allow the two of them to remain among our number, the worse their inevitable betrayal will be, of this I assure you.”

Watching as Hawke helped Krem and Rocky to their feet only to pull them into a grand, sweeping bow for the crowd, the Inquisitor nodded. She doubted wholeheartedly that she’d wake in the coming days to find Hawke and Anders standing at the foot of her bed, poised and prepared to prune another branch of the Chantry’s influence from Thedas, but then again…she’d thought sealing the Breach would’ve been the end of their problems, so perhaps going off of gut feelings was another habit she’d need to work on ridding herself of.

Still, though the possibility of Varric and Hawke conspiring against the Inquisition and its people didn’t feel especially likely to her, she wasn’t fool enough to believe they weren’t up to anything. Talking with Cassandra hadn’t made her worries worse, and neither had it made them better. Instead, it had only served to deepen her curiosity.

Her earlier question remained: What did Varric gain by spreading not one but two versions of Hawke’s story into the world? Two incorrect versions, at that? Two lies?

Hawke straightened for an instant, bringing Sera in on the group’s bow, and together the four of them faced the crowd with wide, toothy grins. The Inquisitor couldn’t bring herself to look away, try as she might, thinking maybe she would understand it all if only she looked at Hawke from the correct angle, maybe she’d gesture in just the right way, catch her eye, drop another wink, and it would all snap into focus.

When it dawned on her that she hadn’t said much of anything for a time, she turned to Cassandra again, nodding with a curt, “Duly noted. Thank you.” Then she glanced towards the patch of land they’d been sparring on, and watched as the group disbanded, Krem wiping the sweat from his forehead as Hawke was swept away and clapped on the back by the others, her laugh bright enough to cut through the din of the courtyard and its rumbling chatter.   

No, she couldn’t say she understood what was going on with any more clarity than Cassandra, and yet…she thought she might’ve been starting to piece it together. Slowly. Messily. But a start was a start, even if perched on flimsy legs.

If absolutely nothing else, she knew what questions she was going to ask next. And for that matter, who she’d be asking them of.

Chapter Text

“Wait, wait…Anders? Why would Hawke be traveling with Anders?” Krem’s face was still glowing from the fight despite Skyhold’s chill, a few sweaty hairs slicked to his forehead. “Think the Seeker’s confused, Your Worship. All due respect, Hawke killed Anders. Stabbed him right through the heart. Everyone knows that!” He took a pull off his drink, eyes narrowing with thought as he did, and when he set his tankard down again he shook his head and muttered in an aside, “Not sure how she could’ve missed that part.”

“Oh?” The Inquisitor pulled up a chair and dropped herself into it, absently glancing around the corner of the Herald’s Rest the Iron Bull’s Chargers had long-since claimed as their own.

Part of her had expected to find Hawke there, truth be told, enjoying a post-spar drink of her own, but wherever she’d been ushered off to after the performance in the courtyard, it certainly hadn’t been the tavern. Just as well, it might’ve even been better that way—it would, at the very least, give her a chance to focus on getting the answers she wanted without having to worry about being overheard. Gossip and information-gathering weren’t exactly her strongest suits on the best of days, and until she was able to put some of this uncertainty about Hawke’s character to rest…well, suffice it to say she wasn’t terribly keen on the idea of being caught in the act.

The sloppy, sloppy, unorganized act.

But after speaking with Cassandra and Varric, her curiosity had taken on a bit of an edge; the feeling of having a stranger in their midst (and a well-armed one, at that) hadn’t exactly lessened, and while she still wasn’t sure she believed Cassandra’s worries that Hawke and Varric had been scheming under their noses all along, neither could she bring herself to accept that Hawke’s sudden presence at Skyhold was cause for immediate celebration. There were too many uncertainties, too many question marks, and, as she was quickly coming to realize, the shadow the Champion cast behind her was a heavy one indeed.

“Then I suppose it really wouldn’t make sense for her to be wandering hither and yon through the Hinterlands with him, would it?” she continued, wondering how much she’d have to pry, to wheedle, to find the crux of Krem’s impression of Hawke, “That’d make quite a different story: The Champion haunting the hills with her dead lover…”

“Lover?!” Krem had been just about to take another drink when he slammed his tankard down in surprise. Its contents sloshed dangerously near the rim but miraculously never actually spilled. “I—again, all respect, Your Worship, I think the Seeker read the wrong book! …or desperately needs to have her head checked.” He lifted his drink again, and then seemed to think better of it. “Not that you heard that from me. Even I know you don’t go around poking dragons.”

She raised an eyebrow curiously, remaining otherwise silent. Really, it was the only choice she had, considering it was taking every ounce of self-control she had to keep from grinning outright. Before today, she would’ve thought it odd, the rush of satisfaction that came with someone else sputtering at the thought of Hawke and Anders getting along (much less being romantically entangled), and yet…well, maybe she was being a bit dramatic, but hearing something resembling her own shock coming out of Krem’s mouth felt a whole lot like stepping into a warm bath after a long day. Finally! At least there was someone in Skyhold who’d had heard the story told the same way she had!

“You’ve read The Tale of the Champion, haven’t you?”

As she had with Cassandra, the Inquisitor shrugged. Her relief was one thing, but she wasn’t about to tip the scales one way or the other; she wanted to hear what Krem knew about Hawke, wanted to reassure herself that yes, Cassandra had somehow gotten hold of the wrong information (truly, from what she’d heard of the conditions of Varric’s interrogation, oh, she simply couldn’t imagine how or why he might’ve been swayed to bend the truth with her!), and, perhaps more than anything else, she wanted to know that the Hawke she’d pictured in her head, the ruthless maleficar with blood smeared across her nose and Fenris glowering at her side, had been the Hawke everyone had known.

“Oh!” Krem snorted a low laugh and flicked one of his hands dismissively. “Then how could you know? Yeah, I don’t know what the Seeker’s on about, but Hawke was not with Anders! Maker…they hated each other, those two! Couldn’t even be in the same room together without a fight breaking out. See, here’s what you have to understand, Your Worship: She—Hawke, that is—had a soft spot for this Dalish mage—”

From a few seats away, there was an indignant groan. “For the last time, I’m not a mage! I’m an archer!”

Krem rolled his eyes and angled his head towards the far side of the table. “Not you, Dalish! I’m talking about—”

“What?”

“I said I’m not talking about y—”

“I can’t hear you from here!”

“I’m—ugh, never mind! Maker’s…where was I?”

Chin resting in her hand as it was, she was easily able to hide her smile behind her fingers. “Hawke’s soft spot, I believe?” Since Haven, it had been all too easy to find herself wrapped up in the endless planning and worrying her advisors laid out before her each morning. Sitting there amid the Chargers’ raucous energy was a good reminder that there was more to life than moving pieces around the war table…and if she was being honest, it was something she’d been starting to forget.

“Oh, right, right. Yeah, uh, Merrill, her name was?”

Wait.

Wait.

Merrill?!

She felt her smile tighten behind her hand and prayed to any deity that might’ve been listening to take pity upon her and not let Krem see the incredulity there. When he’d first brought up the Dalish mage, it just…hadn’t clicked. He’d said the words ‘Dalish mage,’ yes, true, and she’d heard him say it, but somehow her mind had brushed it off, had ignored it, and…oh no. It was happening again, wasn’t it—it was happening again!

Krem, for his part, seemed utterly unaware of the effect the detail had had on her. “Mmm. She was a blood mage, Merrill, and I guess that was a problem for ol’ Anders. Imagine that! Man blows up a Chantry, sisters still inside, probably lighting candles and singing their sad songs, but it’s blood magic he turns his nose up at? Never understood it, myself. But between him always mouthing off about her girl and everything else, she absolutely killed him, Hawke did. Not that he gave her a choice in the end. Not with all the people he blew into the sky.”

Oh, she hoped the noise she made in response sounded interested and not agonized. It felt fairly agonized. In her own head it sounded a bit like a fennec having its tail tread on.

In one fell swoop, Krem had confirmed her suspicions: This was going to be yet another completely different version of Hawke’s life. The Champion living in his head was nothing like the Champion that lived in Cassandra’s, and the Champion in Cassandra’s head was night and day from the Champion in her head, and…

She was going to need a drink.

When she’d set out on this task, she had expected to find, well, maybe a handful of unimportant details changed around, stretched or squashed by the endless tellings and retellings that good stories called for; the tiny, innocuous things that people got wrong all the time—her height, the color of her eyes, whether she’d actually dropped a witty one-liner before murdering an Orlesian noble by dropping him off a cliff…the usual stuff. This, though? This was something else entirely.

Was she to believe, then, that not only had Varric written two exceptionally different editions of The Tale of the Champion, but now there was this third? And if there were three, it stood to reason that there were probably more, but…but why? Why?! Why keep changing the story if he wanted people to remember Hawke for who she was? Wasn’t this just adding fuel to the fire? Wasn’t this confusion just ensuring no one would ever really know the real her?

Maybe she was being premature about this, though. Maybe Merrill was the only changed detail she’d find in Krem’s story. That would make a hell of a lot more sense than everything being moved around. And it was so easy to explain, too! He’d just…he’d just misremembered all those love scenes!

…a lot.

…in some decidedly perplexing ways.

“I suppose she didn’t have much choice, when you put it that way. I just…” Shaking her head, the Inquisitor set both her arms down on the table, trying not to let the slump of her shoulders give her confusion away. “I don’t know, I suppose I’m still just trying to adjust. I expected her to be so…so…so different, is all.”

“Not me.” There it was, the same confidence she’d heard in Cassandra’s voice as she’d told the version of Hawke’s story she knew.

The Inquisitor took a deep breath and prepared herself to learn a new tale of the Champion’s life. “Oh no?”

He gave his head a curt little shake before leaning back in his chair. “Exactly what I pictured, toe to tip. Didn’t think she’d be that quick on her feet, though, nearly ran me through out there, and more than once! Like she’s got hollow bones or something.” He snorted a quiet laugh as though remembering a particular thrust or parry, reaching across himself to rub absently at his shoulder. “Eh, that’s what you get for picking a fight with that family. Not sure what I expected.”

Something about the comment, harmless as it was, caused her to suck her lower lip into her mouth, worrying it between her teeth. She wracked her brain for something, anything, of note about Hawke’s family that might’ve inspired the quip, but short of the basics (sister in the Circle, Templar brother, deceased parents, degenerate uncle), there wasn’t a single thing she could come up with. So, already suspecting this was a string that would unravel for miles once tugged, she cleared her throat and asked, “‘That family?’”

Krem didn’t miss a beat. “I’m just saying since she’s cousins with the Hero of Ferelden and all. Whole lot of them just seem to be made for fighting.”

The Hero of…oh, come on! What?!

That time there was absolutely no hope of hiding her disbelief. The Inquisitor knew she was staring at him as though he’d slapped her own mother, but there was just nothing to be done about it. “She’s cousins wi—”

“She’s not cousins with the Hero of Ferelden,” Rocky interrupted, scoffing loudly enough to be heard over the din of the tavern, “Now who needs their head checked?”

“Shove it, the Hero of Ferelden was an Amell. Like Hawke’s mother. They’re blood! Do you ever think before you open that mouth of yours, mate?”

“Big talk coming from someone who knows shit-all about shit-all. The Hero of Ferelden was a dwarf, so unless Hawke’s mother—”

“Knew you drank too much seawater that last run out to the coast. Knew it. Told you I knew it then, too. The Hero of Ferelden’s as human as human goes! Did you even look at that ugly fucking thing they put up in Redcliffe?”

Ending the back and forth as quickly and cleanly as a knife through flesh, someone dropped into the open seat beside the Inquisitor, surprising Krem and Rocky into (relative) silence. “You’re both wrong,” Skinner said, voice full of certainty despite the flatness of her tone. “One of you worse than the other, but wrong nonetheless.” She laid her own forearms on the table and leaned forward, the stained wood creaking faintly under her added weight, and after casting a sidelong glance the Inquisitor’s way, she continued. “They’re cousins, all right. Cousins on the father’s side, though. And for your information, the Hero of Ferelden and Hawke’s father? Elves.”

“I—elves. Elves?”

Skinner blinked once. “Consider paying closer attention to sources before you just—”

“If the Hero of Ferelden was an elf, I will eat my own boot, laces and all. I’ll let you pick which one, too, how about that?”

There was another sidelong look, a specialty of Skinner’s as it seemed, before her shoulders rose and fell in a shrug. “You saw her as clear as I did. Hawke’s small for a human. That’s because she isn’t. Not wholly, anyway. She’s half elf.”

“Come off it!”

“No, you come off it. Hawke’s half elf. Everyone and their mother knows that.”

“Half elf?! Where in the—you’re full of it, is what you are.”

“That’s all it takes, eh? Little shorter than you expect her to be and suddenly her father’s an elf, is he?”

From the other side of the table there was a low grunt, as if of doubt, and a moment later Stitches folded himself into the debate. “Grim’s gotta point there—did you see her ears?”

“Why no, Grim, I suppose I wasn’t paying much attention to her ears while she had a pair a’ blades to my throat, silly me! How about I make a note to check next time? Maybe offer to tenderly brush her hair out of her face for her while I’m at it? Whisper sweet nothings while she cuts me a new breathing hole?”

“Oh, you can’t tell from the ears! That’s just ta—”

“You can.”

“No, you can’t.”

“Pretty sure you can.”

“You just sit around staring at people’s ears all day? Is that what you’re telling me? Reading ears like augurs reading fortunes now, is that what we’re doing? Listen to yourself!”

“I wonder whose opinion actually counts for something in this conversation: The elf’s, or any of yours.” At that, Skinner turned fully towards the Inquisitor, face impassive if pinched, and mouthed the words ‘half elf’ with perfect clarity before pointing to her own ears and nodding. Then, looking back to Krem, she soldiered on, “That’s why she and her Dalish mage got on so quickly. It only makes sense.”

“I’m not—” Dalish began again (having since gotten up from her seat to stand huffily between Stitches and the others) only to be immediately cut off.

“No one’s talking about you.”

“But you—”

If there had been only one thing her time as Herald and Inquisitor had taught her, it was that this many people talking over one another was not, in fact, one of her favorite sounds. “I wonder,” she said, injecting herself into the conversation once more, raising her voice to be heard over the rest of them, “If Hawke and Merrill were so close, why do you think she came here all alone? Quite the journey to make by your lonesome, wouldn’t you say?”

Skinner’s eyebrows shot up and she clucked her tongue as though the Inquisitor were joking. “Why didn’t she bring a blood mage with her? To the Inquisition stronghold? Where the troops are commanded by an ex-Templar?”

“It was something of a pointless question, wasn’t it?” She chuckled along with the rest of them, finding it easy to do despite that boulder of uncertainty in her stomach sitting heavy as ever; despite their chaos, the Chargers were good for that—loosening the laughs from you. “Forget I asked.”

How he was able to do it she couldn’t say, but with the others now fully engrossed in their debate over Hawke’s lineage (and ears), Krem simply picked up their conversation where it had been left off. “Honestly I’d be surprised if they were still together at all…I don’t know how she’d be able to stick it out with a blood mage like that after what happened to her mother. Just have to imagine it soured the whole thing in her head. Ask me, that’s why she turned tail and left Kirkwall without a second word about it. Had to get away from all that blood magic, afraid she’d become one of them, y’know. All that temptation? S’not good for a mage.”

So he’d been under the impression Hawke was a mage too. Just…not a blood mage? A difference like that had to be purposeful, had to have been planted for a reason, but…whatever that reason was, it was beyond her. “Hawke wasn’t using magic when the two of you were sparring just now,” the Inquisitor pointed out, watching his expression carefully.

Some part of her had anticipated a wrinkle of confusion in his brow, a moment of doubt to flit across his features, but Krem’s was not the face of a man whose faith had been shaken. “Not the first mage I’ve met to pick up a different weapon.” With the others as distracted as they were, he nodded Dalish’s way without trying to hide his smirk, snorting a low laugh afterwards. “‘Sides, wouldn’t surprise me if she wanted to put a little space between herself and magic altogether, what with seeing what happened to the First Enchanter up close and personal. Eugh, awful mess, that. Can’t imagine a person seeing something like that and not going absolutely stark raving after.”

Her curiosity pulsed again, quickly becoming a living, breathing beast of its own, and she lifted her hand into the air to signal Cabot to bring the table another round of drinks. She had a feeling they’d be talking for a good long while yet, she and the Chargers, a good long while indeed. “Ah, right, Orsino…I suppose I’d mostly forgotten about that situation. I never really understood what happened there, to be frank. It was so…strange. Disconnected, almost.”

“I don’t blame you! Man goes out of his head, turns into some blubbery abomination, then attacks the very people championing his cause? Mad! Just mad. Hawke took care of him too, of course—put her blade straight into his throat. Stopped that real quick.”

“Guess she really earned that Champion title, eh?” Accepting her drink from Cabot, she took a slow sip, resisting the urge to purse her lips. The intrigue just kept growing, it seemed. Growing and growing. Deepening. Warping. Twisting like wind-torn tree roots in a storm.

What was going on here?

How many of these stories was she going to find if she kept poking about?

And more importantly…which one was true?

Chapter Text

“Orsino? Blood magic? Oh darling…this is why we don’t ask roving bands of mercenaries for history lessons.” Smoothing the lines of her dress, Vivienne gracefully sat herself down on her chaise, gesturing primly towards a nearby chair such that the Inquisitor might join her.

The shaking of her head and the uptick of the corners of her lips suggested more amusement than frustration as she began pouring their tea, and…well, the fact she wasn’t wasting any time on the nicety of asking whether or not said tea was actually wanted (it was) suggested that perhaps the last round (or two) with the Chargers had been a mistake (still up for debate). The Inquisitor quietly accepted her cup with a smile and a nod, all the while wondering just how badly she must’ve reeked of alcohol.

Her suspicion?

Fairly badly.  

“I can’t claim to have known the man well, of course, and far be it from me to suggest that people can’t surprise you when their backs are to the wall, but…” Vivienne raised her cup to her lips, blowing delicately. “Suffice it to say, I find it highly questionable Orsino would have the wherewithal to do much of anything like what you just described.” Then, under her breath, almost too quietly to be heard, she added, “Not the least of which, finding people fool enough to follow him.”

She took a slow sip, resisting the urge to down it in just one go (debate over, that last round had been a mistake, and she made a mental note to remind Cabot to never again serve her whatever that had been), and hummed in interest. Krem’s story about Kirkwall’s Grand Enchanter had matched up almost beat-for-beat with the one she herself had taken as truth, but it wasn’t until she’d heard it from his mouth that she’d come to doubt it; since just that morning she’d known Hawke to be a mage, a blood mage, none of those, Anders’s lover, Merrill’s lover, Fenris’s lover, none (or all) of those, and it would’ve been a fool who’d assumed they knew anything about the woman’s life by that point. So when Krem had gone on and on about Orsino becoming—what was it he’d said? Some sort of ‘blubbery abomination massacring those championing his cause?’ Something along those lines, anyway—a villain in his own right, all it had done was raise more questions.

“Oh, he was adequate enough as Grand Enchanter, I’m sure,” Vivienne continued, glossing over the implied slight with a half-nod, “And he wouldn’t have been the first mage to resort to blood magic when he found his position threatened, but one does have to wonder where one hears stories such as these, hmm?” There was a glimmer in her eyes when she glanced up from her tea that didn’t quite reach the threshold of mockery…but promised it could, or would, if given due time. “Again, my dear, I won’t suggest I knew him particularly well, but on those occasions where we have met, my impression of the man has always been such that I’d think, when faced with a threat like the Champion, or the Knight-Commander, for that matter, he’d be dead long before he could summon the steel to do anything like what you’re talking about.”

So much for implied slights.

Managing another tight smile of her own, the Inquisitor stole a quick look out towards the balcony. A lovely breeze floated in, the rays of afternoon sunshine warming the alcove to the point of giving it a sleepy sort of haze. It was idyllic, almost, the sort of cool comfort she’d denied herself since the losses at Haven, and oh what she would’ve given to slouch down in that lovely chair and sleep off the ringing in her ears the Chargers and their tankards had left in their wake. Alas, the view from over her shoulder was a much different story—from Vivienne’s high perch, she could see nearly every inch of Skyhold’s entryway, including the builders and guests and scouts going about their lives, milling about and chattering to fill the space with the low buzz of disorganized conversation. It was nearly dark enough to be oppressive within those thick stone walls, the air heavy with the cloying smells of pinesap and metal, and she couldn’t help counting the heads that bobbled by: those she saw and those she didn’t, those that were there and those that should’ve been.

Sleep? How could she even consider sleeping when there was so much to do? So many others to help? It was unthinkable, really, even if the heady combination of the warm teacup in her hands and the soft breeze fluttering by lent itself perfectly to letting go and drifting off…or would’ve, had it not been for who her eyes fell on next.

There were people enough in the main hall that she could easily pretend she wasn’t blatantly staring at the table nearest the main doors. Had she been so inclined to look that way, then perhaps she might’ve noticed the objects of the day’s curiosity reclining near the empty grate of the fireplace. The loud ones. The ones occasionally pointing in some direction before exchanging veiled looks and quieter comments hidden behind their hands.

No, Hawke certainly hadn’t been in the Herald’s Rest after the impromptu sparring match in the courtyard, and perhaps where she had been would remain shrouded in mystery for the rest of time itself (like everything else about her), but wherever she may have gotten off to while the Inquisitor had passed her own time with the Chargers, one thing was for certain—she’d picked up a new friend along the way. There, unmistakable even in a crowd, was Cole. It was impossible to tell precisely where he was looking under that ridiculously large and floppy hat of his, but as far as she could see, he seemed to be raptly listening to Hawke and Varric. Judging by the way Hawke kept throwing her head back to laugh, not to mention the intensity of Varric’s hand gestures, it must’ve been a hell of a tale being told.

Another for the pile.

She didn’t let her eyes rest on any one point for too long, and even so, in the blink of an eye, Cole had tilted his head to look directly at her and she just as quickly glanced away. Too late, too late, too late…the Inquisitor swore she could feel the other two’s attention turn upwards towards her just as she met Vivienne’s gaze again. It was all too easy to imagine their grins.

This was why she usually left the subterfuge and secrecy to other members of the Inquisition. Subtlety was a struggle for her on the best of days—the ones where she wasn’t fighting against the taste of ale in the back of her throat and a faint pounding in the back of her head (becoming less and less faint by the moment). Part of her wondered if they knew what she was doing, whether that quick, possibly imagined, glance her way had been enough to read the signs and know without needing to be told that she was discussing them. It felt just as likely as it did improbable; she’d heard everything else about Hawke today, might as well throw mind-reading into the mix. Lip-reading at the very least.

