Chapter Text
Hawke desperately needed a hot meal, a bath, and a proper mattress, in that order.
The past few months had been thoroughly miserable, even by the standards the fugitive had established over the last several years. He’d honestly lost track of how long it had been since they last managed to make a real stop in any of the towns they’d passed. Even with the occasional trader they’d found on the road, their supplies were running dangerously low, and with the roads suddenly positively crawling with templars, they’d hardly even managed to keep a camp for more than a night. He couldn’t begin to count how many check-in letters he had to have missed by now - Varric must have been climbing the walls waiting for news. And to top it off, his chest was bothering him again, the old wound the Arishok had given him flaring back to life with the cold damp of their surroundings.
Anders wasn’t doing any better. His lover looked half dead on his feet - more so than usual, at any rate - as they stumbled along the overgrown forest path, brambles snagging tears in their already badly abused cloaks. Between the templars, his increasingly frequent Warden nightmares, and the ever-present Justice, the man had barely slept in weeks. Hawke almost wanted to just stop in the nearest clearing, get at least a few hours’ rest, but his pack was feeling worryingly light, and they were so close to their goal.
A little tavern in the middle of nowhere, according to the map he’d found on the last bandit group that had tried to rob them. A small travelers’ respite, certainly off the radar of any templars, or anyone but a few scattered wayfarers. Perfect for their purposes.
If they could just find the damned thing. “We must be nearly there by now,” Hawke said aloud, for the fourth time in as many hours. Anders just grunted in response, leaning heavily against his staff. “Maybe it's time to join up with the main road,” he continued. “We can get our bearings, and there shouldn’t be too many travelers around this time of night...”
His partner shook his head, opening his mouth to reject the offer before stopping, seeming to think it over. Hawke shot him a pleading glance. “... we can take a look, I suppose,” Anders capitulated, and Hawke sighed with relief.
Their stomachs were growling by the time they rejoined the weedy gravel path that passed for the main road. Hawke resisted the urge to break into their meager rations - there was no telling how well they would be able to restock once they reached the inn, and beyond that, it would have been difficult to content himself with jerky and hardtack with the promise of a proper meal on the horizon.
“Do you hear voices?” Anders’ question startled him out of his thoughts, and Hawke raised a hand to his eyes, squinting against the sunset. Now that Anders had mentioned it, he could hear the murmur of conversation in the distance - and see smoke trailing through the treelines.
“Perfect! See, I told you.” The pair walked towards the noise, and Hawke was surprised by how loud the chatter was growing, how many voices were tangling together - until they crested the hill, and saw the crowd spread out before them.
For a moment, they just stared at the teeming mass of travelers. The inn was clearly filled nearly to bursting, the more ragged of their numbers forced out back onto the road. Anders and Hawke looked at each other nervously, and thoughtlessly, Hawke pulled the map back out, glancing back between it and the inn as though it would bring some measure of clarity.
“I hadn’t realized this was such a… tourist attraction,” he said slowly.
“There's too many of them. We should get out of sight,” Anders said, pulling his hood lower over his face.
“That’s going to make it hard to get a room,” Hawke replied, earning a glower from his lover. Undeterred - and more than a bit spurred on by the complaints of his stomach - he swung an arm over Anders’ shoulders, pulling him gently along. “Come on. We still have coin, we can lose ourselves in the crowd. This will work. We’re just a pair of traveling mercenaries, stopping for a rest. Mercenaries who desperately need supplies.” He was silent for a beat. “And a bath. Yes, definitely a bath.”
Anders rolled his eyes, but Hawke could see the twitch at the corner of his lips, and, encouraged, he walked them towards the low building.
True to his predictions, the crowd paid the new arrivals little mind as they pushed through the doors, navigating to the counter with some difficulty. To their dismay, there were no more rooms available, even shared with another patron, but Hawke was at least able to bargain for supplies, use of a tub upstairs, and, most importantly, two servings of hot soup.
“I don’t understand,” Hawke commented to Anders once they’d found space enough to sit with their meals. He scanned the room over his bowl, taking in the weary and bedraggled travelers crowding the building. The sight brought an odd pang of familiarity, and he was forcibly reminded of their flight from Ferelden a full ten years ago, recognizing the weary, vacant looks on the faces that surrounded him. Refugees. But from what? They hardly looked Orlesian, and at any rate, they were rather far north for refugees from the civil war. “What happened to these people?”
“You mean you don’t know?” came a voice from behind him, and Hawke turned towards the speaker, a tired-looking young man. “What, did you miss the templars crawling the roads for anyone who even looks like a mage sympathizer? The apostates fireballing everything in sight?”
Anders and Hawke shot each other nervous glances. “... we know the Circles have been rebelling, but-”
“That’s just it. There are no more Circles,” the man replied, weary. “The mages and the templars broke away from the Chantry, and they’ve been fighting ever since. It’s war now. Maker help us all.”