The Inquisitor took another sip of her tea, letting the steam caress her face, and there were not words enough to describe how grateful she was that Vivienne continued, ever-so-gracefully filling the silence that her spying had brought about. “The whole Kirkwall debacle was exceptionally unfortunate, and while I must admit I agree with our dear Cassandra that I’m not entirely comfortable with having two of its key players under our roof, I also understand that the bulk of the blame for that horrendous tragedy should fall on the poor planning and structure of the city itself. There’s condemnation enough to go around, as is always the case. The Viscount, the Grand Enchanter, the Knight-Commander, most certainly the Grand Cleric, and yes, our beloved Champion. None without blame.” Vivienne looked thoughtfully to the side, eyes narrowing only subtly, as though she were attempting to recall something long-since lost to her. “None without their faults.

“So much of the tension in that city was due to the combined threat of the Blight and the Qunari invasion. In the beginning, at least…ah, but the Chantry allowed itself to be knocked off-balance early on in that madness, found itself swept away in the confusion, and then spent the next few years scrambling to find some handhold in the chaos. Meanwhile, Kirkwall’s citizens were left to watch them flounder time and time again.” An airy sigh escaped her, “Such needless tragedy. It does make one wonder…could any of it have been prevented? Or, by virtue of its pillars, was it doomed from the very start? People, you see, can only comport themselves with the same sort of civility they observe from those they consider to be their leaders. Is it any wonder, then, that the city collapsed?”

No pressure there.

Despite the thought, there was something so soothing about Vivienne’s voice, calming as the warmth of the teacup slowly sinking into the palm of her hand. It was a talent she ached for in that secret place in the very back of her heart, the ability to bring calm to a situation simply by speaking, to ease others’ worries with the cadence of her words. Things had been too shouty, of late, and it had begun to feel as though no one would ever be calm when in her presence.

The Herald of Andraste. The Inquisitor. Not the warmest of titles. The whole glowing hand thing definitely hadn’t helped.

Despite that sense of calm, of peace, she reminded herself she’d come to Vivienne for a reason. From the moment she’d first imagined her own uncertainty as a mossy boulder sitting in her gut, the image had only grown stronger and crisper in her mind; as she sat there, the padding of her chair whisper-soft against the backs of her arms and neck, she could almost feel it begin to roll again, slimy and heavy and making her insides jiggle about. Silently inspecting the etchings of her teacup, the Inquisitor considered her next words carefully. “Have you read The Tale of the Champion, I wonder?”

Vivienne laughed—a soft, warm sound. “Read it? Of course! Why, it was all the rage in the court when it was first released! Now, am I inclined to believe half of what was written in it?” Her lips turned up into the barest hint of a smile. “That…is another question entirely.”

She returned the smile, trying not to laugh outright. “It most certainly is.” There was a quiet clink when, after she took another drink of her tea, she set the cup back on its saucer. “If you were inclined to believe any of it, though…what parts would those be?”

There was a beat of silence as Vivienne seemed to consider the question. “My beliefs regarding the Champion are wholly without consequence, Inquisitor. What matters is what you believe.” She said it with a certain air of finality, and for a moment she was sure she would have to press her further…and then the knowing smile resurfaced. “With that in mind…I believe, helpful as she is—helpful as they both have been—the reality of the situation is that we have opened ourselves up to an alliance with two very accomplished career criminals. Not to say we should discount or reject their help, you understand, but only a fool would look at the Champion’s timely appearance and see nothing more than coincidence or providence. When one finds themselves very suddenly in the presence of opportunists, Inquisitor, one must stop and consider what opportunity they’ve scented on the air.”

The boulder gave another slick lurch. More of this, then? The endless back-and-forth of guessing and second-guessing Hawke’s intentions? It still struck her as doubtful she was planning anything nefarious, but the whiplash of going from Cassandra’s grim suspicions to the Chargers’ gleeful anecdotes to, now, Vivienne’s softly intoned warning was…dizzying. How could so many different people believe so many different things about Hawke? Had Varric printed his Tale (or Tales, as it were) of the Champion with blank spots where readers could simply fill in whatever details they wanted? It didn’t make sense, not one lick, and regardless of what she believed about Hawke, or perhaps more to the point, what she wanted to believe about Hawke, the Inquisitor couldn’t shake that creeping sense of doubt.

“I’ve heard…a lot of conflicting stories today,” she finally admitted, gingerly setting her saucer down on a nearby table.

The statement was received with another soft laugh. “Of that, Inquisitor, I have no doubt.” It was Vivienne’s turn to gaze across the open expanse of Skyhold, then, though she did little to hide the way her eyes fell to the fireplace. She blinked slowly once, twice, the gesture that of a contented cat curled up in a patch of brilliant sunlight, and not for one second did that smile of hers falter. “I know you haven’t spent overmuch time in Orlais, so allow me, if you will, to teach you one of the unspoken rules of The Game. Stories are a currency all to themselves. Some are worth much more than others. Some, much less. Think of them in terms of coin. You can use a story to buy yourself all manner of things—time, respect, fear, allies, enemies—they can be traded and collected, treasured or thrown into the gutter for anyone to pick up.” That far-away look crossed her features again, though only for a moment. She was quiet for just long enough that the Inquisitor had thought she’d reached the end of her lesson, only for Vivienne to turn towards her and meet her gaze once more.

“Did you know, for all their many, many differences, there is something of a tradition in both Orlais and Antiva to fashion jewelry out of coins?” Vivienne waited the perfect amount of time for an answer before continuing on. “It goes in and out of vogue every few years, you understand…sometimes it’s considered horribly gauche, others, all the rage. One might believe the trend is simply a show of wealth, a…mmm, how would you put it? A disregard for the worth of the money they’re driving holes through. No doubt there’s truth there, flagrant displays of affluence never go out of style, and yet…those who shrug it off as pride and nothing more miss a much less pleasant possibility.”

Her forehead had gone tight with the scrunching of her brow. This felt like a test, somehow, as though her mettle was being scrutinized. The past few weeks, she’d failed at so many things…she wasn’t sure she would’ve been able to deal with disappointing someone else, someone whose opinion she valued as highly as Vivienne’s…so she hazarded a guess. “Coin shines,” she said, watching her face for any sort of reaction, positive or negative, proud or pitying, “Which means it can distract.”

The corners of Vivinne’s eyes crinkled with her smile, only to smooth out once more almost immediately after. She drew herself up a bit and gave a brief clap, the barest tips of her fingers patting against her palm. “Impressive! You’ve got it: All that glimmers, all that flounces, all that jingles and jangles and sways in the wind, it draws the eye, meaning you aren’t paying attention to the telltale bulge of a dagger hidden away inside a sleeve, or a sachet of poison tucked into a garter. Stories use pretty little details to draw your eye from the truth of the matter. I’m sure that, depending on to whom you’ve spoken, you’ve heard all manner of things about our distinguished guest.”

“All manner,” she agreed, not without a slight laugh. “She’s a mage, but she’s not a mage. And she’s been with Anders all this time, except she hasn’t been, because she’s been with Merrill. Oh, and she’s related by blood to the Hero of Ferelden, who may or may not be an elf, or a dwarf, or a human, but who is most definitely related to Hawke’s mother. Er, father, sorry.” Having it all out like that was a relief, chipping away at that traitorous boulder inside of her. It felt so much easier to smile, then.

Or did, until she realized Vivienne’s expression had gone stony at the edges. “Precisely. Details that glitter in the sunlight like a sovereign wound through with lace.” Surreptitiously, she smoothed the fabric of her dress once more, her gaze flitting down through the banisters and towards the fireplace. “Drawing your eye from what matters most.”

A sliver of her tongue poked out to wet her lips. She suddenly very much wanted another drink of her tea, something to hold in her hands, to focus her attention on, to press to her mouth so she wouldn’t need to speak. “What happened to Kirkwall,” the Inquisitor said after a beat, trying and failing to keep her own eyes from following Vivienne’s line of sight. There were Hawke and Varric, still laughing, still gesturing, and there was Cole, still listening, his head tilted to one side in such a way that his expression was impossible to make out.

Hadn’t she, herself, entertained the ludicrous thought she’d be able to see pieces of the Chantry’s plaster still smoking in Hawke’s hair that morning? That she’d be able to smell the blood, the dust, the heat from the explosion? That her skin would still be slick with sweat and rust from that final fight with Meredith in the Gallows? She didn’t see how anyone could forget any of that, details be damned.

“What happened to Kirkwall,” Vivienne said by way of agreement, “And what happened to her companions.”

Oh no. Oh no.

Instead of asking what she’d meant, the Inquisitor remained silent, still watching from the corner of her eye as, below them, Varric gestured and Hawke flitted about, clapping, holding her hands to her face, reaching out to nudge Cole, brandishing some object to help bring attention to whatever point was being made in the story, always moving, never stilling, drawing every eye in Skyhold to her as…as a sovereign wound through with lace might draw every eye in a sunny salon held in Val Royeaux. She didn’t have to wait long to know what Vivienne had meant, but she almost wished she had, if only so she might’ve been able to brace herself.

“I imagine it’s very easy, almost pleasant, to think of her as a scrappy upstart clawing her way through the undercity to reclaim her family’s nobility and name, a wily young woman with a mouth full of clever thoughts and a heart full of ambition. Anything, I suppose, is an easier story to swallow than the truth: That in her mad dash to climb the ranks and secure the position within the city’s hierarchy she thought herself so deserving of, she systematically destroyed the lives of everyone who stopped being of use to her, such that she might free up more space to find new stepping stones to aid her ascent into Hightown and beyond.” It was difficult to tell, considering how very little her expression changed, but Vivienne’s stare had gone very still, very resolute, as she watched Hawke.

The emotion behind it was impossible to parse.

“It began, of course, with her handing her sister over to the Circle. Then came encouraging Varric to murder his own brother. It was no surprise that she gave Isabela to the Arishok, or Fenris to his onetime master. It’s simply what she does, Inquisitor. She survives. By any means necessary.” She finally tore her eyes away from the scene below, resuming her earlier smile as though they’d been discussing nothing more consequential than the weather. “I’m sure she’ll be excellent help in tracking down Corypheus. After that?” She paused to pick up her teacup and take a thoughtful drink. “Well. After that, or outside of that, as the case may be, I’d suggest nothing more than the utmost caution when fraternizing with her.” Again she paused, again she grew thoughtful. “Them.”

Suddenly the breeze coming in from the open window didn’t feel half so comfortable. Her thoughts of falling asleep, of relaxing, seemed a million miles away. A lifetime away. What was it her father had always said? ‘Out of the skillet and into the fire?’ She’d assumed this little foray into Inquisition gossip would be fun, that it would be a much-needed reprieve from the endless worries and fears and doubts that had assailed every second of every minute of every day since she’d woken from the Conclave with a pounding in her head and the Fade itself pulsing from inside her palm. She wasn’t having fun, though. It was all just raising more questions, hundreds of thousands of questions, raising them up high as the battlements they’d met on without a single answer to be found as far or wide as she could see.

It was one of those questions that popped out despite her better judgement: “How do you know?”

“Hmm?” There was nothing cold or unkind in Vivienne’s gaze as she looked to her from over the rim of her teacup. No scorn. Only curiosity. “How do I know…?”

“That any of that’s true? What you just said, I mean. How do you know that those aren’t just more details meant to pull your attention away from something else?” They’d all done it, every single person she’d talked about Hawke with—vehemently cling to what they’d believed to be true, all the while rolling their eyes at or waving off any piece that didn’t fit their own narrative. Cassandra had done it, the Chargers had done it, and now here was Vivienne getting in on the action. It was as though they couldn’t see what they were doing, didn’t hear the conflict in their own retellings. Could that be?

For her part, Vivienne appeared to think it over, her eyes momentarily drifting up and to the right as though focusing in on something high above their heads. There was the faintest movement to her lips, not as if she were saying something to herself, but as if trying to work the question out in her mind. “The uncomfortable reality is that one never really knows anything for certain,” she said after a time, an admission the Inquisitor hadn’t been prepared for, “And since none of us were there at the time, I suppose we’ll never get any closer to the truth than we are allowed. But perhaps you’ll indulge my answering your question with one of my own…” She waited until the Inquisitor nodded, and then, leaning forward just so, placed her hand lightly upon her knee. “If it weren’t true, her abandoning her companions the moment they stopped being of use to her, disposing of them, if you will…then why did she come here alone?”

She opened her mouth to respond, to add another question to the ever-growing chain of questions, when the memory of her earlier conversation with Varric occurred to her. ‘I should probably try and get a few letters out,’ he’d said, ‘There are certain concerned parties that I’m sure would be very relieved to hear she arrived in one piece.’ To which she had asked, smiling the tentative smile of a child wanting to prove they knew something, anything, about the matter at hand, ‘Fenris?’ Only for him to turn away, to echo back, ‘Certain concerned parties.’ Neither a confirmation nor a denial, she’d thought all those hours ago—effectively nothing.

Effectively nothing. Nothing at all.

And that nothing, that nonchalance, that would make perfect sense if there was no Fenris to write to, wouldn’t it? No Isabela, no Bethany, no Carver, no Sebastian or Merrill or Aveline, Anders cold and dead and forgotten under the wreckage of the Chantry, Gamlen bitter and estranged? It would make sense.

…except…then who had he been off in such a rush to write to? If not her companions, if not her friends, then who? It had to be them. Had to be!

It was chance and nothing more than she happened to look down into the entryway again, chance that of all the people gathered around listening to Varric in their loose semi-circle, only one was looking back up at her. She didn’t look away from Hawke that time, but it was only tentatively that she returned her cheery little finger-wave. From that distance she looked even smaller than she had that morning, even more…what? Average? Normal? In her leathers, with her hair pulled out of her face, with her boots scuffed and her daggers sheathed and her face pink from the cold, she could’ve been anyone. She could’ve been no one. No one at all.

From down below, Hawke held her gaze for a moment longer before turning back to Varric, leaning in towards him with an easy grin and slipping into the flow of his story as though she’d never left. In a way, maybe she hadn’t.

“I’ll be careful,” she said with a gracious nod once she’d come back to herself. “But I think you’re wrong.” About the others, about Hawke herself, about Orsino…she wasn’t entirely sure which of those she meant, or whether she meant all of them at once, so she let her voice trail off, the thought ending where it lay, incomplete and abrupt.

Vivienne took in a breath deep enough that she could watch her shoulders rise and fall with the effort of it. “For what it’s worth, darling—and it may not be worth very much at all—I hope I am.”

Chapter Text

Her feet had made the decision for her, really. There’d been nothing conscious about her slow descent from Vivienne’s perch high above the entryway—at least not that she could put her finger on—just the single-minded restlessness of the day guiding her down stair after stair, taking her away from the breeze and back towards the thick heat of activity. That restlessness brought her to the base of the stairway, level with the workers hammering at beams and the scouts trading notes and the cook’s assistants running to and fro (muttering, strangely enough, about missing turnips of all things) and everyone else who’d had the wise idea of ducking into the fortress instead of freezing their fingers off outside, except…

Except Hawke. Of course.

The Inquisitor looked towards the fireplace’s grate to see that Hawke had disappeared, taking Varric and Cole with her while leaving little in her wake besides the red-orange glow of embers trying desperately to kindle against the cold. Ah, but she saw when she looked closer that wasn’t entirely true—her captive audience had only half-dispersed, some still milling about and talking amongst themselves in smaller huddles. Trading stories, she wouldn’t wonder, reliving whatever anecdote Varric had been telling, their expressions saying everything about their own impressions of Hawke as they searched their friends’ faces for much the same.

She watched the crowd dissipate and gather again, ebbing and flowing, ever-changing as the waves crashing against the Storm Coast, silently considering joining the throng for half a breath before her feet, again acting as her brain, carried her away. She had a sinking suspicion that were she to join them, all she’d be able to see would be that same wonder, awe, perplexment, doubt, anticipation that she’d seen when looking out to the crowd when first accepting her new title, the same she’d seen in the mountains that night, her ribs aching, her lungs on fire, the survivors of Haven kneeling around her and—

Yeah, okay, no. The day had been strange enough already; she didn’t need the memory of all that singing added to the mess. A woman could only handle so much at once.

Or ever.

The door was coarse under her hand as she pushed, heaved, slipped inside, and when it shut once more behind her, things went so quiet that it was as though the world itself was holding its breath. That was always how the office felt to her, anyway—as if it swallowed all of Skyhold’s myriad sounds, tamping them down, down, down until the gentle, crackling hiss of the fire became a roar in comparison. So thorough was that quiet, so soothing, that she wouldn’t have been shocked if someone had suggested an arcane influence to be at play.

“Inquisitor!” No craning of the head, no sidelong glances, Josephine simply greeted her as though she’d been able to identify her from the sound of her footsteps alone. “Apologies, I’ll be with you in just a moment!”

She smiled by way of an answer, only then noticing the other two standing at the desk. They were clad as any other Inquisition citizen, but it struck her that they held themselves as Leliana’s scouts did, muscles coiled tight beneath a veneer of nonchalance, their eyes quick to move. They paid her only a moment of attention before bending over Josephine’s desk again, one tapping a finger against some document or other. A pine knot popped in the fire and whatever they were discussing was lost to her amid the resulting crackle. Fine by her all around: The past few weeks had been nothing but logistical conversations and late-night plans formed over old maps, so she was happy to find herself unneeded for this one.

The Inquisitor sat herself in one of the plush chaises in front of the fire, taking a long moment to bask in the heat of it. There was nothing of the idyllic breeze that had lulled her in Vivienne’s alcove; if anything, the insistence of the fire felt like a bolstering force, something to help keep her awake as she organized her thoughts. Her fingers found their way to her temples, pressing away the last remnants of her afternoon with the Chargers…only to make more room, it seemed, for Hawke.

What was she meant to make of any of it? Varric had pulled off a hell of a joke, that much was certain. Her earlier confusion on that subject, at least, had cleared. He’d changed Hawke’s story time and time again, twisting the narrative wherever he could to paint her in a hundred separate lights. For all she knew, every copy of The Tale of the Champion might’ve been different from the last, each filling its reader’s imagination with a wholly unique Hawke. She wouldn’t pretend to understand any of that, but neither would she sit by and continue to let herself be perplexed by it. It was what it was, even if the reasoning behind it was less than forthcoming.

Maybe he’d done it to throw people like Cassandra, people interested in tracking her down, off her trail. That would’ve made about as much sense as anything else, wouldn’t it? It very well might’ve been an attempt to protect her from the Chantry and its supporters. Or…maybe Vivienne had been right. Maybe it was a ploy to distract from some deeper, uglier truth of what had happened in Kirkwall. Could it have been that, together, they’d conspired to trick the wider public into believing in a more palatable series of events?

Maybe?

Maybe.

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But ‘maybe’ only went so far when the person it applied to was suddenly living under your roof, granted full access to your people and resources and was, yes, behaving rather brightly for someone surrounded by all the players they’d been trying so hard to evade, for someone who’d only just found out the ancient darkspawn they’d gone to such lengths to destroy was giving marching orders again, for someone…

“Inquisitor?”

Josephine’s voice startled her out of her own head, and it was when she turned towards her desk that she heard the door thud shut behind her. Lo and behold, whoever the ambassador’s visitors had been, they were already long gone.

Reaction times like that were, again, why she left the subterfuge and subtlety to other members of the Inquisition.

“I…didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, voice slow with thought as she turned towards the desk once more, pushing herself up from the overstuffed seat of the chaise.

“Oh, it’s no matter.” The five, perhaps six, steps to cross the room proved insufficient to shake the heavy blanket of heat from the fire. Even so, there was no missing the distraction in Josephine’s tone—not all too different from the distraction in her own, she wouldn’t wonder.

“Is everything all right?”

“Hmm? Oh! Yes, yes everything is…everything is fine. Just trying to finalize some…” Josephine shut her eyes then, flaring her fingers and shaking her head; a practiced reset if she’d ever seen one. It took her a moment, but she assumed a more casual posture, folding her arms on the desk in front of her, peeling her gaze away from the stack of papers she’d been so furiously flipping through before. “No matter. Is there something I can help you with?”

Try as she might, the Inquisitor couldn’t shake Vivienne’s voice from her head. Josephine was nothing short of the living embodiment of her warning, wasn’t she? Flounces and ruffles and things that shone in the light, all drawing the eye as she cut through their naysayers with nothing sharper than the stroke of a pen…proof positive, if you will. It steadied her resolve, made her feel slightly less ridiculous about asking the same questions she’d been asking all day.

“I was actually hoping to pick your mind about our, er, esteemed guest.” Miniscule though it was, she caught the way Josephine’s face changed. “Unless you’d rather we not?”

“No, it’s—certainly. Certainly! What would you like to discuss?”

Though her mind-reading capabilities were roughly as honed as her subtlety, it didn’t exactly take a psychic to sense something was amiss. The Inquisitor pulled her upper lip into her mouth, worrying it between her teeth for a moment. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

There was a pause that lasted either precisely one heartbeat or one lifetime, and then Josephine’s entire frame crumpled inside its shell of tulle and satin. “I have no idea where to put her! We have plenty of rooms, and in all manner of locations, but nothing I suggest seems to…” A paper rustled when she flicked her hand towards it. “At first, I thought something that overlooked the Herald’s Rest, that maybe she was accustomed to the background noise and the atmosphere the tavern would afford, but then I thought ‘What if it dredges up past memories of the Hanged Man?’ and so I did away with that. Then I considered something near the garden, such that it is at this juncture, but that’s where Mother Giselle has been spending most of her time, and the Champion’s relationship with the Chantry is such that…well…” Her hands floundered in the air before her, saving her voice the work. “And I’ve already had a, hmm, how to put it…I’ve had a few concerned parties suggest they’d prefer she not be housed anywhere near them—”

Her lips had said ‘concerned parties.’

Her eyes had said ‘Cullen.’

“—and far be it from me to question anyone’s preferences, especially as it pertains to their own perceived safety, but…”

She leaned forward over the desk, cutting Josephine off as gently as she could. If the ambassador spoke any faster, the Inquisitor feared she might literally bite her own tongue off in her haste. “Have you…asked Hawke? About where she wants to stay, that is?”

“Of course!” That, at least, seemed to be some sort of relief to her, as though by virtue of being able to give a definitive answer to her question, things were on the mend. “Cassandra and I took her around Skyhold to show her the facilities—”

Not exactly how she remembered that morning going, but okay.

“—and I made plenty of suggestions! Pointed out entire swaths of lodgings that were open! But I couldn’t get a solid response from her on any of them. Every time I’d try, she’d say she was fine where she stayed last night, which of course only agitated Cassandra more than she already was. Each time, she was reminded the Champion had been hiding under our noses for an entire day before she thought to announce herself, and me with her! I just can’t stop thinking…wherever she was hiding last night, I can’t imagine it would be half as comfortable as any of the rooms we could provide to her, so—”

“I think she stayed with Varric.”

Silence.

Josephine’s attention (and eyebrows) shot up from the desk. Her face had taken on the pallid cast of someone who’d had the bad luck to spot an especially large and hairy spider shriveled at the bottom their morning breakfast bowl much too late for anything to be done about it. Had she been speaking to anyone else, the Inquisitor might’ve thought that was the expression of someone staring their own death in the face, and yet all she’d done was present Josephine with the very probable reality that Hawke had simply bunked in Varric’s room for a single night of her stay.

“…I just figured,” she continued carefully, her words made slow as they crept forward on delicate tiptoes, terrified of tripping another unseen trap, “They were probably catching up after all that time apart, and since they were essentially always sharing space in Kirkwall…” Her voice trailed off and she shrugged.

It was logic, wasn’t it? Nothing more, nothing less? If one of her old friends from her life before (before all of this madness, before the Anchor, before Haven, before being pushed out of the Fade) had shown up on her doorstep out of the blue, she would’ve insisted on keeping them close. It only made sense!

Not to Josephine, it seemed. 

“But Varric’s quarters are so small,” she said in a voice more suited to, perhaps, finding out the Divine had been resurrected, only to be strung up in the town center and assassinated a second time. “Oh, I certainly hope you’re wrong about that, Inquisitor, I hope she found other lodgings if she did in fact stay the night. I can’t imagine there’d even be room for two people in his room…Andraste, they would’ve been right on top of each other the whole time!”

Well now, there was a mental image! They would’ve…

Hang on.

Wait a minute.

Wait just a minute.

Oblivious to the chain of dominoes she’d set toppling in the Inquisitor’s mind, Josephine continued, “No, it simply won’t do. We’ll have to find accommodations more suiting someone of her title. There are so many options open right now, she could have her pick! Maybe…maybe something closer to the stables, do you think? Or would that be in poor taste? Remind her too much of Lothering, perhaps? Hmm.” Her hands flared again, followed by another shaking of her head. It was as though she thought she could literally fling the thought from her mind. “Oh! But I’m sure you didn’t come here worried about something as trivial as room and board! I apologize. I assure you, you have my full attention.”

Trouble was, she no longer had hers. Not after that one innocuous little comment. No, now the Inquisitor found herself quite distracted as well. If what she thought was happening actually was, it wouldn’t explain everything, but…

But poor Josephine was busy on the slowest of days, penning endless missives and reaching out to countless contacts; taking up more of her time than she absolutely needed wasn’t just unprofessional, it ran the risk of putting the Inquisition’s people at a severe disadvantage. For that reason, she did her best to move past that particular point of suspicion and instead broached her concerns more generally.

“I’ve been hearing a lot of conflicting stories about Hawke since her arrival,” she began, not missing the minute way the corners of Josie’s mouth quirked upwards as she spoke. “In light of that, I guess you could say I’ve been…giving special consideration to the concern you and the others seemed to be feeling when Varric said we had a guest on the way.”

Josephine’s shoulders dropped a fraction of a fraction of an inch. “I was showing concern? Visibly?”

“You seemed…on edge.”

“Oh dear. Well that simply won’t do. I’ll try to rein that in from here on. If you noticed I was feeling uncertain, I can’t begin to imagine who else might’ve…”

“I’m just wondering,” she continued after affording her time enough to scribble down what she had to imagine was a rather excoriating note to herself, “What do you know about Hawke? For certain, I mean?”

Instead of balking at the question, Josephine offered her a sympathetic nod. The sigh that followed was an answer in and of itself. “I have to be entirely frank with you, Inquisitor—the others know so much more about the Champion than I. Leliana, I know, met her on several occasions, both in Kirkwall and outside of its walls.”

Leliana. It was an excellent suggestion, of course; there was little Leliana didn’t know about anyone, whether it be those under Skyhold’s auspices or those who’d act against it, and yet something kept her at Josephine’s desk.

Even as her eyes flit to the cobwebs at the very top of the room’s vaulted ceiling, aimed in the general direction of the spymaster’s rookery, it was only too easy to imagine Hawke sauntering around somewhere along the way, no doubt charming whosoever she encountered. The more she thought on it, the easier it became to imagine: There she’d be at the top of the stairs, leaning against a bookcase as her quick, snappy asides were easily matched beat-for-beat by Dorian’s slick retorts, Varric’s chuckling blending the two into a seamless tapestry of wit and panache.

Oh, hello there, Inquisitor, Hawke would say in that fetching way of hers, eyes bright and smile brighter still. What brings you here?

Hello, Hawke, she’d say in turn, I was actually just on my way to ask my spymaster some pressing questions about you and your motivations. Maybe even your love life, if time permits. Care to join?

And, if any of what Varric had written about her was true, she’d press her hand to her chest with a dramatic gasp, voice full of glee as she replied with a delighted, Would I!

Then everyone would have a good laugh—Varric and Hawke and Dorian and hell, Cole too, if he were still with them—and, one way or another, this little information-gathering venture of hers would come to a close.

It was difficult to say why that prospect put her off so badly, but she chose to believe it had much more to do with her concern for the safety of the Inquisition and its people than it did the distraction wandering about and asking questions had given her.

“I’m sure I’ll cross paths with Leliana at some point,” she said, only for Josie to return the volley.

“And Commander Cullen, as I’m sure you know, was in Kirkwall with both her and Varric. During not only the Qunari occupation, if memory serves, but also the uprising and the…unpleasantness that came as a result.”

That one, at least, was easy to shrug off. “Cullen made it very clear this morning that he doesn’t have any interest in discussing Hawke. In any capacity. Or ever.”

She hummed in response, sounding not even slightly surprised. “And Cassandra—”

“We’ve already spoken on the subject,” she interrupted, and that did seem to surprise Josephine.

“Truly? And you didn’t find that discussion enlightening?”

“It was enlightening all right.”

Her mouth flattened into a thin line of perplexment. “Hmm. I would’ve thought…ah, but never mind. I’m hardly an expert, but I am, of course, more than happy to address any concerns you may have! To the best of my ability, that is.”

“How did you go about tracking her down? In the beginning, I mean, before—” You found yourselves stuck with me, the exhausted, traitorous voice in the back of her head supplied, “—the Conclave?”

The noise she made wasn’t exactly a laugh, though it came awfully close. “Not with any particular efficacy. Truly, Inquisitor, I’m embarrassed to tell you the majority of that investigation boiled down to running in circles. Wide circles, I’ll grant you, but circles, nonetheless,” Josephine sighed under her breath. “Talking to people, following leads that went nowhere, going back to speak to the people we’d started with…people assume Varric was the first source we sought out, but between you and me…” She waved her hand dismissively, only to quickly pull it back upon spotting a smear of ink across the side of her wrist. A wrinkle of concentration rippled the smooth skin of her forehead as she set about scrubbing the ink away with her other hand. “…he was something of a last resort.”

“Because of the, er.” It was almost alarming, how easily the image of Cassandra’s earlier indignation returned to her. “The lying?”

“Oh, I’d hardly call it lying, Inquisitor! Storytelling, perhaps, embellishing for certain, or, mmm…taking creative liberties!”

No joking wink, no half-smile, nothing to suggest anything but earnestness on the ambassador’s part. How or why, she couldn’t say, yet there was no doubt in her mind that Josephine meant what she’d said: She didn’t think Varric's obfuscation of the truth mattered. At the very least, she didn't hold it against him.

“Now, I wasn’t in Kirkwall during that time, so forgive me if I speak out of turn, but in our private conversations, Leliana and I both agreed that, while his information may prove useful—which, admittedly, it did, if only eventually—Varric would likely be an unreliable resource, at best.” The ink successfully cleaned from her hand, Josephine looked up to her again, her expression made all the brighter for her little victory.

“But he was interrogated anyway. At length, even. Why? If there was reason to doubt him, why carry through with that effort?”

Of all the things Josephine could’ve done in that moment, the Inquisitor had not expected her to laugh. It was a polite laugh, yes, and very swiftly covered by her hand, but oh, it was a laugh, to be sure, sudden as lightning and full of a special breed of glee that called to mind all manner of late-night secrets shared with friends.

“An excellent question,” Josephine said, her face taking on its usual professional calm (even if the corners of her lips continued to twitch mischievously). “Cassandra was insistent upon it, you understand.”

Huh. Insistent. She had been insistent.

Once more, the mental image occurred to her, two of the day’s events split clean down the middle to forge a single glowering face: Cassandra in the main hall, eyes ablaze with indignation at the sight of Hawke, mixing perfectly with the furious snarl-shape of her lips in the courtyard, arms folded tightly over her chest as she watched the gathering crowd cheering Hawke’s name.

‘Varric is a liar!’ she’d spat, ‘A snake!’ And now…now it was coming to light that his interrogation hadn’t just been her responsibility but her idea? Her obvious feelings of betrayal suddenly made significantly more sense.

“Cassandra,” the Inquisitor deadpanned, knowing full well she hadn’t misheard but needing confirmation anyway, “Cassandra insisted on questioning Varric. Despite yours and Leliana’s misgivings.”

“Insisted.” Unless she was mistaken (and she wasn’t), Josephine’s decision to glance back down to her papers was mostly a means to hide the impish glimmer in her eye. “She’s…something of a fan, you understand. Not that you heard it from me.”

“A fan?” Another image returned to her then—the way Cassandra’s face had flushed when Hawke’s attention had been on her, the way she’d nearly caught aflame when she’d kissed her hand. “Of Hawke’s, you mean?”

Josephine’s hum sounded like neither confirmation nor denial. It did, however, sound final. Something else to file away for later, it seemed. The list of mysteries surrounding their visitor just kept growing.

The Inquisitor switched tack then, if only slightly. Her conversation with Vivienne had caught in her mind like a hangnail on silk, and she hoped that if Josephine couldn’t—or wouldn’t—say more about the search for Hawke, she might for the others.

“Should we be expecting anyone else joining our ranks in the dead of night?” When Josephine lifted her gaze to hers, not immediately understanding, she clarified, “I’ll take it there were efforts made to track down the rest of hers and Varric’s, er, associates?” She found herself forming the words ‘given what Anders did,’ and then forced herself to stop.

After the day she’d had, she didn’t know what to expect anymore; every detail, every story, no matter how widely accepted or acknowledged suddenly felt called into question. She didn’t want to say anything too confidently, didn’t want to assume anything lest she be proven wrong. It was a balancing act she’d grown used to since waking up in Haven.

“Of course, attempts to find them were made as well,” Josephine nodded. “Not that we’ve had much more success. If you’re looking for rumors, sordid barroom talk, trust me when I say there is an overabundance. Simply asking around is not enough—you’ll hear any number of stories, ranging from the plausible to the outright ridiculous.”

That time it was the Inquisitor’s turn to nod. She could’ve told her that.

“As for information we’ve been able to confirm, there hasn’t been much, but…and this is strictly confidential, as I’m sure you can understand…we’ve received multiple reports of a, hmm, we’ll say ‘vigilante’ in Tevinter. One going under the moniker of the Blue Wraith, as it were. Whoever they are, they’ve certainly taken it upon themselves to make life…difficult for the Magisterium, of late.”

It took a moment of the pieces to line up, but when they did, she sat back in her seat so abruptly that the upholstery squeaked. After talking to Vivienne—hell, after talking to the Chargers—she hadn’t known what to expect. The revelation hit her at once like a healing balm and an especially sharp bee-sting. “Fenris?”

Her shrug was a reminder that their discussion was hypothetical. The slant of her lips told a slightly different story. “And we’ve been hearing about an impressive spate of attacks launched against ships in the Waking Sea. Ships whose listed cargo tends to differ from what they report stolen when they make it to shore.” Josephine paused, drumming her fingers thoughtfully against her desk. “Well, if they make it to shore.”

That time, understanding came faster. “Slavers, you mean? Slaving ships?” Then, “Isabela?”

There was the maddening little shrug again, saying nothing while suggesting everything. “And there are…well. Until recently, there had been reports of Circles being…liberated all across Thedas. Most of which heavily featured one figure in particular.”

She’d heard as much from Cassandra, but hearing it again, now, presented alongside the rumors of Fenris and Isabela, coming not from a place of anger but simple fact, it felt all the more convincing. “Anders,” she said after a beat, finding it easier and easier to recover from that sort of whiplash the longer the day stretched on. “What about Merrill? Aveline?”

“Again, we have reason to believe that Kirkwall’s alienage has been flourishing under some new leadership as of late, but when it comes to confirmation of any sort, I’m sorry to say Guard Captain Vallen is notoriously tight-lipped. I’ve been told she wasn’t especially forthcoming about the city’s comings and goings before the Chantry explosion, and now that she’s a mother, it seems her desire for privacy—both personal and professional—is at an all-time high.” There was a pause as Josephine’s gaze went momentarily distant. Glassy, almost. “I wonder if she’d be more amenable to communication if we provided some sort of good-faith gift…a fruit basket, perhaps. Something to consider. For a later date.”

The Inquisitor had to imagine those last few comments weren’t meant for her. She hoped they weren’t, anyway. “And Sebastian?” she asked.

Lo and behold, her gaze focused once more. With a soft clucking of her tongue, Josephine began meticulously neatening the papers on her desk, affording a concerned, if brief, glance towards a few sheafs in particular. “Ah. Yes. Well, as for the Prince of Starkhaven, he’s…been in touch. Far be it from me to understand how, but it seems word of the Champion’s arrival has already reached him, if no one else. He is, suffice to say, displeased that we are sheltering her.”

For all the questions that raised, it at least answered what Leliana’s people had been doing in the office when she’d first entered. “But they’re alive? All of them?”

“As I’ve said, we did our best to cross-reference these reports, to ensure the information was credible, but outside of simple repetition, finding proof, as it were, has proven tricky. We’re assuming—”

“That means she didn’t betray them, then?”

Her eyes held on the papers at the very corner of her desk for a moment longer. “Some feel they’ve been…spurned. I’m sure. Such is the nature of—”

“But she didn’t give Fenris to Danarius? She didn’t hand Isabela over to the Arishok?”

“Handed over to the Arish—gracious, Inquisitor! What a perfectly terrible idea! The Champion would never do such a thing!”

After how many times she’d hedged her earlier responses, sticking in as many qualifying statements as her breath would allow, the Inquisitor supposed she should’ve been surprised by the vehemence in Josephine’s voice now, the sheer confidence with which she reported on Hawke’s character.

Since she’d been at this all day, however, she wasn’t. Not even slightly.

“She wouldn’t?”

“Absolutely not! Haven’t you read The Tale of the Champion? Once Isabela returned to Hightown with the Tome of Koslun in her possession, hoping to right her past wrongs, Hawke bested the Arishok in single combat—not only to defend Isabela’s life, you understand, but her honor! A decision made all the more complicated—and thrilling!—by the fact Hawke’s lover, Tallis, is an agent of the Qun.” Her gaze went distant again and she heaved a sigh that was nothing short of dreamy, the shape of her shoulders going soft. Then, just as quickly, she snapped back to attention, casting off the thought with a prim wave of her hand. “A romantic tale from start to finish, but I’m sure you’re not interested in a retelling from me…you should ask Cassandra about it if she didn’t go into detail with you already. She knows the story so much better than I do.”

“All due respect, Josie, she…really doesn’t.”

“Oh no? Hmm.”

Before she could ask any follow-up questions of her own, the Inquistor again changed tack, addressing something she hadn’t paid much mind up to that point. “What about Carver? Hawke’s brother?”

“The information I have—information that—”

“You haven’t been able to confirm.”

“—yes. Well. It would suggest Carver and Bethany both are among the Grey Wardens.” And oh.

Oh.

They were…Grey Wardens.

All right. Sure. Perhaps she’d begun her day by not just thinking but knowing Bethany had died while fleeing Ferelden, that Carver had joined (and then turned his back on) the Templars after being rejected from the City Guard one time too many, but okay. Yeah. Why not. They were both Grey Wardens.

Honestly, it made about as much sense as anything else she’d heard today.

“The issue is, of course, when there isn’t an active Blight for Wardens to face, they’re…well, they’re very hard to track down. We were fortunate to find Warden Blackwall when we did. We sent message after message to every major Grey Warden base we could think of, and of the scant few that responded, not one counted any Hawkes among their number. That could be due to a lack of organization, it could be that Bethany and Carver took on different names to escape their sister’s shadow in the wake of what happened in Kirkwall, it could be any number of things, but at the end of the day, Inquisitor, the result is the same.” Her shoulders rose and fell. “We have no idea where they could be. For all we know, Hawke is hiding them in much the same way Varric hid her. There’s just no telling.”

Before she could say much else, there came the low sound of someone clearing their throat from the direction of the entrance hall door. A quick glance over her shoulder didn’t tell the Inquisitor much, only that another of Leliana’s scouts had need of the ambassador’s extremely valuable time.

Acknowledging that, she rose from her seat with a tight, thankful smile, readying herself to take her leave. “Just…one last thing? If you don’t mind my asking?”

Ever the diplomat, Josephine returned her smile with an attentive tilt of her head. “Anything!”

There were only so many ways to word the question she wanted to ask, so she went with the simplest. “Are you worried?”

“Am I worried?” Whether with curiosity or disbelief she couldn’t say, but Josephine’s eyebrows arched high at that. “Of course I’m worried! I…” She gestured vaguely towards the papers and maps of vacant lodgings laid out on the desk before her. “Worry is an old friend of mine! We’re rarely out of one another’s company, I’m afraid.”

Maybe it was insensitive, but she couldn’t staunch the snort of laughter that escaped her. “No, no! I meant are you worried about Hawke, herself? With everything you know about her…or don’t know about her, as it were?”

Her posture grew lax with relief. “Oh. Am I concerned she’s a danger to us? In that regard, let me reassure you: No, I’m not concerned in the slightest. I may lose sleep over imagining the storied Champion of Kirkwall shivering in a room with a draft while under our auspices, but as for whether I’m expecting to find a blade to my throat when I wake up from that troubled rest, I don’t. Truly.”

It was hardly the answer she’d expected, especially after her conversations with Vivienne and Cassandra—to say nothing of Cullen’s visceral reaction that morning. “You aren’t the slightest bit apprehensive? Even with everything she’s done? And…”

Josephine silenced her with a single raised finger. “That is my only concern. That Hawke’s reputation will prove itself an issue. I have no reason to distrust the Champion myself—as far as I’m aware, I’m no enemy of hers, and she has been more than kind to me since arriving—but to stand by and hope everyone in Skyhold feels the same? That is where my worries lie, Inquisitor.” A deep wrinkle appeared between her brows. She seemed at odds with herself, like there was something more she wanted to say. Instead of saying it, however, whatever it was, she took to spinning her quill between her fingers. Its feather traced circles in the air as she met her gaze with a smile caught somewhere in the valley between acceptance and resignation. “That is what worries me.”

Chapter Text

The sun had already begun to set when she again found herself in the courtyard, and the sight of the ramparts standing against the sky such that it was, harsh grey stone set before rich oranges, reds, pinks, and even purples, had an oddly dizzying effect. It felt like only a moment ago that she’d stood on those ramparts herself, tripping over her tongue as she attempted to greet the Champion of Kirkwall with the sort of dignity befitting the Inquisition; it also felt as though a lifetime had passed. Funny how often that seemed to happen nowadays…funny in the same way banging your elbow against a table was.

She’d stopped by the kitchens after her talk with Josephine, hoping that eating might lessen the feeling of that strange, heavy boulder rolling to and fro in her stomach. If anything, it had only served to make her more aware of the damn thing, but still she nibbled at the bread roll she’d taken, loath to waste a crumb knowing what she did about their dwindling supplies.

It was odd, the way Josephine had opened her eyes. It had had nothing to do with the diligent (if unconfirmed) answers she’d given her questions and everything to do with the tiny, offhanded remarks that’d come between: While, maddeningly, she suspected she was no closer to knowing Hawke—the real Hawke—than she’d been that morning, she couldn’t help thinking the answer to the why of it all was finally within her reach. Not wholly, not totally, not enough that she could wrap her fingers around it and hold it out for all to see, but…almost.

That wasn’t where it ended, either. There was another way her eyes had been opened—by way of her ears. The whispers had started the moment Josephine’s door had shut behind her, Skyhold’s cavernous insides carrying sounds strangely, anonymously, making it impossible for her to determine from where or which mouth the voices came. But oh, they were there.

All you had to do was listen.

“They say she murdered a Chantry sister with her bare hands, you know. Right in the Chantry, no less! And now we’re supposed to sleep easy with her under our roof? Ha!”

“I heard she made a pact with the Witch of the Wilds. Gave up her soul, she did—it’s how she can do the things she does. No guilt! No remorse! Everything she caused in that Marcher shithole, she’ll do again here, you mark my words…”

“You can’t trust anyone raised in a family of apostates. I give it a week before we’re neck-deep in demons and all manner of abominations. Maker, if these are the Inquisition’s bedfellows, maybe we all should’ve died in Haven. Don’t give me that look, you’re thinking the same thing!”

At first, they were jarring, those comments hissed between grit teeth and behind raised hands. Jarring not only because they echoed some of her own silent worries, but because of how suddenly they’d come on. Rationally, it only stood to reason that they’d been there all along, that she merely hadn’t been able to hear them over the roar of the audience Hawke always seemed to gather around her. Surely some of the wonder, the awe, the hushed whispers the Inquisitor had watched rippling in Hawke’s wake had been the fearful sort, she’d just been too distracted by the laughter. The cheers. The glimmer and gleam of coin meant to draw the eye away. Now that she’d noticed, though, now that she’d learned where to look and listen…she saw and heard it everywhere.

Curled upper lips. Bitter words spoken through tensed jaws. Sharp sidelong stares. Arms crossed stiffly over chests. Scoffs pointed enough to draw blood. Upturned noses and raised hackles. Hands resting on weapon hilts. The abrupt absence of Chantry robes among those milling in the open.

And the more she noticed, she more she realized those gestures were aimed at her just as much as Hawke.

A fortnight ago, maybe a few days more or less, those same people had knelt before her, hands outstretched and voices raised in her praise. Her word had been law—divine doctrine, even. Then she’d accompanied Hawke on a single walk up the stairs and into the fortress, and in their eyes she’d become an unknown quantity once more, a stranger acting not on the Maker’s will but her own.

It was that shifting tide, the sudden oppressive realization that not everyone who’d read one of Varric’s many (many, many, many) Tales of the Champion had come away braced by Hawke’s misadventures or wowed by her imperfections, that had brought the Inquisitor back outside. After the reaction he’d had that morning, pressing Cullen for more information about what had really transpired in Kirkwall had been one of the last things she’d wanted to do. And yet…there was that damned boulder of anxiety in her stomach, made all the worse by the terrible, haunting image Varric had put in her head—that faceless statue bobbing in the Waking Sea, destroyed by the very people Hawke had protected time and time again.

Grateful as she was for them, the others’ answers had only raised more questions for her. Cullen had been there. He had known Hawke, had known her even before she’d been named Champion, long before plans for that ghastly statue had even been drawn. She doubted his perspective on Hawke was one she wanted, not when his face had gone so sickishly grey upon hearing of her arrival, but maybe it was the perspective she needed to make sense of everything.

So what other choice did she have? She made her way towards the tower where he oversaw the daily comings and goings of their soldiers, and she listened to the voices whispering about Hawke. The voices that…

Huh.

Well, that was odd.

The voices, she noticed, were getting louder. Much louder, in fact.

She turned away from the ramparts, from Cullen’s quarters, her curiosity proving a fickle, fickle beast, and—aha. It seemed she’d been wrong before, imagining Hawke sauntering through Skyhold’s upper floors, acquainting herself with lodgings and lodgers alike. But then, she hadn’t gotten anything else right about her so far, so she wasn’t sure why she was surprised.

When she’d sat for a drink (or twelve) with the Chargers in the Herald’s Rest earlier, she’d been able to count its patrons on both hands. There’d been little chatter save for Krem’s story and the others’ incessant interruptions. It had been slow enough that Cabot had spent more time wiping down tables and polishing tankards than pouring drinks.

It was a difficult memory to reconcile with what she saw now.

The Rest wasn’t just full—it was bursting, boasting grinning, laughing faces in its windows, to say nothing of the raucous noise coming from within. There were so many people inside that the place seemed to give off a heat of its own; the Inquisitor hadn’t gotten within a meter of the door before she could feel it, the warmth of a too-full room, of a party that hadn’t quite worn out its welcome yet.

From over the heads of the crowd, she could see Hawke standing on the bar, her mouth moving as she led the throng in what seemed to be a criminally off-key version of Andraste’s Mabari…or something like it, anyway. Her arm was hooked in another woman’s, and as they danced, stomping their boots to keep time as they spun ‘round and ‘round, she saw it was Maryden. The minstrel (who, by the way, she’d never heard raise her voice or seen react with more than a slow, enigmatic smile) appeared to be laughing so hard she could barely breathe. Even from that distance, the Inquisitor could see her cheeks shine with tears as she and Hawke danced above the crowd.

The ground positively vibrated beneath her feet, jouncing as the tavern’s patrons—those on the main floor and those leaning over the second- and third-floor railings alike—stamped their feet and clapped their hands in time, more than a few showing off their own questionable dancing skills where space allowed. The air was thick with the smell of alcohol, yeasty and sweet.

It was the laughter that stood out the most, though. How long had it been since she’d heard the Inquisition’s people laugh like that?

Had she ever heard them laugh like that?

She stole a not-so-surreptitious glance over her shoulder, and while they hadn’t gathered around to form a mob of their own, there was no missing the irritation on the faces of those still milling about the courtyard, tending to their work. There, a sneer. There, an annoyed snort. The line between revelry and disgust may well have been a rift of its own. Her hand throbbed dully beneath her glove, and she pushed that mental image aside before the Anchor could begin to ache in earnest.

When she turned back to the tavern, it was in time to not only see Cabot join Hawke and Maryden on the bar with some fancy footwork of his own, but to catch a couple other familiar faces as they separated from the crowd.

“Allllll right, that’s about enough of that for you, I think.” Without needing to be asked, the Inquisitor took a quick step to the side, allowing Blackwall the room he needed to leave the tavern, encumbered as he was. “Obliged, milady,” he managed, catching her eye appreciatively before the weight slung across his shoulders suddenly shifted and he had no choice but to look away. “For the love of—Sera!”

There was no mistaking the flush on Sera’s cheeks, nor the unsteady way her feet kept tangling beneath her. She flung both of her arms out wide as Blackwall all but dragged her into the night air, her grin so wide that it squinched her eyes shut, the very picture of inebriation. At the top of her voice, she kept on with the song, bellowing out across the courtyard, “And there’s Andraste’s MABARIII, chompin’ on another NUG! In the fight against Tevinter, he’ll be PISSIN’ ON THE RUG!”

It wasn’t the most leaderly of reactions, to be sure, but there was no stopping the snort of laughter that escaped her at that. “Can’t say I’ve heard this version before.”

“I have,” Blackwall sighed, his voice pitched in such a way that one might’ve thought him exasperated…if they couldn’t see the fondness under all that beard, that was. “Which is why I know she needs to stop before—”

“The Maker sent him SPECIAL! Fifteen paws and quite the JUMP! He’ll track down those Tevinters and he’ll gIVE THEM ALL A—”

Neither a poet nor a lyricist herself, even the Inquisitor saw where Sera’s rhyme was headed. Gingerly, feeling every inch a fool for doing it, she took her nibbled-on bread roll and…well…there wasn’t really a better word for it: She corked her mouth.

Immediately, the song was forgotten. “Wha—,” she could hear Sera mutter around the roll, “how ih ooo oh?!”

“Um.”

“I believe that was ‘How did you know?’ I—so we’re just eating now, are we? There’s a bench not five steps away, but the doorway is where we’re going to stop and eat.”

“We?” Sera shot back, tearing into the roll with what could only be described as reckless abandon. “Get your own, beardy, this one’s mine! ‘Quisitor gave it to me special, didn’t you, Inky?” She took a massive bite, punctuating each chew with the sort of moan that suggested she hadn’t eaten in a fortnight. When she wasn’t moaning, she was laughing, and the crumbs coming off of her were just…too much.

“Here,” she said, positioning herself under Sera’s other arm. It was more for the benefit of their amusement than anything else—she’d polished swords that weighed more than Sera, and it wasn’t as though Blackwall was lacking in upper body strength—the three of them stumbling over to the bench taking her mind off the whispers, the looks, the anxiety that’d been tailing her all day. If only for a moment, it was like she was in her old life again, the one that had come before the Conclave.

So maybe it hadn’t only been for their amusement.

“Isn’t her room in the tavern?” she asked once they’d gotten Sera situated on the bench, all spindly limbs and delighted snickering and endless crumbs.

“A little fresh air seemed prudent, all considering.”

“Ah.”

He propped one of his boots up on the edge of the bench cool as you please, but it was only a moment later that Sera ended up slumping against his leg, her chortling twice as gleeful for the knowledge she’d very nearly fallen off altogether. “Someone,” he said, the word doing nothing to mask his meaning, “went and tried matching our esteemed guest drink-for-drink tonight. You can see how that went.”

“Went fine,” Sera shot back, “’til she started cheating.”

“You say that like fair play was on the table to begin with.”

“Oh, you’re one to talk! Least she didn’t take my money!”

The Inquisitor’s eyebrows went up; her hand went down. Down to her coin purse, that was, in much the same way it had that morning. “I’m sorry, Hawke robbed you? Am I misunderstanding something?”

There was a distinct note of shame in the way Blackwall cleared his throat. One of his hands took to absently kneading a knot in his shoulder. It was about as obvious as tells went, and still she let him muddle his way through the admission, going so far as to fold her arms and play the part of the disapproving leader.

“Robbed? No, no, I wouldn’t say that. There was simply a less than amicable parting between me and my coin.”

Now fully sprawled on the bench, bread roll finished and digesting, Sera snorted. “Lost it all on darts. Stupid. She was shit at darts too! Still wiped the floor with him, she did. Was mental, watching! Blind leading the blind and all that.”

His hands went up in defense. “She issued a challenge to everyone in there. No one was willing to go in on it, so, in the spirit of welcoming her into our ranks…”

“…you took her up on it?” There was no stopping the slow spread of her grin, much less the judgmental cluck of her tongue. “I take it back. I don’t feel sorry for you. Not in the slightest. Disappointed, perhaps, but sympathetic? Hardly. Hawke, a renowned con artist and associate of Varric Tethras, another renowned con artist, offers you a wager and you take it.”

“When you put it that way, it almost sounds like I had it coming, doesn’t it?” Blackwall chuckled. “Didn’t seem right to deny a lady of her stature of her request, that’s all.”

Her grin became a laugh. “Especially a lady of her stature who seemed so very, very bad at darts.”

“Especially,” he agreed, letting his arms fall to his sides once it became clear there wasn’t any defense to be had. “Suppose it’s not a mistake I’ll be making twice.”

“I should hope not.”

“Embarrassin’ is what it was. I had to step in—try and save our shiny image, y’know. Whipped her so merciless she had to buy me drinks after! Keeping a brave face and all. Good sport.” One of Sera’s arms draped itself over her eyes as she lay there, the other flopping over the side of the bench so her fingers could twiddle in the grass. “Woulda had her there too, but Ser Spoilsport stepped in to ruin it.”

The look Blackwall shot her said everything it needed to. And then some. “You got me there. I’m sure you would’ve showed her what-for in the end.”

“Woulda. Coulda. Almost did! Next time. Next time, for sure.”

“Next time for sure,” he echoed, then promptly took to rubbing his temples. “It was the damnedest thing…the moment I step aside and this one takes my place, the Champion’s aim seems to start pulling to the left.”

“Subtly to the left, I’d imagine?”

He blew out a puff of air that sounded much too close to a laugh to be anything else. “Subtle. Now there’s a word.”

“Saw me comin’ and got all intimidated-like,” Sera said, her arm doing nothing to hide the wide, gleeful grin on her face. “Knows a threat when she sees one, that one. Almost felt bad wringing her dry like I did, but that’s what happens when you come all strutty into a place, innit? ‘Oooh, lookit me, I’m the Champion! I can hit a dragon’s eye from a mile away, ohohoho!’”

Without drawing too much attention to herself, she shot Blackwall a glance as amused as it was covert, her silence growing ever more difficult to maintain as Sera’s imitation of Hawke devolved, inexplicably, into kissy noises. When their eyes met, there was no question of whether or not they were on the same page.

They were. Oh yes they were.

“Am I to take it you won back everything he lost? Stole it all back from Hawke, so to speak?”

Pulling a face, an incredulous little number that popped up whenever anyone called her skill into question, Sera dropped her arm from her face and turned towards her with her eyebrows so high as to be in distinct danger of disappearing into her hairline. “Uhhh…‘course I did. What, you think just cuz she’s new here I’d let her off that ea…sy…”

Since Haven, it had been increasingly difficult for her to find anything joyous about life. Everything had become cold and ugly, jagged at the edges, sharp enough to sting; the days were short, the nights were long, and the wind sometimes brought with it the awful memory of that final attack. Her very existence had become worry after worry, angular pieces pushed around the war table while her advisors bickered in the background. No, just of late, the Inquisitor hadn’t seen much in the world that felt particularly beautiful.

Until, that was, she saw realization dawning in Sera’s eyes.

Her expression melted from the top down (if such a thing were possible), her grin giving its all even as her forehead wrinkled and her eyes crinkled at the corners. It was only once she’d turned out her pockets and reached into her tunic that it finally wibbled, wobbled, dropped, and oh. Oh, that moment of understanding spreading across Sera’s face reminded her there was still levity out there, waiting to be found.

It wasn’t especially professional—again, certainly not leaderly—but she couldn’t stop the snort that escaped her, bubbling up into a single caw of laughter when Sera whirled back around towards the tavern, all but shouting, “Fuck off! Fancy-pants lady-priss picked my bloody pocket!”

Laughing right along with her, Blackwall clapped Sera on the shoulder, afterwards giving her a conciliatory pat on the head. “Happens to the best of us.”

“Like hell it does! That sneaky little…I knew it!” Her change of heart came as suddenly as a lightning strike, and she flopped down onto the bench once more, stamping her feet on it in a show of indignation. “Knew it! I did! She was shit, yeah, but she wasn’t too shit…she was the kinda shit you gotta think about being, yeah? Nah. Knew it. I knew it!”

“And you took the bet anyway.”

The Inquisitor leaned over to nudge the warden with her elbow. “Really?” she snickered, fixing him with a pointed stare. “You’re going to lecture her?”

“Lecture? Never. Just might’ve hoped she’d learn from my mistakes, that’s all…”

“‘Course you were gonna lose, beardy,” Sera said, still glowering in the general direction of the Herald’s Rest, “You’re shit, too.”

“Hey now, you watch your—”

“There’s a tone I recognize.”

Joining their impromptu huddle with her hands in her pockets and nary a sway in her measured step, Scout Lace Harding looked very much the same as she did in the field—capable, unshakeable, and positively exhausted. She smiled as she perched herself on the unoccupied part of the bench near Sera’s slippered feet, and though she had the same flush to her face as the others did, there was nothing rumpled or disheveled about her to suggest she’d spent her evening in a hot, crowded tavern. Not so much as a single hair had fallen out of place.

“Are we talking about getting bled dry in there? Maybe we need to start a club.” She met her gaze for a moment, dipped her head, and in the manner the Inquisitor was becoming all too accustomed to, bade her a greeting of her own. “Your Worship.”

She returned the nod, but her disbelief won out over any other pleasantry. “Please don’t tell me Hawke—”

“Hawke? Oh, no. I didn’t think there was any way the stories I’ve heard about her were true, but I wasn’t going to risk it. That being said…” Harding heaved a sigh and tipped her head up to the darkening sky. “Varric had started a game of Wicked Grace in the back. Thought I’d try my luck. Went about as well as expected, honestly.”

“You weren’t sure you could trust the Champion, but you trusted Varric?”

“Trust didn’t factor into it, Warden. I saw who else was at the table. I thought I stood a fighting chance. Didn’t, as it turned out, but…what’re you gonna do.”

“Gonna wait ‘til she’s not looking and take her cheating britches out from under her, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

She listened to the three of them discuss their losses in their wildly varied tones for a moment longer. Then, same as she’d been doing all day, she relaxed her posture and cocked her head to the side in interest, gently (though insistently) nudging the topic of conversation a few degrees to the left. Subtly to the left, one might say. “Speaking of Hawke. And Varric, I suppose. And…stories…”

Yeah. Uh huh. Subtle.

“There isn’t any chance you’ve met either of her siblings, Blackwall? Bethany or Carver?”

He'd been chuckling until that moment. As the sound of his laughter tapered, she saw something like confusion furrow his brow. “I…can’t say I have. Not to my knowledge.”

It wasn’t an unexpected answer. Still, she would’ve been a liar to say she wasn’t the tiniest bit disappointed. “I figured it was a long shot,” she admitted, shaking her head. “I’d heard they’d joined the Grey Wardens, so—”

And, in another manner she was fast becoming accustomed to, the three of them turned to her as one.

“What? Who told you that? That’s not how it goes. Stuffy-ass brother got all mangled by an ogre, didn’t he? Sister’s some snooty-snoot up in some Circle somewhere, all magey and shit.”

“Mmm. What I’ve heard, they both died in the Deep Roads. Darkspawn swarmed their group, they didn’t stand a chance.”

“I…don’t think that’s right. Any of it. I had the impression her sister died fleeing Ferelden. Her brother’s a Templar back in Kirkwall. From what I understand, that is. Commander Cullen probably knows more. I mean, he was there.”

In the silence that followed their disparate answers, the Inquisitor fully expected them to start picking at one another’s beliefs like the Chargers had done. Any second now, she reckoned, they’d descend on each other, pointing fingers and waving hands, arguing why their version of Hawke was the right one—obviously—and how anyone who thought otherwise was a fool.

That didn’t happen.

The silence simply continued, companionable and perhaps even downright friendly. Harding and Blackwall traded a glance then laughed soft, secret laughs, only the slightest movement of their shoulders betraying them. Sera tried to sit up, thought better of it, and scooted down the bench to prod at Harding’s mail with her toes. It was a far cry from what she’d seen from the others she’d stopped to question throughout the day.

How was it that every time she thought she was getting a handle on this mystery, it found some new way to slip her grasp? How could there possibly be this many stories about Hawke? And how could they all be so different?

“What do you know about her? Hawke, that is? Broad strokes are fine, just…curious.”

There were shrugs. A couple shaken heads. None of them seemed especially hesitant to answer, yet there was an obvious moment where they all waited for someone else to step in, to offer their tale first.

In the end, it was Blackwall who led the charge. “Well,” he began, “Before she bested the Arishok, she was part of a mercenary group in Kirkwall. Mostly took the ugly jobs no one else wanted to touch, formed a bit of a reputation that way. After the mess with the Qunari, she turned down the Viscount’s seat and carried on as she was. That mage friend of hers did what he did, and in the end, it was a step too far even for her—she killed him, rallied Kirkwall’s Templars, and put an end to the Grand Enchanter there.”

That got Sera sitting up. “Story’s shite,” she said matter-of-factly, wobbling for a moment before finding her equilibrium. “I mean, sellsword, yeah, but she was too smart to pick sides. Heard the mages and Templars cryin’, stuck two fingers right in the air where they could see.” Cackling, she raised the fingers in question, sticking her tongue out for good measure. “Ran off with, uh, whatshername, the one with the tits. Bashed in as many Qunari heads as they could, then stole the biggest ship they saw and left to pirate all the rich snobbies flying their fancy flags out on the water. Happily ever after.”

It was the strangest thing—there they were, telling their stories, and despite how little matched up between them, neither Blackwall nor Sera thought to correct the other. Maybe their night in the tavern had relaxed them, put them in a jovial enough headspace that they didn’t feel the need to stand their ground. But she kept thinking back to her conversation with the Chargers. With Vivienne. With Cassandra. All of them had spoken as though they, and only they, knew the truth of the matter.

She turned to Harding, wondering if she would be the one to put her foot down.

Immediately, she saw that wasn’t going to be the case.

Harding sat placidly as ever, though suddenly her brows were drawn close together and the corners of her mouth had gone tight. “You know, up until tonight, Inquisitor, I would’ve been happy to tell you what I thought Hawke’s story was, but the thing is…I’ve…met her. And I’m now…fairly sure that story is…wrong. About as wrong as it gets, in fact.”

“That bad, is it?” asked Blackwall.

“Bad is a, uh, relative term, I think.”

Sera was having none of that. “Say it, say it!” she chanted, bouncing up and down on the bench, pumping her fists in time, clearly having a ball. “Say it, say it!”

Harding looked to the Inquisitor for help. At least, that’s what she thought the pained expression on her face was meant to convey. It found no home. The scout had walked herself into this minefield, and now there was nothing to do but keep walking until she was out again. All the Inquisitor could bring herself to do was shrug, hoping it got across what she meant to say: Nothing I can do, sorry.

She turned to Blackwall in much the same way, Harding, and when she was met with another shrug and—worse yet—a fist lackadaisically waving in time with Sera’s, the uncertain shape of her mouth settled into a slash of resignation.

With a sound one might’ve expected to hear from a criminal facing their own execution, Harding shut her eyes. “Before I open my mouth and everyone starts laughing,” she sighed, pressing the heels of her hands hard against her eyelids, “I’d like to make it known that I’ve only just thought about this, and I realize it’s absolutely—”

“Say it! Sayyy iiit!”

“—ugh.” Her arms fell to her sides. As befitting a scout of the Inquisition, Harding kept her chin high as she proceeded to say the most mind-numbingly bizarre thing she had ever heard another person say, all while speaking in a voice that somehow managed to remain perfectly neutral. “Hawke was never a mercenary. She was an informant in the city, an information trader. She convinced the Arishok and his troops to leave by returning a stolen artifact and through diplomacy. With her younger brother acting as a Templar, she had no choice but to support their cause, and after the Chantry explosion, decided to get out of that world completely. Since leaving Kirkwall, she’s been in Starkhaven, where she entered into a chaste marriage with Prince Vael after taking her vows and committing herself to the Chantry as a sister. Now, before you start—”

Sera’s peal of laughter was almost a scream. “WHAT?!”

“Okay. So. As I said. Obviously, now that I’ve met her, I understand this is unlikely to have been the case.”

“Unlikely?!”

“It took you meeting her to realize that?” Blackwall asked, voice full of wonder.

From the corner of her eye, Harding shot the Inquisitor another plaintive look…and when it again went unanswered (the Inquisitor’s own laughter proving difficult to rein in), she let out a long, exasperated groan. “I’m sure this will shock all of you, but I tend to have more on my plate in a day than would allow for me to sit around fantasizing about the finer points of some random Marcher’s life, okay?”

It was nearly impossible to make out past the wheezing laughter, but Sera seemed to say, “A sister in the Chantry!” She wiped a very real tear from her eye, making a grand show of collapsing to the bench and clutching her stomach amid another gale of laughter. “Hawke! Goin’ around all namby-pamby in her fancy robes and big hat, was she? Blessing all ‘em Carta shits before stabbing out their eyes and shovin’ ‘em into their own mouths again?!”

“You know, I’m not sure they give the sisters hats.”

“Uh huh. Okay. Laugh it up. Go on. Doesn’t hurt my pride or anything.”

“Marrying the Prince?!”

“Ha ha, I get it.”

“What next, they gonna make her Viscountess, now the old one doesn’t have a head to put the crown on?!”

“I told you it was bad.”

“A sister! In the Chantry! I’m gonna fucking piss!”

She let herself laugh right along with them. For a time, anyway. As ridiculous as Harding’s story had been, it only took her mind off the matter at hand for a moment. Sooner than she expected (and certainly sooner than she would’ve liked), the Inquisitor was once more aware of the eyes on them, aware of the voices in the courtyard—the ones not singing about the Nug King from inside the Rest’s walls.

And the boulder in her stomach, of course. The one lurching back and forth like that awful, faceless statue.

“So,” she chanced, doing away entirely with any thought of going about the matter more sneakily. “None of you are bothered by the fact your stories don’t match?”

There was another flurry of shrugs and flapped hands and bobbled heads. A couple “no”s were murmured. Someone snorted.

“But,” she tried again, “None of this makes sense! You see that, don’t you? Each of you read Varric’s book, and you all came away with a completely different—”

Harding smiled a tight, polite smile. “Well. Not quite. I never actually read The Tale of the Champion.”

“Neither did I,” Blackwall piped in.

She blinked. That possibility had never occurred to her. Not once.

Clearly, that surprise must’ve shown on her face, because Harding continued, “I guess I picked it up piecemeal, if that makes sense. I mean, you’re out around other people, they’re talking, you kind of put stuff together that way.”

Blackwall nodded. “People talk when they’re scared. Especially if the story’s good enough to take their minds off whatever it is that’s doing the scaring. You hear your fair share, decide what sounds likely and what sounds like bunk, you start to believe it.”

“Speak for yourselves. I read it.” Stretching contently, Sera once more made herself known. “Found a copy once. Sort of boring, honestly. All the good parts were torn out.”

“Then how do you know they were the good parts?”

“Because they were torn out.”

“That’s…all right, fair point.”

“Plus,” Harding continued, turning away from Sera and Blackwall to favor the Inquisitor with another tired smile, “I like him a lot and all, but as a general rule of thumb? I take everything Varric says with a grain of salt. Maybe two grains of salt. Or ten. Or a whole shaker of it. I mean, that’s his job, making things up. And, to be fair, I don’t think any of us ever thought we’d actually meet Hawke, so I guess I never really cared enough about knowing what about her was true and what about her was fake to…I dunno, seek that information out. She’s a hero, right? What else is there to know?”

“He was never going to tell the truth about her, anyway. Varric.” It was Blackwall’s turn to look away, to angle his face such that he could see the stars starting to poke through the night sky (such that they could no longer see his expression). “He was never going to tell the truth about anything that happened in Kirkwall. People run from their pasts, Inquisitor, they don’t publish them where everyone can see the less-than-savory details.”

“A sister in the Chantry,” Sera snorted, collapsing once more into a fit of giggles. “Married to the Prince, she says! Chaste, she says! Know what? I’m not even mad about the darts anymore—that story was worth every silver I had!”

There was a faint light flickering up in the tower when she glanced its way, a pale promise against the quickly blackening sky. The Inquisitor smiled, laughed, pretended their talk had put her at ease. It hadn’t, though. Since sunrise, she hadn’t had a single conversation that had given her more answers than questions, but…she hoped the next one would be different.

She’d put it off for long enough: It was time she paid the Commander a visit.

Chapter Text

“Wh-why would you think to ask me that, of all things?!”

The Inquisitor heaved a heavy sigh through her nose and rolled her eyes up towards the loft hanging high above Cullen’s office. She was doing a lot of that lately—sighing. Came with the territory, she figured, the whole ‘saving the world’ thing, but damn if it didn’t make her sound like her mother. “Well, you were in Kirkwall. I figured if anyone would know, it would be you.” She shifted her weight onto her other leg as she leaned against his desk. “Everyone else I’ve spoken to today was bursting at the seams to talk about it. I just figured—”

“I didn’t pay any mind to who she—!” Cullen interrupted, quickly turning away to compose himself. “No,” he tried again, his voice still terribly fraught, “I can’t say I have the slightest idea as to…any of that.”

She doubted entirely that the color creeping into the tips of his ears was wholly due to embarrassment. That was part of it, of course, perhaps even the lion’s share, and yet the curling of his upper lip suggested something else lurking beneath the surface. If she had to guess, it was likely some combination of disgust, discomfort, and plain old shock. She hadn’t thought the question out of line…

And still, she was so very glad to see it had had its intended effect.

The fact of the matter was simple: She’d known from the start that getting Cullen to talk would be a challenge. Skyhold’s other occupants had seemed perfectly happy to speak (at length) about their unexpected guest, regardless of their own misgivings or preconceived notions; even Cassandra, slighted and betrayed and positively radiating righteous fury, had stopped fuming long enough to summarize Hawke’s greatest hits. All the Inquisitor had needed to do was nod a time or two, perhaps ask a pointed question here or there, and there they’d go, waxing poetic about their version of the Champion of Kirkwall, her exploits, and, with shockingly few exceptions, her love life.

So, she’d simply…well, raised that question herself, this time around! Cut to the chase, so to speak. It was a different stratagem than she’d used with the others, yes, but she’d seen the look of abject misery on Cullen’s face the moment she’d walked through his door. There wouldn’t be any tiptoeing around it, that much was obvious. Maybe she could surprise the answers out of him!

She’d surprised him, all right. As for getting answers, uh, she was taking it a step at a time.

“I—they—” Cullen cleared his throat and smoothed down the back of his hair, allowing himself another moment to collect his words and loosen his throat. “With all due respect, Inquisitor, my time in Kirkwall was…turbulent. There were a great many other things that required my attention. You’ll forgive me for not taking closer notice of Hawke’s dance card.”

She hummed a flat, “Mhm,” and continued to watch him squirm, realizing with a fair measure of disappointment that her plan didn’t appear to be working. Tragic, really, considering the whole three minutes of planning she’d put into it. “You really don’t know? You won’t even hazard a guess or—”

“No,” he said just a bit too curtly. He held up a hand, averting his gaze to his bookshelf as though he would find any assistance hidden there. “If it’s all the same to you, I would greatly appreciate not having to think about…any…of…that. Not today, not tomorrow…not anytime in the foreseeable future…or, ever, if at all possible.” Clearing his throat for what must’ve been the umpteenth time since she’d opened his door, he shot her an apprehensive look from the corner of his eye. “I’ll admit I don’t understand why you’d think…that in the first place. Or why you would care.”

“You know me,” she shrugged, pushing herself up from where she’d been leaning against his desk. “Always looking for reason to gossip.”

Perhaps that wasn’t wholly true, but it was as good a reason as any, wasn’t it?

“Seems to me everyone is looking for a reason to gossip today.”

And was it just her imagination, or had a new note come into his voice? Something past curtness, something splintered, something jagged, something—

“Why this sudden interest, no, insistence, in discussing Hawke?! Everywhere I turn, it’s as though no one can think of anything better to talk about! There are greater issues at hand, Inquisitor. Corypheus, for one. Our dwindling supplies, for another. We haven’t even finished identifying all those we lost in Haven, and every moment we sit here rehashing her already storied deeds is another breath wasted! A thought unwisely spent! A, a…”

While he stammered, unable to get a firm enough grasp on his words, she found herself caught on one in particular. ‘Storied.’

The word of the day, that one.

Hers was not a graceful segue. It wasn’t even especially tactful. But he had given her an opening whether he’d wanted to or not. She wasn’t about to waste it. “Have you read The Tale of the Champion? Varric’s book?”

Cullen cringed away with such abruptness that, for a moment, she thought he was about to sneeze. “Maker no,” he scoffed, “I already lived it once, didn’t I? Why bother. Besides…” A new look crossed his face then, one that looked terribly like dread, “I quite pride myself on maintaining a professional working relationship with everyone under our banner. I have a sneaking suspicion reading Varric’s characterization of me would swiftly end any further hopes of the two of us carrying on in a civil manner.”

He wasn’t wrong.

“Better I don’t know.”

That time, she thought, his gaze sought her expression out. It was brief, fleeting, little more than a flick of his eyes. Regardless, she felt it, recognizing immediately that he was hoping she might tell him his worries were unfounded, that his staunch avoidance of Varric’s book—any and every version of it—had been pointless, baseless, even downright foolish.

She couldn’t do that. Not with any measure of believability, anyway. Cullen’s name had come up three, maybe four, times in the copy of The Tale that had crossed her path, and while those passages had been short, they had never been lacking in detail.

More to the point, they’d never been especially flattering.

Before her face could let on as much, the Inquisitor pressed on. “For better or for worse, Hawke is now a guest of the Inquisition. ‘Under our auspices,’ I’ve heard said. I’ve heard a lot of things said today, and…”

And, what? That was the question, wasn’t it? And what? That morning, it had seemed simple: Figure out why Hawke was so different from what she’d been led to believe. Now, though? After every question she’d asked had raised five more? When every answer she’d gotten had been immediately contradicted? She’d heard a lot of things said today, period. She’d heard a lot of things said today, end of sentence. It didn’t mean she was any closer to knowing the truth.

Neither did it do anything to dispel the boulder of anxiety that’d been weighing her down. There was something she’d missed, something important she’d overlooked, and she prayed that if anyone could shed light on what that something was, Cullen could. As she’d been reminded by nearly everyone she’d spoken to today, he’d been there. He didn’t have to rely on Varric’s retelling to know what had happened in Kirkwall, or what Hawke’s part in it had been.

The fact he hadn’t been able to answer her (extremely simple) question regarding who Hawke may or may not have been romantically entangled with during that time didn’t exactly bolster her confidence, but…these were desperate times. The Inquisitor would take what she could get.

“I’m realizing I don’t know as much about her as I thought,” she started over. “You seem to have reservations about her joining us.”

His answer was a hard, humorless scoff.

“But seeing as how the only other person in our ranks who knew her during her time in Kirkwall is Varric, someone who is openly and, dare I say, vocally fond of her, I can’t help feeling as though I’m only getting part of the story.”

When he realized she was waiting for him to respond, Cullen let an exasperated breath out from between his teeth. “Leliana knew her,” he pointed out, the faintest note of desperation in his voice—not so obvious that a passerby would’ve heard it, yet impossible for her to miss. “They had a number of run-ins from what I understand. Some…Orlesian farce where a nobleman was murdered, that…sorry business with Prince Vael…if I remember correctly, they were also both in Lothering around the time of the Blight. Surely her perspective—”

“Commander,” she said after a moment. Then, restraining a sigh of her own, “Cullen. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t important.”

After closing a rift, the air changed. It was hard to describe past that, it just…changed. Breathing became a little easier even as the world’s color seemed to dull, your body felt a little lighter despite how suddenly aware you became of the ground beneath your feet, and the strange elasticity that threatened to hold you back or pull you down simply dissipated in the way a bad dream might, there one instant and gone the next.

That was how the fight went out of him. She saw it happen clear as crystal, watched as he exhaled and made the decision to defer to her, no matter how little he wanted to. He was a soldier at the end of the day, and hers was the banner he’d chosen to carry.

“All right. If you are so…determined to have me discuss Hawke, then…fine. Fine. I will…discuss Hawke.”

He leaned forward over his desk; it was a gesture, she thought, meant less to evoke authority than to simply steady himself as he braced against the unpleasant tide of memory. His eyes found hers for only a moment, but that moment was all it took for her to understand perhaps ‘unpleasant’ was too delicate a word to describe a return to Kirkwall.

Perhaps ‘agonizing,’ would’ve been the better fit. ‘Wretched.’

“Cassandra and I are of a mind on one thing, at the very least—Varric is a liar. However. I would be remiss if I didn’t draw your attention to the one thing, the only thing, I’ve heard him say about our shared time in Kirkwall that at least approaches the truth.”

She couldn’t help but notice that Cullen spoke the city’s name in much the same way Hawke had spoken Elthina’s: as though it tasted bitter on his tongue, like the shape of it alone brought him to the brink of retching.

“Namely,” he continued, speaking with a terrible evenness that smacked of everything except calm, “if, for whatever reason, you wanted to find Hawke, all you had to do was follow the blood. What blood? Whose blood? Some might argue that since Hawke killed so often, so indiscriminately, that it wouldn’t matter which smear you picked. Oh, I’ve heard the jokes. I’ve heard them all. How it must’ve sometimes seemed Kirkwall was populated solely by nameless, faceless throngs of ruffians she cut through at nightfall, slashing and hacking her way towards the betterment of the city. How Varric had to keep a running tally of vendettas held against her, lest she forget which seedy element might be coming after her next for putting an end to their leader. Hilarious. Utterly.”

Had Cullen not been wearing his gloves, the Inquisitor had the singular sense she’d be watching his knuckles turn white as bone; the way he’d taken to gripping the edges of his desk, she was a bit shocked that nothing had given way.

Yet, that was. Nothing had given way yet.

“None of it true, of course. There was nothing amusing, and certainly nothing happenstance about the people Hawke murdered—and everything else aside, that’s what it was: murder. No, if you wanted to find Hawke in Kirkwall, you followed the blood, to be sure! But first…first, you had to stumble over a body wearing the Chantry’s colors.”

Part of her was surprised at how, well, not surprised she was. As she folded her arms and set her weight on her hip, she found it took very little pushing or pulling to make any of this information fit into her hazy portrait of Hawke, the one she’d had before meeting her in the flesh, the one she’d woken up with that morning. If anything, hearing that anger burbling just below the surface of Cullen’s tone, feeling the sting of wounds never allowed to set or heal the right way, brought with it a sort of comfort. A bittersweet sort, to be sure, and unquestionably unkind, but comfort, nonetheless. It didn’t sound exactly like the Hawke she’d come to picture in her head, and yet…

And yet Hawke the unrepentant butcher of Templars and Chantry faithful felt like an old friend, in a way. That image felt simpler. Easier. It was an idea she could swallow without choking on a hundred maybes or ifs or buts or actuallys. In an awful way, it was a relief to know something she’d been led to believe had been grounded in truth, even if absolutely nothing else had.

Cullen hardly seemed to share in that relief, if the pinched look of his face was anything to go by. “What Varric leaves unspoken in that joke of his is that it was Templar blood you followed to find Hawke. Every. Single. Time. Templars had a nasty habit of turning up dead whenever they found themselves in Hawke’s vicinity, be they respected veterans or bleary-eyed recruits. It was obvious. It was pointed. And yet nothing ever came of it—do you know why?

“Because overnight, she had become one of the wealthiest people in the city, and with that status came the unspoken knowledge that she could simply make things like that disappear with nothing more than a rattling of a coin purse. She paid the Guard to turn the other way. She paid shop owners to forget things they’d seen or heard. Between her and Varric, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear they’d bribed the Maker, Himself, to turn a blind eye to their depravity—that’s how deep their coffers ran.

“And the things she couldn’t make disappear with silver and gold? Those, she turned the weight of her influence upon. She started with the Viscount. When her mother’s endless appeals to repossess their family home went unanswered, Hawke stepped in to miraculously rescue Dumar’s only son from a band of kidnappers. With him in her pocket, she had the Guard-Captain deposed and replaced, conveniently, with Aveline Vallen. One of her own. She made a point to track down and enlist a Qunlat speaker to sweet-talk the Qunari delegation. She plied the Dalish camp until they entrusted her with their First, and then she promptly stationed her as a new set of eyes in the alienage, to go along with the eyes she had in Lowtown, Hightown, Darktown, the sewers, the coast, the brothel! You could not sneeze in Kirkwall without their lot hearing about it. And if anyone tried to move against them…” The earlier evenness of his voice gave way, and as though meaning to banish the unsteadiness that had crept in, Cullen brought his fist down onto the desk hard enough to topple a candlestick. Then he turned away, raking his fingers through his hair.

The Inquisitor let her eyes wander as he struggled with his composure, tracing the bare bricks of the walls to count their chips. The tower was suddenly unbearably hot, the air stifled. The harsh, restrained sound of Cullen’s breathing served to remind her that, in much the same way she had no real sense of where Hawke the storybook heroine ended and Hawke the person began, neither could she tell the difference between the Inquisition’s Commander and Kirkwall’s Knight-Captain. It was a feeling she’d grown tired of by that point in the day. It didn’t sit well with her, the realization that, at the heart of things, she didn’t know the people around her. That they, in all likelihood, didn’t know her. Not really. Not in any of the ways that mattered most.

Spending the day turning Varric’s motivations over in her head had been bad enough, polishing those worries and doubts to a fine shine with each new story she heard, and that was saying nothing of the other things that had been rattling around in her head alongside them: the way his face had changed at the title of ‘Champion,’ how everything about him had melted at the sound of Hawke’s laugh, how the two of them had fallen into step as though they’d never been apart at all, how it appeared neither of them cared about Corypheus or Haven or the way the Veil itself was falling to tatters around them if it meant they could trade jokes and grins in person again. A heavy weight in her mind, all of it.

Now she couldn’t help but add Cullen to her ever-growing list of concerns. Her list of questions. How could he speak of Hawke like that and still work alongside Varric? Had he only agreed to join Cassandra and Leliana after they’d made it clear Hawke was nowhere to be found? More to the point, could she, as Inquisitor, the leader of these people who’d just lost so much, reconcile the ire of her Commander with her need for Hawke’s help?

She opened her mouth to say something (not that she knew what), and got about as far as filling her lungs before Cullen, apparently having gathered himself, began speaking again.

“Hawke is…clever. And she is charming. And she has this…infuriating ability to talk herself out of trouble. It would almost be impressive, were it not so absolutely terrifying. We would do well to count her among our assets. Our…allies. To take that ability of hers and wield it against those who oppose us. It’s good sense. But we would be fools to trust her. I cannot conceive of an idea worse than bringing her into our fold. Mark my words—we will live to regret her assistance. Of that, I have little doubt.” His back had been to her, but then he turned to face her once again, and the change that had overcome him was impossible to ignore.

The thunderhead of rage had passed, or so it seemed, and though the grey cloud about him had yet to disperse, it had faded enough for her to steal a glimpse of what was hiding just beyond it. Something like apprehension, if not downright concern. Something that lived on the very border of fear.

And then it was gone.

“She thinks of no one but herself. Kirkwall? Kirkwall rewarded her for that. She was never held accountable, Inquisitor. She has never been held accountable. She basks in the glory but sidesteps the blame, and do you know why that is? It’s because she learned she can convince people she’s the hero and they’ll ignore the rest. A well-timed joke, a charming smile, and she’s allowed to continue on her merry way no matter the scene she created, no matter how many bodies left in her wake, no matter how…how…” He shook his head, his upper lip disappearing into his mouth. “The night—the very night—she was first introduced to that mage, do you know what they did?”

Cullen didn’t wait to find out whether she knew the answer; she did, of course, she just…she hadn’t considered what it might’ve meant to someone else, someone like him.

“They slaughtered no fewer than ten Templars. Ten. On holy ground. Inside the Chantry, no less.” He’d taken to jabbing one of his fingers against the desk with each syllable, looking not at her, not at his documents, but some space between the two. It was almost as if a rift had opened right there and then, leading not into the Fade, but the past.

She hadn’t quite figured out how to close those.

“Good men and women. Good men and women put there to protect the city and its people, to maintain order and peace, and then, as though in some sort of divine joke, Hawke meets Anders and decides to end their lives. For what? For being Templars? For doing their duty? For carrying out the Maker’s word and keeping Kirkwall safe? For—”

“Karl Thekla?”

His eyes snapped to her like she’d slapped him full across the face. For the first time since the topic of Hawke had been raised, she had his full attention.

Ah. So that was how she closed the rift to the past.

Good to know.

Neither said much of anything for a time. They didn’t need to. In one instant, with one name, everything that needed saying had been said, and in no uncertain terms.

The air in the tower only grew heavier.

When Cullen swallowed, she could see his throat working. He suddenly looked very, very tired—perhaps the most she’d ever seen. Even in Haven, Corypheus’s aberrant dragon laying waste to everything in sight, he’d at least been holding his sword and bracing behind his shield. Here, tonight, with the cheers from the Herald’s Rest only just beginning to die down, he almost looked beaten.

“If those are the details he’s thought to include, maybe I should read Varric’s book,” he murmured.

She thought to offer him her copy, then decided against it. His distaste was already so palpable, she shuddered to imagine what the idea of Hawke the maleficar might do to his blood pressure.  

“I’m not proud of my time in Kirkwall, Inquisitor,” Cullen said sharply, changing tack with an answer to an accusation she hadn’t raised. “All I did then, I did to fulfill the duty expected of me, but even so there are things I said, things I did, things…” The muscles of his jaw clenched and unclenched over his working throat. “…things allowed to happen under my watch, which I regret so thoroughly as to know they will follow me well into my grave. But the actions I’ve taken against Hawke and her cohort—ordered or otherwise? No.” A brisk shake of his head. “Those I do not regret in the slightest. Not even in hindsight.”

It was times like these, times where the tension crackled like ozone before a storm, that made her worry for the whole of the Inquisition. For Thedas, really. There she was, meant to be their benevolent leader, even-tempered and understanding, and instead of backing away with arms raised to allow the situation to defuse, instinct had her grinding her boot that much harder into the softer bits offered up to her, hoping to wring out as much blood as she could before the wound scabbed over.

It was times like these that she worried the Sister in Val Royeaux had been right, that she’d never be accepted as the voice of the people, as a protector and guide; maybe she’d always be who she’d been before the Conclave, no matter how brightly her armor shone, no matter who it was who’d stepped behind her in the Fade and pushed her back into the waking world.

“You make her sound like a monster. You realize that, I hope? She seemed perfectly pleasant this morning, if a little…spirited.”

Cullen exhaled. “Hawke is a great many things, Inquisitor. A great many. She is not, however, a monster. She is a criminal.”

“Seems an interesting distinction to make.”

“Monsters are. They can’t help that. It’s how they were born, there’s no choice in the matter. Being a criminal is a conscious decision. A continued one, too. They see the destruction their actions cause and make the choice to just keep on, so long as it means they themselves are comfortable.”

And oh, he hadn’t needed to think on that answer at all; it had simply been there within his reach, waiting for him to pluck it from the ether. It made her wonder whether he’d been practicing the whole day through, whether he’d bustled away from her and Varric that morning to begin—what was it Hawke had said?—running lines in preparation for this very talk.

It was another opportunity to walk away. To leave it be. All she had to do was thank Cullen for his time and…

“From what I understand, Kirkwall had its fair share of both.”

So much for that.

He regarded her carefully for a moment, and while the expression on his face was tricky to parse, the way his hand kept coming up to scrub at his mouth was not. “I haven’t read Varric’s book,” he repeated, his voice gaining a sense of intention, of deliberateness, that she could only ever remember hearing in the field, “But that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard the stories. ‘Mad Merry.’” His derision was palpable in the still air of the room. “How they say the Knight-Commander lost her mind there at the end…she did, I won’t argue that, won’t waste the breath it would take, but what those same people refuse to acknowledge—refuse!—is that Hawke. Did. Too.”

Cullen swallowed hard, perhaps attempting to tamp the memory down. Whether it worked, she wasn’t sure she could say.

“As you said yourself, Inquisitor: I was there. You were not. You didn’t see what she’d become.”

“Worse than Meredith?” To be entirely fair, it hadn’t been meant as a challenge (not consciously, at least). It was curiosity, nothing more and nothing less, the same sort that had led her on the winding journey through Skyhold to begin with, collecting tales of the Champion like so many stalks of elfroot along the way.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t received as a challenge.

“They were the same,” he said, his words going strangely stilted, almost as though he were trying to throttle the affected edge her line of questioning had caused in him. “That night in the Gallows? It was a stage play! One where they had both cast themselves as Andraste, the avenging bride of the Maker. Both perfectly out of their minds, surrounded on all sides by sycophants and admirers, wholly convinced that they and they alone spoke for Kirkwall and its people. They didn’t, of course, neither of them, but in that belief they were identical, so blinded by their own pride that they saw nothing else. Thought nothing else. They couldn’t. Kirkwall in flames, and they stood posturing!”

His fingers found his mouth again, rubbing agitated swathes across his lips and chin. It seemed to be a pattern: physically silencing himself whenever his tone grew too fervent. How much of that was a nervous tic, the Inquisitor wondered, and how much of it had been the Chantry’s conditioning?

“People talk about the Knight-Commander’s madness, and they are right to. They’re quick to mock her religious mania, her quoting the Chant of Light even as the city crumbled around her and the Grand Enchanter’s blood dried on her blade. What they do not talk about is Hawke’s madness. And believe you me, she was. She was mad.”

The time for poking and prodding, she suspected, had passed. The Inquisitor didn’t say a word, only pulled her shoulders inward and followed his pacing with her eyes. She’d dredged Cullen’s story out from the depths he’d buried it below. There was nothing to do now but wait for him to sick the rest of it up.

“No one ever seems to remember the way she stood there, watching, as the Chantry bur…” He cleared his throat again. Twice. Three times. “She watched, unflinching all the while. And when Sebast…when Prince Vael, the only rational member of that broken cabal of theirs, demanded she do something about it, that she take some action against the madman, the murderer, who’d done it, do you know what she did then? Do you?” Cullen didn’t wait—he didn’t really want her to answer. “She comforted him. Anders. She told him he’d done the necessary thing—the right thing, and…and Varric…he calls himself an Andrastian, but he—” Up went the hand to rub, rub, rub at his mouth.

It only occurred to her in that moment that maybe, just maybe, he wasn’t actually trying to keep himself cool and collected when he did that. Was it possible…could it be that it had less to do with his mouth and more to do with his scar?

Now there was a thought.

Hadn’t there been a scene in the book where, after growing tired of listening to him rattle off a fair chunk of anti-mage rhetoric outside the Gallows, Hawke had hauled off and punched some unnamed Templar square in the mouth? She seemed to remember reading something like that. In her copy, it had made sense: a blood mage hearing the words “Mages are not people like you and me” spoken and deciding she didn’t need to hear what came next. But could it be that the Hawke she’d met this morning had done the same, spurred on not by her own magic but her friends’? Her family’s? The eyes of the crowd that had no doubt gathered around her like moths circling a flame?

Yes, she answered herself. Yes, she thought that sounded very much like something the Hawke she’d met might do.

The question she couldn’t answer as quickly—or certainly—was whether Cullen might’ve been that Templar outside the Gallows, if he’d thought it wise to say something like that with his whole chest where anyone could hear. After all, that very well could’ve been just another one of Varric’s tall tales spun whole-cloth from nothing. It could’ve been made up entirely.

He could’ve gotten that scar anywhere.

Cullen, unaware, continued. “Not that I can judge him too harshly for his loyalties, Varric…Maker knows I stood by Meredith right until that moment at the end.”

“But not anymore?”

His eyes snapped back to her as they had at the mention of Karl’s name. An odd flicker of something overcame him for just an instant, and for the span of a heartbeat, he looked positively aghast. “Of course not! I…Inquisitor, allow me to be abundantly clear in that, in case there are any lingering doubts. No. I do not agree with Knight-Commander Stannard, nor do I mourn her loss.” The sentence ended abruptly, hanging jaggedly in the air. Maybe he’d meant to end it differently and thought better of it at the last second.

“She, like Hawke, understood how to use charisma as a weapon. She understood it implicitly. And yes, I fell prey to that as so many others did, but I did not stand with her in the end, and that is because I made the much-belated realization that there is no amount of charisma, nor wit, nor confidence, that can justify madness. At a certain point, one has to look around oneself and decide whether enough has become enough.”

After a deep breath or two, Cullen drew his treatise to a close, his eyes once again averted, looking in any direction but hers. It was a position she had become woefully familiar with of late, one she’d been taking up with alarming frequency since stepping out of the Fade and into the role of leader: I’ve said too much, I’ve been too loud, let’s you and I both agree that this discussion never happened.

“All of this to say that Hawke will smile. She will make you laugh. I have no doubt of that. Whether or not you can fathom it, she’s gotten me to do both in the past, much to my mortification. But you didn’t see her that night. I did. I saw the look in her eyes after she killed the Knight-Commander, and what I saw there didn’t just leave me shaken, it terrified me.”

What was she meant to say to that?

He must’ve picked up on her apprehension, because just as quickly he added, “I will work alongside her and I will be civil. You have my word of that—I can and will be her associate until such a time as Corypheus no longer poses a threat. However, it’s imperative to me that you understand I will never count myself among her friends. Knowing we’re under the same roof is difficult enough. The thought of being in the same room is untenable.”

And what was she meant to say to that? She took a breath, set her shoulders, and nodded. “That’s all I ask. Thank you. I know this wasn’t pleasant for you, but I…appreciate your insight.”

“Yes. Well. If that’s all…” Brusquely, he returned to staring at the paperwork scattered across his desk, a clear plea to be dismissed.

But she couldn’t. Not just yet.

“What about Hawke’s family?”

“What about her family?”

By that time, she knew what she was getting into by asking the question, knew what she was opening herself up to. Still, she couldn’t help it. She had to know. “Do you think there’s any possibility Carver or Bethany could use their influence to help our numbers?”

When he looked up from his papers that time, there was no agitation in Cullen’s demeanor. No anger, no fear, no disgust, none of the things she’d seen before. There was, however, confusion.

Which was its own kind of answer, she supposed.

“I’ve had conflicting reports,” she soldiered on, waiting for the inevitable blow to land, “some say they’re with the Grey Wardens, some claim they’re back in Kirkwall, but wherever their allegiances lie, I should think having Hawke here would mean they could lend themselves and their people to our cause as well.”

He watched her a moment longer, as if sussing out whether she was being serious. Then, speaking with considerably more care than before, “Hawke doesn’t have siblings, Inquisitor. Not anymore, I mean, not any that I’m aware of.”

And there it was.

Again Vivienne’s words occurred to her, her sentiments on stories pulling the eye away from terrible truths, the glint and gleam of charming anecdotes distracting from the unpleasantness of reality. The boulder in her stomach lurched.

“Are you sure?”

As though their earlier conversation had never happened, the air in the room shifted, its heaviness skewing to the left and up, uncomfortable in a completely different sense. Cullen searched her face. She hadn’t the foggiest of what he was looking for, but he didn’t seem to find it, whatever it was. There was something almost wary in his expression when he spoke again.

“Hawke came into the city with three people: Guard-Captain Vallen, her mother Leandra, and a younger sister—”

“Bethany,” she nodded. “But you must’ve meant four. Bethany had a twin brother, Carver, and—”

The wariness intensified. For all intents and purposes, Cullen suddenly looked every inch a suspect worried they’d said too much under questioning. “I’m sorry, I…I don’t know anything about a brother.”

Though she’d suspected as much, her tongue was a rock in her mouth. “You said ‘anymore.’ That Hawke doesn’t have siblings anymore.”

Cullen simply held her gaze. It felt very much like karma for her earlier digging.

“What happened to Bethany? Do you know?”

“We…had reason to suspect the younger sister was an apostate, so tabs were kept. Standard protocol, I assure you, nothing especially in-depth, but…she accompanied Hawke and Varric into the Deep Roads and just…” His shoulders rose and fell in a shrug made the more obvious by his mantle. “She didn’t return with them.”

Because she’s a Grey Warden.

It was on the tip of her tongue, but she couldn’t force it out. No, not with the way Cullen was looking at her, that wariness slowly edging its way towards some mangy breed of pity. She had never met the twins, had never seen them, so why should she be so affected? Why lodge herself so firmly in denial when she’d already come to terms with the idea that nothing—absolutely nothing—she’d thought she’d known about Hawke’s life had happened the way Varric had said?

She didn’t return with them because Josephine was right, wasn’t she? Something terrible came to pass and Bethany became a Grey Warden? No one saw her after the Expedition because she was spirited off to Weisshaupt or some other Warden encampment, right? Right?

It was futile, a childish and pointless argument to raise even with herself. That denial was ridiculous, not to mention unbecoming, of the Inquisition’s leader—the same who, not all that long ago, snickered at Josephine’s suggestion that the twins had been Joined and taken from Kirkwall, that they might still be found somewhere, anywhere, if only someone knew where to look. It was sad. It was pathetic.

And it was so much better than imagining Hawke living alone in that empty estate for the better part of a decade. It was easier than thinking she’d sat in front of the fire by her lonesome after holding her mother one last time. It hurt less than accepting Hawke had lost everything and everyone, her first family reduced to ash and memory, her second carried off by the wind to any number of hiding places, any number of endings; it hurt less than thinking back on the crinkle of Hawke’s eyes and nose as she’d laughed that morning on the battlements, knowing that of her people, of her life, she and Varric were potentially all that remained.

That wasn’t how the Champion’s story was meant to go. That couldn’t be how The Tale of the Champion ended. There was supposed to be triumph in a hero’s tale—glory. Not this. Never this.

“Inquisitor?”

“Thank you, Commander,” she managed after a time, regretting every choice she’d made since climbing the stairs to the rampart that morning, wishing keenly she could take it all back. “You’ve given me a lot to think about.”

Chapter Text

The rookery was cool and quiet; a welcome relief after the sweltering air of Cullen’s watchtower. Outside, night had settled in earnest, darkening the spymaster’s nest except for the soft, almost ghostly, circles of candlelight glowing throughout. From just beyond those tiny pools of light, feathers ruffled and oil slick eyes gleamed, but the sense of being watched couldn’t have been more different than what she’d felt in the courtyard: there was no judgment contained in those hanging cages, no sense her fitness as a leader was being gauged.

Tentatively, she reached a finger between a set of gilded bars and stroked the bird watching her from within. It let out a low squawk before raising its beak, guiding her towards the shaggier feathers at its throat. The Inquisitor couldn’t help the smile that overtook her, tired as it was. She’d never been able to figure out whether the Inquisition’s messenger birds were ravens, crows, or something else entirely, and the irony of that struck her even as she moved her finger up to gingerly rub at the creature’s beak. As it turned out, she couldn’t quite figure out what Hawke was either—so maybe it was a specifically avian issue on her part.

The joke was awful even in her own head, and yet, despite her conversation with Cullen still hanging heavily over her, there was no stopping the chuckle that escaped her as the bird shook its feathers out and squawked again.

“Ah, Inquisitor,” Leliana said by way of greeting, her tone perfectly confident despite having her back turned. “I was wondering when you’d find your way to me. I suppose I might’ve expected you’d take the path less traveled.” A moment longer and she released a quiet sigh, rolling up whatever communiqué she’d been looking over before placing it at the end of her desk. “I’m afraid most of what I know about Hawke comes from second- and thirdhand accounts not terribly different from the ones you’ve been hearing all day, but I’d be happy to give the best answers I can to whatever questions you may still have after your busy day.”

Immediately, she (and her head) spun. Thanks to the rookery’s dim lighting, she’d only been vaguely aware of Leliana’s presence among the shadows. Her sudden appearance had been a surprise on its own; combined with her directness, it was nearly enough to knock her back a step.

“I hope I’m not—my busy day?” The Inquisitor slowly removed her finger from the cage as Leliana’s meaning belatedly clicked in her mind. No wasting time on preamble with her, eh?

On the one hand, it was precisely the sort of no-nonsense demeanor one wanted in a spymaster…but on the other hand, wow, could it be spooky.

Intensely so.

She didn’t envy those who found themselves on Leliana’s bad side.

“Have I been that obvious?” It was all she could do not to grimace. Subtlety and subterfuge had never been her strongest points of course, but she’d at least hoped she hadn’t been bumbling her way through the grounds. Suddenly, she wasn’t so sure. “It’s not really a habit of mind to go around information-gathering on every guest we have. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

In the candlelight, the corners of Leliana’s eyes crinkled just so. “Well, you may not be in the habit…but I most certainly am.” She let the statement hang in the air for a beat, and then reached behind herself to smooth her tunic as she sat behind her makeshift desk. “For what it’s worth, I wouldn’t say you’ve been obvious…”

The Inquisitor’s relief was palpable.

“But to those of us for whom information is a livelihood, your methods have been…noticeable, I will say.”

Well. So much for that.

“People like you,” the Inquisitor said, her smile growing tight with mortification. “And Varric.” It took every iota of strength to keep herself from wincing. “And…Hawke?”

Leliana’s nod was nearly imperceptible, but oh, that didn’t stop it from being there. “Not that I’ve asked them myself. Or that they’ve said as much where it could be overheard. Still, it feels a safe enough assumption to make.” She set her chin atop steepled fingers, watching her with an utterly unreadable expression. “Sit, if you like,” she said, nodding towards the stool across from her.

After standing opposite Cullen for as long as she had, drawing each horrid experience out of him like a surgeon removing rotten teeth, she was only too grateful for the offer. The bird she’d doted upon gave one last squawk (one almost human in its indignation), then tucked its head beneath a wing to doze.

The sweet smell of parchment rose from the table to meet her as she sat; Leliana’s gaze lowered to follow. The curve of her smile didn’t so much as falter as she threw her for yet another loop.

“Not pleasant, is it? Going around collecting rumors?” she asked, her voice perfectly pleasant, perfectly placid, from behind her steepled fingers. “I’d wager by this point that you’re more than a little confused. Perhaps even disheartened—caught between the sense you’ve never been closer to the truth whilst all the while straying ever farther from it. You shouldn’t be, of course…but it is only natural.”

“How could you…” the Inquisitor began, shutting her mouth just as quickly. It seemed ridiculous to ask Leliana how she knew anything when her job was, at its core, to know everything.

Appropriately, then, she continued to speak as though reading her mind. “Inquisitor, please. I assure you, what you’re experiencing with Hawke right now, I’ve seen a hundred times before. The path you are walking is one I am intimately familiar with. What you are feeling, I have felt. What you are struggling with, I have also.”

“You…have?” No sooner had she said it, though, than it hit her. In much the same way she had realized mid-conversation that Cullen hadn’t always been the Inquisition’s Commander, stern-faced and unrested, neither had Leliana always been its spymaster. She’d had a life before the Conclave, too—an eventful one, at that. “You have.”

“If trading in secrets were easy, I think you’d find the world a significantly less interesting place.” As though it had been some private joke, Leliana paused to hum a warm little laugh to herself. “Now, Varric has done quite the job of muddying the waters, I will give him that, but as I said before, should you want to add another perspective to what I’m sure is already a considerable collection, I’d be more than happy to tell you what I know of Hawke.”

“Why would he do it?” Two could play at the preamble-skipping game, she decided. “Why would Varric go and tell so many different stories about her? I just…I can’t get my head around it! I tried to ask him—not outright, I suppose, but indirectly. I was trying to figure out why it was that the Hawke I had in my head wasn’t the Hawke in front of my eyes, and I thought…well, he seemed so genuinely upset about people forgetting her! That they saw her as the Champion and not herself, that they let her fade from her own story…but then he goes around and tells tens, hell, maybe hundreds, of other stories about her, most of which, I’ve gathered, are completely and totally detached from reality, and—”

As Leliana set her hands upon the table, folding them there, her smile became that much more obvious.

“…what?” After the reactions she’d been getting all day, grins and grimaces, rolled eyes and shrugs, shaking heads and laughter, something about that little smile inspired a wholly separate feeling in her.

There was a joke she’d missed somewhere along the way, one that Leliana was in on but she, herself, was not.

In a way, she’d suspected as much. It was the boulder of concern in her stomach, the itch at the very back of her mind, a tiny voice murmuring in the silence between her thoughts that she’d missed something—something important—and until she got her hands around it, the mystery would persist. The worry would persist. It was what had driven her to keep going, to keep her eyes and ears open as the Inquisition accepted the reality of Hawke’s presence. There was something she was missing, and while it had been taking shape all day, she still couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

The thought didn’t sit well.

Instead of answering straight away, Leliana narrowed her eyes. Not in malice, not in thought, but as though in some kind of internal debate, like she was trying to choose how best to start. After a moment of silence, she decided. “Which one.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Which one,” she repeated. “It’s the first thing Varric said during his questioning. Did you know that?” The question quirked the corners of her mouth into a shape subtle enough that it could’ve simply been a trick of the candlelight. “Cassandra asked him…demanded of him, I suppose, that he tell her everything he knew about the Champion. And he responded by asking her in turn—”

“Which one.”

She watched Leliana’s smile grow. It wasn’t by much, but it was there all the same. The sense of standing outside a private joke grew right along with it. Oh, she hoped the plan was to bring her in on it. Any minute now…any minute.

“Given their, hmm, complicated dynamic, she probably believed he was poking fun at her. In all likelihood he was, but of course we know now that there was so much more to it, don’t we?” Leliana rose from her table with the grace of a ghost, each fluid movement reminding her in no uncertain terms that, spymaster or not, agent of the Divine or not, at the end of the day the woman opposite her was a bard before all else.

“Cassandra is skilled in many, many areas, Inquisitor, as I’m sure you’ve come to learn. Certainly, she’s without equal on the battlefield. Yet, when it comes to reading people, let us say…” Again that inscrutable smile grew. “Well…I suppose I don’t have to tell you that, had I been the one questioning him, an answer like that would’ve piqued my curiosity.”

“But you weren’t the one questioning him.” The last word came out strangely choked, not unlike the occasional caws coming from the cages around them. She hadn’t been able to decide whether or not she’d wanted it to be a question.

It was a struggle Leliana seemed keenly aware of. “I was not.”

Before that very moment, it hadn’t really occurred to her how strange it was that, of the masses the Divine had at her beck and call, it had been Cassandra doing the interrogating in Kirkwall. By all accounts, it didn’t add up. Yes, she was Justinia’s Right Hand, but since when was that sort of questioning considered the Right Hand’s responsibility? Cassandra was easily exasperated, impatient, quick to anger; Varric was the worst person to leave her alone with. Leliana, such that she was, wouldn’t have just been the better choice, she would’ve been the best choice: She would’ve scented Varric’s half-truths from a mile away, she would’ve known the right promises to make, the softest places to bear down on, everything.

So why had the job been left to Cassandra?

The question must’ve been in her eyes, because Leliana chuckled. “Oh, there were pressing matters for me to attend to, you understand. I won’t say they were more pressing than speaking with Hawke’s associates, but Cassandra reassured me time and time again that she was more than capable of handling that end of things while I sought out others who might be able to help our cause.”

“The Hero of Ferelden,” the Inquisitor finished for her, beginning to understand. “The Warden.”

No answer that time, just the faintest tilt to her chin. “Between you and me, I’ve always thought there were probably other reasons she wanted to be the one to handle Varric. Reasons slightly less professional and more personal. I wonder…” Leliana looked to her, still wearing that sly, secret little smile. “Have you ever read Swords & Shields?”

“I, uh…”

Her day had been centered so wholly on The Tale of the Champion that the mention of another book surprised her almost as much as a slap. The change in topic felt wildly abrupt— inappropriate, even. However, experience had taught her that, where Leliana was concerned, there was no such thing as chance. Even the choices that seemed the most random had been thought out meticulously. Planned. There was logic here, even if the Inquisitor wasn’t seeing it yet.

“I can’t say that I have,” she said after a moment of searching. “I’m not actually sure I’ve heard of it at all, truth be told.”

“I see. It’s a serial Varric has written—you simply must ask Cassandra about it sometime. She’s quite the fan. I wonder whether her opinion has changed, knowing him as she does, now. I’d imagine it’s complicated, separating an artist from their art…if such a thing can even be done, that is. I, myself, am firmly of the belief that stories never matter half as much as the person telling them, you see.”

“Oh?”

“If I may…at any point today, did you stop to ask yourself who it was, telling you these things?” Leliana blinked once, slowly, and continued without prompting. “Were they someone who cared for Hawke? Hated her? Resented, idolized, envied, admired her? The stories they’d accepted as truth, were they stories where they imagined her the hero or the villain? A bully or a victim? Or, perhaps, were they stories where they could project themselves onto her? Stories where they could live vicariously through her? Did you stop to wonder why they believed the things they believed? Did you ask yourself, Inquisitor, why it was that you believed the story you had?”

“It’s…what I read.” Out loud, the admission felt weak. Preposterous, in fact. It was the kind of answer a child would give, but it was the truth. “I read it, and I’d heard rumors in the same vein, and so I just thought…”

Her voice trailed off as her conversation with the others in the courtyard returned to her. Hadn’t Blackwall said something to the same effect? That he’d decided what had sounded true enough and what had sounded like bunk and that had been that? Was that what they’d all done? Not just him and Harding, but the Chargers? Josephine and Vivienne? Had they all, as Sera had suggested, seen the gaps between each line and filled them in themselves? Even Cassandra and Cullen, the two whose stories should’ve been closest to reality, had slipped in anecdotes that sounded less like retellings and more like Chantry dogma, at times painting Hawke as a divine punishment or an unholy avenger, hardly a person at all.

Had Varric been the one to create so many versions of Hawke? Or had they done it themselves? Had they been the storytellers all along?

Slowly, her stomach feeling heavy and sick and much too full, the Inquisitor lowered her head into her hands. She stared at the wood grain between her elbows as she thought, focusing on its branching paths to keep her mind from the queasy fear that she was on the verge of understanding something she would’ve been better off leaving alone.

Ah, but she was in the wrong place for that, now, wasn’t she? One didn’t go asking questions of a spymaster if one was afraid of the answers they might receive.

“Yet you threw that belief away as soon as you saw her standing before you. You saw Hawke, realized something was amiss—suspicious at the very least—and suddenly you weren’t sure what to believe anymore.”

She shook her head, frowning as she contended with everything she’d heard that day. “Well…none of it was right. I couldn’t go on believing Hawke was some, I don’t know, ferocious blood mage when she was looking me in the eye, no staff to be seen. She wasn’t some terrifying force of nature in dress armor, she wasn’t imposing, or unnatural, or, or remarkable. I went out this morning expecting to meet the Champion of Kirkwall, and she was…just a person. She was…” Again, she shook her head, feeling more than slightly foolish by her admission. “She was shorter than I thought she’d be.”

“Of the people you spoke to today, would you say meeting Hawke—seeing her, as you did—did it change what they believed about her?” Leliana’s gaze took on a new edge, an intensity that once more made her fear for those she stood against. She was looking for something, waiting for some realization to blossom.

It wasn’t forthcoming, however. “I suppose not,” the Inquisitor said after a time, wracking her brain as she thought back on it. “Maybe…maybe slightly? In some cases, that is, not every one of them. Maker knows Cullen wouldn’t—”

“And when you pointed out the discrepancies?”

“I—” She blinked. Sat up straighter.

Perfect clarity it was not, but as it trickled back to her piece-by-piece, the realization that came over her then probably was what Leliana had been looking for.

The more she thought on it, the more it became clear that no, no one had been swayed from their own version of Hawke. Seeing her, speaking to her, sparring against her, none of that had been enough to shake them, and when she’d gone out of her way to poke and prod? To point out obvious details that just didn’t fit? What had happened then?

‘She’s not a mage,’ she’d said to Krem, only for him to brush her off, saying he’d known plenty of mages who’d chosen to hide their abilities.

‘Don’t believe all the things meant to distract you from the real story,’ Vivienne had warned, only to continue in the very same breath, ‘And remember that she betrayed her friends when it mattered most.’

‘Cassandra knows more about it than I do,’ Josephine had said, implying the two of them had discussed their wildly differing tales and had come away accepting they would never match; Cassandra had said the same of Cullen, and Cullen of Leliana, and nowhere in any of their retellings had there been more than a handful of overlapping details.

She had walked away from them in turn, her own belief shaken more each time, but theirs? Theirs remained. Even Harding, smiling sheepishly as Sera teased her between bouts of shrill, delirious laughter, had shrugged in the end. ‘I take everything Varric says with a grain of salt,’ she’d said, but only after having admitted she’d begun to believe the stories she’d heard about Hawke’s less savory exploits.

Eerily, Leliana remained silent throughout. It was as though she’d been tracking the thought’s progress in the Inquisitor’s mind the whole time through, and once it had reached some invisible threshold, only then did she speak. “How much do you know about Andraste?”

“…uh…?” Another abrupt shift in topic. The Inquisitor couldn’t keep from bracing herself for what came next.

After a moment, Leliana’s smile resurfaced…or tried to, anyway. It was different from the one before, a far cry from the welcoming crinkling at the corner of her eyes she’d seen when first stepping into the rookery. “How much do you know about Her as a person?” she clarified, somehow making even less sense the second time. “Her favorite foods? What brought Her the most joy on rainy days? Do you know who Her friends were? Before being called to Her divine cause, did She have dreams? Aspirations? What about Maferath? Shartan?”

Oh, how she wished she could see the point she was making. The Inquisitor shook her head, her ears prickling with the hot onset of embarrassment. This felt like a test, one sufficiently more important than Vivienne’s, and she feared she was failing spectacularly.

Leliana’s smile softened, though only just. “Some of the most well-known names in Thedas…the most well-known figures, or legends, or whatever you care to call them, and yet you know so very little about them. Isn’t that peculiar?” She repositioned her stool at the table, its legs making a muted screech as she nudged it to the side.

The mossy boulder in her stomach gave a familiar lurch.

“There’s a cost for everything in life, have you noticed that? Surely you must’ve. After what you’ve been through, how could you not? Magic has its cost, as does power, faith, comfort…it’s greatness, though, for which the cost has always seemed, to me, the highest. The cruelest, as well. The more people remember the things you’ve done, the more they forget you as you are. You become your deeds and the rest fades away. In time, you—the essence of you—is stripped away to the bone, becoming so much dust on a bookshelf.

“The greater you become, the greater the things you achieve, the less a person you become, until one day, after you’ve been whittled away to nothing but your most towering victories and losses, people take for granted that you had a life at all. Eventually, if you aren’t careful, every part of you not cast in stone or memorialized in marble is gone, lost, and you become nothing more than a series of dates and events to be memorized by rote.”

“Unless…” It was out of her mouth before the thought had formed, leaving her to stammer under the edge of Leliana’s gaze for a moment. “Unless someone makes you a person. Over and over again. Maybe in a book. Maybe in a lot of books. Books written to make people talk about you. Books written to make people disagree about you so they cling that much harder to the version that lives in their head.”

Her throat felt so very, very dry. The thing that had been worrying her all day, the thing that had worried her since she’d seen Hawke lounging comfortably in her leathers, was suddenly within reach. She couldn’t name it yet, couldn’t wrap her unwilling heart around it, but it was close. It was so terribly close.

She swallowed hard. “If someone did that, it…it would be impossible not to know you. Some version of you, anyway. Even if it wasn’t the whole truth, it would still be you. It would still be a part of who you really were.”

“Such a story could remind the world at large that you were a person, yes—one who stumbled, who made mistakes. A person with flaws, a person who loved, who lived, who was, in precisely the same way the person reading the story is. People are imperfect, maybe even shamefully so, at times. We are not gods, our paths are not without failures. It is less the content of these tales that matter, Inquisitor, and more that reminder: Our heroes, whoever they may be, were people. They were people, and not—”

“Faceless statues on the dock.”

“I suppose that’s one way of phrasing it.”

And there was one mystery solved. The day returned to her in flashes as things fell into place, each conversation taking on new meaning the longer she dwelled on it.

Cassandra and Josephine had come away from Hawke’s tale focused on its romance, the passion in the tragedy. Cullen, meanwhile, had spoken only of its destruction and death. Vivienne’s takeaway had been the power dynamics shifting Kirkwall’s gears and the sacrifices Hawke had made (at the expense of countless others) to secure her own position therein…but even then, there was more to it, wasn’t there? Because there had been others who had hardly spoken a word about the events of Hawke’s life as written, but who had managed to fill in the gaps with their own understanding anyway; to Sera, Hawke had become a pirate after leaving Kirkwall, a menace to high society and slavers alike; to the Chargers, she’d been half elf, a secret mage, a deadly sellsword with no equal who’d chosen to run to escape the limelight. In one way or another, her story had become a personal thing to each of them—a cautionary tale or an escapist fantasy, an action-packed adventure fueled by revenge or love or political intrigue or religious doubt.

Varric had written multiple editions, sure, but now she wondered if maybe it had only been two or three and not the hundreds she’d come to imagine. Even then, she wasn’t at all sure they’d be necessary…the number of Hawkes she’d heard about today alone had grown with every person she’d spoken to. Everyone had their own version of Hawke in their head, in their heart, each just as colorful, as captivating, as alive as the next.

None of them were real. None of them were the Hawke she’d met this morning. But maybe, in some small way, each and every one of them was.

If every person in Thedas only knew one thing about Hawke, a singular detail that made her a person and not just a name on a page…then it felt disingenuous to say any version of her was wrong. Perhaps everyone was right to some degree—maybe the shinier parts of Varric’s stories had been meant to draw readers’ eyes towards some things and away from others, maybe Hawke was dangerous, maybe she had let some of her friends down in the end, maybe she had made mistakes, had stumbled, had sided with the wrong faction from time to time, had flaunted her wealth to get out of trouble, maybe, maybe, maybe. She’d certainly been imperfect in each of those tales. She’d stumbled, she’d lost, she’d pushed on anyway. She’d been a person.

She’d been a person.

And if the Inquisitor stayed on that line of thought for much longer, she thought the few bites of bread she’d taken earlier might make a surprise guest appearance on Leliana’s table. So, clearing her throat and gathering herself as best she could, she took it upon herself to be the one abruptly changing the subject that time around.

“Do you really think Hawke knows I’ve spent the day asking about her behind her back, then?” She straightened her posture once more, looking anywhere in the rookery but Leliana. In the half-light of the candles, the birds’ eyes seemed almost to glow above their perches, ruby glimmers of intelligence blinking out from the shadows. How many of them had been sent out today, the Inquisitor wondered.

“I think she’s accustomed to curiosity.” It wasn’t an answer to her question, per se; it was, however, telling in its own right. “And, if only for your peace of mind, I must tell you that I would’ve been alarmed had you not shown interest in getting to the bottom of our enigmatic guest. Someone with a reputation like hers suddenly appears in our midst, affording us only the slightest warning? If that hadn’t raised alarms for you, I would’ve worried we’d been hasty in granting you a title.”

Nothing in Leliana’s expression suggested it had been meant as a jab (quite the contrary, actually), but as many, maybe even most, comments about her position, it sat strangely in her chest. Perhaps that was what led her to ask her next question—one she hadn’t realized had been weighing on her until it was on the tip of her tongue.

“She should’ve been Inquisitor, Hawke. Don’t you think?”

Once more, Leliana’s eyes narrowed in that calculating, pensive manner. Moving with that same grace, she slowly lowered herself back onto the open stool, folding her arms neatly atop the table. “A curious thing to ask! Why, I wonder, would you say that?”

“It’s why Cassandra is so incensed Varric lied to her. Had she known where Hawke was, she could’ve sent her to the Conclave. If anyone could’ve rescued the Divine…it would’ve been Hawke.” The rest of it she left unsaid: Because I certainly couldn’t.

“Cassandra is never wanting for reasons to be irritated with others, Inquisitor,” she answered without missing a beat, not without an echo of her earlier smile—the sort that suggested a private joke.

“She has more influence than I do. Connections and allies in unexpected places.”

“Most of which would be viewed as quite unsavory by the average person, I should imagine. Questionable, at the very least.”

“People know her.”

“They’ve come to know you, I should think.”

“She’s faced Corypheus before.”

“And after Haven, so have you.” Across from her, Leliana’s gaze became a palpable thing—weighted and assessing, none too different from that of her birds’. For the barest instant, her chin tipped to one side as if in interest. Then, only furthering the sense she could read her mind, she too straightened in her seat, mirroring the Inquisitor’s posture. “It is my belief that, had Hawke been attended the Conclave, there would have likely been more survivors. There would have been signs only she could’ve recognized, telltale hints that it was Corypheus at work, and the moment she realized that, yes, I believe she would’ve done everything in her power to save who she could.

“Where you are mistaken, where I must disagree with you, is that she would’ve saved the Divine. I do not claim to know Hawke well, but I do know her. Much as Cassandra likes to think otherwise, Hawke would not have saved Most Holy. You mustn’t let that thought weigh on you.”

It was all she could do to blink.

Leliana nodded in response, slowly at first, gaining certainty with each dip of her chin. “And, had she been the one to step out of the Fade only to be met by Cassandra and myself, her first course of action would not have been to answer our questions, or offer her assistance. Let us not neglect either that, had Chancellor Roderick or any other Chantry faithful spoken to her the way they’ve spoken to you, at any juncture, we likely would’ve been swallowed by the Breach already, for the holy wars we’d be fighting.

“It’s a roundabout way of answering your question, I suppose. No. No, I do not think Hawke should have, or even could have, been the Inquisitor. More than that, I find it hard to believe that Andraste Herself would entrust us with anyone other than the only person capable of carrying such a mantle.”

That it had been meant as a compliment, as high praise, did little to ease that lingering heaviness in her gut. There was still something she was missing, some figurative bird that hadn’t come home to roost just yet.

“You don’t trust her, then?”

“To aid us in besting Corypheus and his Venatori? Of that, I am sure her cooperation will prove invaluable. Beyond that, however, no. My time in Kirkwall was short, Inquisitor, but it was informative. I made a foolish assumption, as it pertained to Hawke, once: Since Prince Vael believed her to be trustworthy, so too could I.” Her mouth hardened into a line, but there was none of the vitriol she’d seen in Cullen’s expression, none of the betrayal she’d seen in Cassandra’s. There was resignation, she thought, and perhaps the barest suggestion of regret. That was all. “I assure you it’s not a mistake I intend to make twice. Neither, I imagine, will Sebastian.”

“Varric certainly seems to trust her.”  

Her smile returned as she once more stood from the table, surprising her by greeting a scout whose approach she hadn’t noticed in the slightest. “Contrary to popular belief, Varric and I are very different people. His decision to bring Hawke out of hiding has done little but emphasize that fact.”

The Inquisitor stood without needing to be excused, offering the scout a polite nod as she passed them by. It was only as she reached the mouth of the stairs that she heard the rest of Leliana’s statement, the part that had been left unspoken.

“Leliana?” she asked, pausing with one hand resting against the wall, turning to glance over her shoulder. “Should the stars align just so, I’d like it to be known that I’d greatly appreciate a bit more than a few days’ warning, should the Hero of Ferelden decide to drop in on us.”

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that!” Leliana replied, her voice curling around the edges with a coyness made almost saccharine by its insistence. “As I’ve told Cassandra time and time again, I simply haven’t the slightest idea where they are. And, as I just told you, Inquisitor—” There she raised her eyes from the scout, meeting her gaze evenly. “—Varric and I are very different people. It takes a pill slightly more bitter than loneliness to choke me, I think you’ll find.”

“It would be nice to have enough time to set the good linens out and come up with a seating chart for meals, that’s all I’m saying.”

Leliana’s smile curled into a smirk for all of a moment. It made her wonder what sort of stories she might write, should the whim ever take her. “Ah. Well then. Duly noted.”

Chapter Text

The sun had set far below the horizon by the time she finally made it up the endless set of stairs leading to her quarters. That wasn’t to say it was dark—the night sky reflected off the snowy mountains and shone through her windows to throw a silvery cast about the room, not quite illuminating everything, but affording her just enough light to realize something was wrong.

Hmm, all right, maybe not wrong, but amiss. Something was amiss.

It was like the furniture had subtly moved since she’d left that morning, hurrying out the door while straightening her clothes and calming her breath in anticipation of meeting the Champion. Had one of Leliana’s scouts stopped by to drop off some important documents? Had Josephine sent someone to freshen her bedclothes? Perhaps Vivienne had come by to conduct (another) assault on her admittedly lacking wardrobe. Would she find another half-eaten meat pie wedged under her pillow, courtesy of Sera? A long-lost book returned to her by Cole? At first blush, it didn’t seem to be any of those things, but…

“Well well! The prodigal daughter of Andraste returns! I can see by the slump of those regal shoulders that you’ve tired yourself out! Been keeping busy today?”

That, of course, was when she noticed the chill.

Had it been an assassin waiting for her there on the balcony, she would’ve been dead ten times over, she was sure; she hadn’t noticed the drapes drifting in the breeze, nor the snowflakes fluttering through the air among the dust motes, so it wasn’t a stretch to assume she would’ve missed some crouching mercenary, blade held tight in their teeth. Luckily for her (and the rest of the Inquisition, she supposed) the only silhouette standing out against the dull white night was Hawke’s.

“I do so hope you don’t mind,” she continued, and though the Inquisitor could only see the back of her head as she leaned against the guardrail to overlook the mountains, she had a discomfiting inkling Hawke had been thinking much the same as she had—it had been all too easy for her to catch her unawares. “I got it in my head that I didn’t properly thank you this morning, so I thought I’d just…oh you know, stop by and extend a more earnest show of gratitude.”

As she watched, Hawke lifted something that had, until that moment, been hanging at her side. She gave it a little shake as though to tempt her with it, and the wintry starlight hit it in such a way that it gleamed amber as honey.

An interesting turn of events, to say the very least.

That morning she’d doubted Hawke’s motivations, suspected there was something troubling lurking behind her sudden arrival. After everything she’d heard, though, all the conflicting stories and rumors and wide-eyed retellings, she realized…that doubt had fled her.

When had that happened? Whose tale had been the first to call it all into question?

Maybe, in the end, it didn’t actually matter.

“I really wouldn’t drink that, were I you,” she said, crossing her arms tightly against the cold as she joined Hawke out on the balcony.

“No?”

She shook her head before following Hawke’s line of sight, looking not at Skyhold but the world surrounding it, the thick groves of trees among the snow, the outcroppings of rocky formations giving way to sheer cliffs. It must’ve been a startling change from the view she’d had in Kirkwall. “If you’d seen where we found that…”

With a mischievous little hum, Hawke lifted the bottle to her mouth all the same, taking two long, gulping drinks. The Inquisitor grimaced—she knew where they’d found it after all, not to mention how many corpses it had been surrounded by—but Hawke didn’t so much as flinch. Instead, she held it out to her again, giving another of those teasing flourishes. When she put her hand up, a polite refusal, Hawke shrugged and brought it to her lips once more. ‘Suit yourself,’ that shrug said, ‘More for me.’

Looking directly over the guardrail made her dizzier than she cared to admit, so the Inquisitor hung back, not quite hugging the exterior wall but certainly not leaning into the empty air as Hawke was. Between them, the wind whistled, bringing with it the barest snatches of sound from below: peaks and valleys of conversation, the clanging of arms being forged, the harsh squawking of birds being sent out or dutifully returning. Yet Hawke was quiet.

“You really don’t need to be thanking me,” she said once it was clear Hawke would’ve been content enough to finish the bottle in silence. “Considering you’ve faced Corypheus before, having you here is nothing short of a—”

“Mmm, oh, oh no.” She shook her head and lowered the bottle from her lips, breathing a soft laugh through her nose.

Hawke did a lot of that, the Inquisitor couldn’t help but notice. Laugh. Seeing her with the advisors that morning, she’d taken all that laughter as playful jeering, contempt, maybe even out and out mockery, but now? Now it was plain as the mountains before them that it had all been in her head. Beneath the bright, crisp notes of that laugh was something else entirely. Something the Inquisitor couldn’t believe she’d missed before.

“Not very civil of me, I know, but I wasn’t thanking you for welcoming me into the fold here. No offense to you, of course, Your Royal Holiness, you understand, but there are roughly nine million places I’d rather be than here, close enough to Orlais that I could spit on Celene should I choose to.” A corner of her mouth turned up. “Keeping Seeker Pentaghast from throttling Varric, though…that I would like to thank you for. I’m sure I wouldn’t know to do with myself if, after everything we’d been through, the dragons and the undead and the giant spiders and the demons and the assassins and the betrayals and the backstabbings, it was a spurned fan of his romance novels throwing him down a flight of stairs that killed him. So thank you. Thank you for saving me the trouble of working all of that into a eulogy. It’s very much appreciated.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” Going right up to the rail remained a bit too daunting for the time being, but she took a few calculated steps forward to bring herself closer to Hawke. “Still plenty of time.”

“A good point. And if I know Varric—which I do—he won’t exactly be going out of his way to avoid throttling distance.” She smiled against the bottle’s rim, chuckling warmly before taking another drink. “Ah. Well. You know what they say: The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

As slowly and as subtly as the snow drifting on the wind, a blanket of silence fell over them. It was at once both heavy and pleasant; something she most certainly hadn’t anticipated. There were things she knew she wanted to say, to ask, and yet after everything, there was no fighting the sense that the two of them could’ve remained there until the sun peeked over the horizon, never saying a word, and they would’ve understood one another completely. There was comfort in that notion—comfort and, if she was being honest, a fair bit of surprise.

After speaking with Leliana, a part of her had been so certain, so convinced, that Hawke would’ve been affronted by her going around collecting stories. That same part of her had expected this meeting to be stiff. Tense. Fraught. Hawke would’ve been well within her right to take offense upon hearing about all the prying she’d done, asking everyone in Thedas about her…except, of course, for her.

But this didn’t feel like that. It didn’t feel like that in the slightest.

There was a quiet glug as Hawke took another impressive drink from the bottle, punctuated by a long, theatrical sigh once she’d swallowed. “You know, you’re a very difficult lady to get ahold of. Has anyone ever told you that?”

No. No, no one had ever told her that, actually.

Since she’d fallen from the sky, it was usually her presence that caused others irritation, not her absence.

“…I am?”

“I realize I’m one to talk, eh? I’m sure the Seeker would have a thing or two to say about my…availability, but let’s for a moment pretend I don’t factor into this.” Content enough to chuckle at her own joke, Hawke offered her a look, eyebrows high and mouth a sickle of amusement. “I’ll have you know it’s not usually a habit of mine to break into powerful women’s bedrooms in the middle of the night—that was always more sort of Bela’s specialty, being honest—but truthfully, I had no other choice! After our less than ideal parting this morning, I’ve been trying all day to secure myself a private audience with the legendary Herald of Andraste, and wouldn’t you know it? Couldn’t shake it! Me! With my reputation! Positively unthinkable.”

Hawke…had been trying to talk to her all day? That was why she’d kept turning up in the periphery?

Oh.

Well.

Huh.

The thought hadn’t occurred to her, not even for a moment. She’d been so busy chasing after Hawke (others’ versions of her, anyway) that she hadn’t noticed the real one flagging her down. There was probably a moral in there, somewhere, a lesson. Hell if she knew what it was, though.

“I’ve been right here all day,” she said, skirting around the obvious.

In one smooth, practiced movement, Hawke hoisted herself up onto the guardrail, sitting such that they were facing one another. She seemed utterly unaffected by the height, smiling and gesturing with the bottle in her hand as though they were speaking at a table instead of out in the open air. “True! Getting eyes on you was hardly a challenge, lady Heraldquisitor. However…it’s the damnedest thing, every time I looked your way, you were happily chatting away with someone else, and oh, I couldn’t fathom interrupting you. I’m already an imposition enough, what with my unexpected arrival…my contentious history stirring your allies into a frenzy…to say nothing of the wicked acid indigestion my very presence has given your Commander…”

The snort of laughter that escaped her then surprised no one more than herself. The Inquisitor quickly cleared her throat as if to cover it, then slowly—tentatively—joined Hawke at the rail. “You’re not an imposition.”

“Ah, but the rest of it…?”

“You’re not an imposition. We’re glad to have you. Your expertise is—”

Hawke waved the rest of it off, quieting her before she could fall back into the stilted ramble of gratitude she’d delivered earlier in the day. “Yes, yes,” she teased, “I’m sure my failing to kill Corypheus will prove invaluable to your own efforts. No doubt you’re feeling very, very lucky to have me under your roof.” She paused, tilting her head back to look up into the open sky. Maddeningly, horrifyingly, she let her legs swing slowly beneath her, pendulums shifting her weight this way and that as she balanced on the thin metal bar. After a beat, she added, slyly, “Metaphorically, of course.”

“We are. Lucky, that is.”

“Hmm, no second thoughts? Wavering confidence? No concerns about my…storied past?” It was obvious what she was getting at, if not in her tone, by the shape of her smirk. Still, the Inquisitor didn’t sense any anger in her. She wasn’t being cruel as she let her know (in so many words) that her reconnaissance hadn’t gone unnoticed; if anything, she seemed entertained, amused.

It struck her then that Hawke was probably used to this sort of treatment. No, she wasn’t just used to it, she probably expected it. Thanks to Varric, she doubted there was a corner of Thedas that hadn’t heard some whisper of her story, so it only made sense that, wherever she went, people reacted with the same shock, awe, and disbelief that she’d seen today. Hers was a household name! Her reputation preceded her! She…

For reasons utterly unrelated to the vertiginous view below her, the Inquisitor felt that boulder in her stomach lurch.

Wait a minute.

“Ah, but here I go again, talking on and on about myself when I finally manage to worm my way into your schedule. Typical, wouldn’t you say? What else would one expect from the notorious Champion of Kirkwall?” Hawke turned away from the vista, bracing herself with her empty hand as she straightened to her full unimposing height. “The primary reason I was hoping to track you down today, Your Worship, is that as I was touring your grounds with the charming Lady Montilyet and the slightly less charming and, if we’re honest, willing Seeker Pentaghast, it occurred to me that we were never properly introduced this morning, you and I.”

She blinked, taking a deliberate step away from the balcony’s edge in hopes it would quell the roiling in her stomach. It didn’t. “But we were, weren’t we? Varric said—”

“Varric said, and I quote…” Pausing just long enough to clear her throat and assume what she could only imagine was meant to be a purposely horrendous imitation of him, Hawke grumbled, “‘Inquisitor! Meet Hawke, the Champion of Kirkwall. Hawke, the Inquisitor.’ Then we both said hello, you pointed out I’m not nearly as tall as you would’ve believed, I laughed—ha! And the rest is history. It was an introduction of a sort, to be sure, just not a proper one. Not by my measure, anyhow.”

Though she still didn’t quite understand, she assumed a polite smile in hopes of hiding the dread burbling away inside of her. “All right. What is a proper introduction, then? By your measure?”

Hopping off the rail and back to her feet, Hawke stuck her empty hand out, giving her chin that same little nod she’d come to expect from her—the curtsy that wasn’t quite a curtsy. “Good evening,” she said, feigning an almost Orlesian level of propriety even as she gave the fingers of her offered hand a wiggle. “My name is Marian, how do you do? Thank you so much for affording me succor here at your beautiful, if somewhat ramshackle, elven war citadel, I truly cannot tell you how much it means.” There was another long beat of silence as they continued to simply stare at one another…then, her smirk softening into something else entirely, Hawke prompted her with a gentle, “Inquisitor.”

When finally it clicked, she couldn’t help but laugh aloud at herself. So that’s what she meant!

“Oh!” she said, surprised, “I understand now, I’m—”

But then it really clicked.

And it clicked hard.

Her mouth hung open in what she was sure must’ve been a most dignified display as she stared into the middle-space, the day’s events suddenly crashing down on her with new meaning. Where before her focus had been on the stories she’d heard, the rumors and warnings and gossip and hearsay, now she could think only of herself, of how everyone she’d spoken with that day had spoken of her.

Your Worship.  

Inquisitor.

Herald.

“Oh,” she repeated, her hand hovering halfway between herself and Hawke. “Oh,” she said again as it dropped to her side. “Oh.” Suddenly everything below her eyes felt very, very numb, and she doubted the cold had much to do with it. The boulder fell out of her stomach and into her feet. The feeling of unease it had brought with it, the sense she’d been missing something, overlooking something, finally slotted home. “Oh no.”

Hawke—Marian—didn’t say anything in return. She watched her, though, her smile still soft in the middle like a baked good gone soggy, any trace of mockery (playful or otherwise) lost to the wind. She let her hand fall too, dropping the last vestige of her act as she leaned once more against the railing, her elbows holding her weight steady as she watched her come to terms with the reality she, herself, had been living with for years and years.

Sick as she felt, the Inquisitor found she couldn’t bring herself to look away from her. “It’s going to happen to me after all of this, isn’t it? Everything that happened to you, it’s…”

It was out of her mouth before she could think about it, blurted out in the same way that morning’s quip about Marian’s height had been. There had been no stopping it—now that she understood, now that she could look it full in the face and see it for what it was, there was no staunching it. This was what had worried her since she’d stepped onto the ramparts, this was why she’d spent her day obsessively collecting stories, this was why her insides had tied themselves into knots over and over again with each conversation she’d walked away from. It had been there since Varric had looked her square in the eye and lamented how the Champion of Kirkwall had erased Marian from her own story, how the people she’d served and saved had rubbed her name for luck until it had faded altogether, how the statue they’d carved in her honor had been featureless, expressionless, faceless.

It was going to happen to her. All of it. It was going to happen to her just like it had happened to Hawke.

A soft whoosh as Marian pulled a breath in through her nose. “What? You think they’re going to tell stories about you? The woman who fell out of the sky? Pushed from the very heavens herself by Andraste’s flaming hand? The sole sealer of rifts who stared into the eyes of a darkspawn older than time immemorial before limping through the snow and past death’s door to unite the people of Thedas to the Maker’s grand cause?” She paused long enough to take a drink. “I don’t know how to tell you this, but they’re already doing that.”

It took a moment to sink in. When it did, she threw her fears to the wind, once more joining her at the railing and plucking the bottle from her hands to take a long drink. Whatever was in that blasted bottle tasted like vinegar and felt like stripweed going down, but it bloomed in her stomach to melt away at least a few of the knots and gnarls that had gathered there.

She was so busy coughing up the lining of her throat that she felt more than she saw Hawke turn, resting her cheek on one of her hands as she leaned nearly perpendicular to the railing, those bright eyes of hers still carefully watching her. “Sorry to say, you’re not the only one who spent her day flitting about, listening to the latest gossip. Oh yes, don’t look so surprised, you weren’t exactly subtle, you know—I’m rather well versed in the fine art of poking and prying. I know the sorts of faces one makes when trying to sneakily listen to tavern rumors. I’ve heard…let’s see…oh! Well, there was the farmer and flock that you saved by wrestling a pack of wolves into submission…”

“I…I led a druffalo back to its pen in the Hinterlands.”

“You laid a wicked trap to catch a magister, gathering your forces in the dark, planning and plotting with the Grand Enchanter, utilizing a dangerous new flavor of magic to travel back in time to his boyhood so you could end his reign of terror while he was still in nappies.”

For a moment, it was all she could do to jaw at the air. “Alexius’s son slid me a note telling me what to do. If Dorian hadn’t been with me…and wait, Fiona wasn’t….”

Marian pressed on, ticking them off one by one on her fingers. “You make it a habit to scale the sheerest cliffs backwards with your eyes closed and nothing but the Maker’s will to guide you…you wrangled an entire den of wyverns to stock your stables to strike fear into the hearts of the Venatori…you have a deeply, deeply worrying fixation with Crystal Grace blossoms…and my personal favorite, when you escaped Haven, unbroken and unshaken, the whole of the Inquisition’s forces fell to their knees and sang your praises. Quite literally.”

Her throat, warm though it was, constricted until she was breathing through a pinhole. She took another long drink, grimacing as it tore its way through her. “Please. Please don’t mention the singing.”

“Oooh! What a charmed life you lead! No one’s sung about me. Not to my knowledge, anyhow.” She reached over, taking the bottle when it was handed to her, then, after a moment of considering the stars, drank. “Shudder to think what sort of song it’d be. Shudder to think about who’d be doing the singing! Shudders. Shudders all around.”

In her periphery, she saw Hawke offering her the bottle again, but she couldn’t find it within herself to take it, want it as she might. No, her energy was singularly focused inward just then, her hands gripping the guardrail white-knuckle tight as she absorbed what she’d been told. There was a faint ringing in her ears. A numbness in her lips.

Suddenly, the stars above them seemed very, very bright; the night air whipping around them was very, very cold.

“Try not to look so down about it! Trust me, this sort of talk? It’s nothing. Nothing at all! See, they actually know you at this juncture, they see you walking around, hear you making your grandiose speeches, sometimes they even eat at the same table as you. You’re one of them! More or less, I suppose, since I can’t imagine you’ve bumped into anyone else with such a shiny hand just of late, but you smile at them. You talk to them. They’ve seen you bleed.” The cheer in her voice was almost saccharine enough to curdle. “The trouble comes when they forget that. Which they will. Inevitably. Then you become something else entirely. Then, my glowy, Fade-touched friend, you become a hero. A legend. A—”

“A faceless statue on the docks.”

Varric’s story had soured her guts when she’d first heard it, but now? Now it felt unbearable; it was a mantle of wet wool wrapped around her shoulders choking off her breath as it pulled her inexorably down, down, down. How long until her name disappeared altogether, polished to a slick, featureless shine by hundreds of thousands of well-meaning hands? Had the process already begun?

“Even then, I suppose it’s not so bad.” Hawke had pointedly chosen to ignore her sudden fit of solemnity, it seemed, and kept soldiering on as though speaking to herself. “It can actually be quite funny to listen to, if you can believe that.” She drummed her fingers against her own cheek before looking out towards the mountains again, removing the weight of her gaze from the Inquisitor’s profile. “Want to know how it’ll go? I can tell you right now. Forewarned is forearmed and all that. Here, you mark my words, and you tell me in, eh…let’s say two years—”

Her knees threatened to give out from under her. “Only two?”

“Time is a cruel mistress, but I do see your point! That was rather grim on my part, wasn’t it? All right all right…five years, then. Assuming Corypheus isn’t using our skulls as the fancy bowls brought out when entertaining honored guests by then, you tell me in five years that I wasn’t absolutely spot-on in my assessment, how’s that?”

She dropped her arm and cracked the knuckles of both hands as though preparing for some sort of stunt. A signet ring, one the Inquisitor hadn’t noticed that morning, caught the moonlight and glinted. “You will be…a dwarf with a dark past in the Carta. Only no, actually, you’ll have been a Tal-Vashoth mercenary who’d shrugged off the chains of the Qun. Ah, but in reality, of course, you were a Dalish elf in line to be the next Keeper of your clan, possessing untold knowledge of ‘The Old Magics,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean…” Heaving a dramatic sigh, she leaned over to nudge the Inquisitor’s shoulder with hers. “Which you don’t need me to tell you is all bullshit—you’ll have been a human of noble birth, because, quite frankly, the heroes of these stories are always humans of noble birth!”

Despite the roiling of her gut, the Inquisitor found herself chuckling right along with her. Bitterly, true, but chuckling all the same. It was too much. All of it. It was too, too much, and she feared if she didn’t vent it somehow, she might go completely mad.

“You’ll be a mage, except no you won’t, dwarves can’t be mages, but what does that matter if you weren’t a dwarf to begin with? No, you fought with all the honor and strength of any Templar worth their vows—sword in one hand, shield in the other, the only thing more fearsome than your battle cry being the power behind your blows! Or, hang on, was it the power behind your bows? Ah yes! That’s right, terribly sorry, you were actually an archer, as it turns out.”

She took another long drink of whatever horrible concoction the bottle held, shaking her head. Much as she knew nothing about the situation was funny, she found she couldn’t stop laughing no matter how hard she tried. It was as though there had been a bubble of hysterics sitting low in her intestines, just waiting to be dislodged, and now she was helpless to stifle what had come out when it popped.

Maybe that was why Marian laughed so often.

The thought only made her laugh harder.

“Regardless, you will, of course, be the most Andrastian Andrastian who was ever an Andrastian, so I do hope you’re read up on the Chant of Light—people will be expecting you to have a relevant passage to quote at them for all of their troubles…”

The snort that escaped her then sounded awfully close to a nug being slaughtered for supper. “Wait, wait…” And oh, she could feel the warm, dastardly fingers of the alcohol creeping through her then, loosening the places that had been taut with dread only moments before. Hawke’s charm, too, she thought was playing its own part. “Why would…that doesn’t even make sense! The others, sure, maybe I could see, but why would a Dalish elf—”

“Believe in the Maker in all of His heavenly glory instead of the Creators?” Hawke’s shoulders rose and fell in a sardonic shrug. “Who’s to say! The world is full of questions like those! Have you seen those statues of Andraste, though? Woman had tits to die for, it’s no wonder people of all walks would choose to prostrate themselves before her and her all-knowing husband.”

Her laugh that time was more of a bray.

“But believe you me, regardless of what you do or say, I can guarantee you that the world will be remembering you as a pious, righteous, tithing thing, so if you’re looking for advice? Now might be the time to invest in some ethereal, flowing garments. Stand in a windy place? Let the chiffon really billow? Oh, the people will work themselves into a frenzy!”

When Hawke reached for the bottle, she let her take it. The worst of her manic laughter had begun to taper by then, taking with it, she found, a significant chunk of her terror.

So much of the day had been driven by uncertainty, by a cloying sense of low-grade panic. Who was Hawke? Why was she there? What had Varric told her? Was she a threat to the Inquisition’s people? Now there was only the buzz of unexpected camaraderie and perhaps the strange, reverberating shock that came with meeting one’s idols and finding them made of flesh and bone instead of marble and gold filigree. That, and the burn of the alcohol in her throat, throbbing in time with the itch buried deep in her left palm.

“Some of what you said just now was right, though.” She held Marian’s gaze that time, something about that bout of laughter having bolstered her. “Some of it was true. About who I am, I mean.”

“Well of course it was,” Hawke scoffed, affecting a jokingly stuffy tone. “Some of it is always true—that’s the thing. There will always be people who saw you once, or who know someone that did, and so pieces of the truth will rise to the top on occasion, like bloated corpses in a lake. Maybe they get the general gist of who you were wrong, but they know…the color of your hair, say, or your favorite food, or…well, in my case, they tend to remember the most thoroughly unpleasant things that have happened to me. They love asking about those, you understand, always want the grimy details.” Another shrug. “But then they turn around and get everything else wrong: your height, your friends, your enemies, who you let in your bed…” At that, she turned, a smirk twisting her lips before she took another sip.

“Not to be insensitive, but while on the subject…” the Inquisitor started, only for Hawke to hold her hand up, cutting her off abruptly.

“Oh I’ll be happy enough to give you whatever sordid details you want, but before that, you really do need to help me settle something. All day, and I do mean all day, Varric and I have been so wildly at odds with one another. We started this…well, let’s call it a ‘friendly wager,’ shall we, about who among your companions most tickles your fancy. Now, Varric is of the opinion that it’s your dour Warden friend—something about selfless, heroic women being drawn to chest hair, it’s an old in-joke, I won’t drag you into the weeds of it—but now that I’ve seen how you comport yourself, I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t prim and proper Lady Montilyet who’s caught your eye. Rogues are the best lovers, you know,” she said with a pointed wink. “It’s all that sinuous strength, I think. Not to mention the silver tongue that comes along with the territory. You know what they say…deft hands, fine tools…”

In that instant she was very glad she was no longer holding the bottle; she could only too easily imagine herself taking a drink, hearing that, and then spluttering as she promptly choked to death. As it was, she had to hold her own head, palms covering her eyes, lest the heat of her embarrassment literally fog the air on the balcony. “Why…why on…why would that even be a discussion you’d have?”

Hawke didn’t answer right away. Instead she narrowed her eyes, tilting her head this way and that to get a better look at her burning face. “Ah, we were both wrong, I see. That’s fine, that’s fine! Just please tell me it’s not the Seeker. Or Cullen. That would be absolutely unthinkable.” A pause. “And Maker, not the bald one. Talk about insufferable. Never stops talking about the Fade, does he? Just blah blah Fade this and blah blah Fade that…”

“You said,” she interjected, speaking very, very quickly in hopes of throwing her off the topic once and for all, “That it’s always the case that some truth gets mixed in.” She swallowed hard again, then dropped her hands, forcing herself to meet Hawke’s eye. “Am I to take it, then, that means you do know where they are?”

Hawke tilted her head coquettishly to one side, a swoop of her bangs falling to cast a faint shadow over one eye. “Now who might ‘they’ be, I wonder? I—oh! Oh, you mean the rest of the merry band of misfits, no doubt? Ah. Yes, well, of course I know where they are! What sort of friend would I be if I didn’t?” With that selfsame smirk she flipped her hair back out of her face, once more ticking points off on her fingers. The ring, signet and all, was impossible to miss that time.

“Well…Aveline is safe and sound back in Kirkwall, you’ll be relieved to hear. Oh, the Guard would simply be ruined without her! They wouldn’t be able to tie their own bootlaces or anything, saying nothing of her dear, dear husband and his dear, dear muttonchops. Sweet, precious Merrill is there, too, doubtlessly brightening the days of all who pass her by with her cheery humming and her smiles, proving once and for all that she is every inch the monster her clan always made her out to be. Whether or not she’s still trucking with strange spirits in dank, musty caves is neither here nor there. Then there’s loveable old uncle Gamlen—”

Hawke stopped rambling when the Inquisitor cleared her throat. She did not, however, lose her sly grin. “Oh,” she chuckled, a hint of that saccharine sweetness from earlier dripping into her voice. “Not interested in my loving uncle? Shame. No one ever is. Who else could you be interested in, then? Hmm…I wonder.”

The idea of asking her what she was about to would’ve dried her tongue to a sponge that morning. Standing there in the cold, nothing but the scavenged bottle to warm them, she found it almost a relief to finally get the name out. “Anders?”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Somewhere where I know he’s safe,” Hawke nodded, her eyes never leaving hers.

So Cassandra had been right all along.

“Isabela?”

Still she held her eyes, but her expression flickered just so, the confidence she’d had when talking about Anders wavering in the slight raising of her lower eyelids, the tightening of one corner of her mouth. “Somewhere where I’m less sure she’s safe.”

And Josephine, perhaps.

“Fenris?”

At that Hawke actually snorted, her shoulders jostling in a laugh that sounded to be made of equal parts fondness and exasperation. “Somewhere,” she began, lowering her voice into a much more conspiratorial tone, “Where I’m quite sure they aren’t safe from him.”

The story she’d known, then.

There they’d been from the start: Kernels of truth hidden in the thick foliage of embellishment, of legend. Hawke had known all along where they were, the most controversial of her companions, and if she knew, that meant Cassandra had been right about a second point, too.

There was someone else who must’ve known.

“I do, if you don’t mind, have one more question.”

“Only the one?” The soft sound of soles scuffing stone could be heard as Marian kicked one of her legs out and pulled it back, swinging it in much the same way a child might while waiting on their friends to come calling. She assumed a beleaguered expression, eyebrows drawn tightly together and head shaking faintly. “I know what it is,” she sighed, her chest heaving with a dramatic sigh. “You want to know whether or not I saw the Arishok naked during his tempestuous stay in our fair city-state. Well, suffice it to say, the answer to that question may just surprise you.”

“I…no, I…what? No, no, I…I’m not saying you’re wrong, I do think the answer would surprise me, whatever it may be—” She tried her best not to laugh when Hawke made a mischievous little sound beside her, “—but that’s…that’s not it.”

She pressed a hand flat to her chest in a pantomime of shock. “No? Oh, well, pardon me! Sorry, you would not believe how often that one gets brought up.”

In all honestly, she didn’t want to know how often that one got brought up.

Or why, for that matter.

“You and Varric,” the Inquisitor began, and then stopped, suddenly unsure how to best phrase her question. “How long have you…?”

“How long have we been causing mischief in the name of our own amusement?” She blew a raspberry of a breath upwards to ruffle her bangs, her gaze going distant and thoughtful for a moment. “Shit. I didn’t think there’d be math involved. Um…I arrived in Kirkwall in…9:30? 9:31? Maker, this is making me feel old. We met shortly after that, so…really, I suppose I’ve been casting a pall on his life for well over a decade! Ugh, I’ve never said that out loud before. ‘Well over a decade?!’ I feel absolutely ancient now, thank you for th—”

“That’s not what I meant.” There was going to be such egg on her face if it turned out she was wrong about her suspicion, but there was no going back now.

Josephine had slipped the idea into her mind (albeit unintentionally), but there had been a million clues along the way, now that she could look back on it. The look that had come over him as he’d talked about that damned statue, for one. The time, effort, and energy he’d put into the many, many Tales of the Champion, for another. The way he’d fought for so hard and so long to keep her hidden and safe, only to bring her back out of hiding immediately after the near-miss at Haven.

The way the two of them had been smiling every single time she’d caught sight of them today.

The way they just kept laughing at each other’s jokes, carrying on as though the world wasn’t ending around them.

That signet ring on her finger.

“I meant how long have you been together? Romantically. You are, aren’t you?”

There was a moment of stillness…and then Hawke’s grin returned, twice as wide and twice as warm as before, accompanied by a laugh dazzling enough to be its own sort of weapon. When she looked to her that time, there was no sign of her earlier teasing, the smooth-talking façade she’d built around herself. The sense of them being old friends, of knowing one another, understanding one another, came back with a vengeance.

“That’s it? You’ve had this look on your face for the past ten minutes, and I was so sure you were steeling yourself up to ask me something awful, but…” Shaking her head, Marian beamed, the corners of her eyes and the bridge of her nose crinkling. “Promise me something? Not a word of that in front of Seeker Pentaghast. I’m waiting for precisely the right moment to drop that bit of information on her. I want to watch her face as she attempts to process every emotion known to mankind at once.” Then, as though in example, she contorted her own face into an impressive range of facial expressions—none of which, it stood to be said, were especially flattering.

“You have my word,” she laughed. “Just…I’d rather not be within spitting distance when that moment comes, so a little warning would be appreciated.”

“That,” Hawke snickered, “I cannot promise, alas. Comedic timing waits for no one. But I digress. Hmmm…how long, how long…an interesting question, that.” She brightened further then, if such a thing were possible. “Have you read The Tale of the Champion? I suppose you must’ve—you seemed a little too expectant when I first came down those stairs this morning. A little too disappointed that I didn’t loom over you like some sort of vengeful wraith with blood in my teeth and a skull on my belt.”

“You know,” she said, starting to laugh again, “I have. I have read it.”

“Which one?”

“Believe it or not, uh…all of them, I think. In one way or another.”

Hawke’s eyes narrowed for a second, her gaze going cloudy with recollection. “Page six,” she said slowly. She paused, chewing it over for a while, and then nodded. “That’s when it started. Page six.”

“…in which version?”

Her grin widened. “Well. Believe it or not, all of them, I think.” Her nose crinkled in an expression so full of fondness that it was nearly indescribable. “In one way or another.”

She couldn’t help but return the grin. She opened her mouth to say something else, to joke about how she’d never been great at reading between the lines, or how awkward it must’ve been, Varric writing all those romantic scenes between her and their friends, how they all must’ve laughed over that…but what actually came out of her, the words her numb, tipsy tongue pushed out past her lips, was something else altogether.

“How do you do it?”

“Hmm?”

“How do you…how do you stand it? Being the Champion? How…how am I going to do this?”

She took a deep breath, Hawke, and let it out slowly. “Well. I do it the same way I do everything, I guess. Poorly. Loudly. Drunkenly, more often than not. Messily. Either much too slowly or much too quickly, depending on the day. As to how you’re going to do this, I’d imagine the answer will be about the same. You’ll do it how you do everything else.”

Her teeth worried at her lip, running back and forth until the cold turned it raw.

“But,” Hawke began again, “I guess since you’ve kept Varric safe in my stead for all this time, I could perhaps find it within myself to throw open the doors to the vault of my heart and give you some of the good advice. I don’t stand it. Being the Champion. Oooh, I hate it. Hate it. The looks, the expectations, it’s exhausting. So what I did is I surrounded myself with a bunch of ragtag misfits. Ones who know precisely how unimposing I really am. Ones who have no issue calling out my cheating at cards, or my terrible fashion sense. Ones who recognize me even when I’m skulking about in a stupid disguise. Ones who know my name and won’t let me forget it no matter how hard the world at large tries. Ones who wouldn’t call me ‘Champion’ except to take the piss. I found my people.” Her eyes met hers, the gaze pointed. “And I’ve kept them safe.”

“I’m Sylvie,” she said much too quickly, unsure whether the faint stinging in her sinuses was from the cold, the alcohol, or an emotion she hadn’t stopped to figure out yet. She held her hand out as Hawke had before, breathing deeply of the frigid night air. “My name’s Sylvie. I guess I haven’t forgotten it yet.”

Hawke’s smile softened further. “Hello, Sylvie!” she said, taking her hand in hers with a grasp as firm as it was welcoming. “It’s such a pleasure to finally meet you. I have the strangest feeling we’re going to be friends, you and I.”

“Hello, Marian. I think I’d like that.”

“Good! Because from what I’ve heard, officially, we’ve both had a Chantry destroyed in a fiery explosion under our watch, so. We’re certainly an even match, if nothing else. Maybe we should start a competition, see who gets to number two the quickest.”

“Careful how loud you say things like that,” she warned, not without a tired little laugh of her own. “People will talk.”

Dropping her hand to press the (now nearly empty) bottle into it instead, Marian sighed theatrically and hopped up to sit on the guardrail once more. “Don’t I know it. Don’t I just. Now finish that, would you? Tomorrow, I suspect, the Inquisitor and the Champion will be expected to figure out what to do about a certain scraggly darkspawn and his adoring fans. Before tomorrow comes, then, I think I’d rather quite like to talk to Sylvie some more. Maybe you can tell me about that druffalo we touched on before!”

She drummed her fingers against the bottle, deciding. Then, smiling, she knocked back the last bit of the awful stuff, shuddering as it went down. “It’s not a very interesting story, I’ll tell you that up-front…”

“It’s yours, though.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is.” With that, she nodded towards her quarters, wordlessly asking Hawke to join her where it was warmer, and where the view was a little less sprawling. “Her name was Druffy,” Sylvie began. “And it took us a whole afternoon to get her to cross that awful ravine.”