Chapter Text
Blood is on her breath, cold and white before her face where she crouches on the roof’s edge, a silent gargoyle with the moon at her back. It weighs her down, the leather coat soaked through and heavy on her shoulders, but the rank smell is too familiar to be unpleasant.
A growl from the street below disrupts the quiet, but Hawke’s breath is even and steady. The pistol sits a comforting weight in her hand, the ragged sawblade pressing down on her back. A heartbeat passes, the pumping of her blood counting down in her ears, as alert to the machinations of the city as to those of her own body. One. Two. Three.
She flies.
The beast does not see her coming – not until her blade is burrowed firmly in a grizzled back. The answering howl cleaves the night in half, but it’s not a dying call, Hawke realises, as she is flung from the scourge’s back. The cobblestones embrace her without mercy, knocking the breath from her lungs as she rolls, before her movement is halted by the cast-iron fence standing between her and the deadly drop to the street far below.
“Mother of–” Hawke spits blood, rolling out of the way as a disfigured paw makes a swipe for her head. Scrambling for her gun, she lands a hit, but it’s not enough to stop its advance. Great jaws frothing with spit stained pink, the beast makes to lunge–
A shadow steps from the coffin propped against the wall to her left, but it’s not another creature, a carrion come to prey at another’s feast. Instead Hawke spots the hem of a hunter’s cloak, a hunter’s weapon strapped to a broad back, but it’s a finer blade than hers, sleek steel for cleaving clean cuts. A lean stature lurks beneath a long, dark coat, buttoned to hide any discernible features but for a pair of decidedly out-of-place eyes.
Green, Hawke thinks, drawing the colour from a memory stained black and red.
Two heartbeats have passed, but the new arrival has made the beast hesitate. Hawke tastes blood on her tongue, sharp and metallic, and anticipation drums in tune with the one in her veins.
It’s over before she’s had the chance to blink.
The beast lunges, claws extended to maul, but the newcomer is quick – quick enough to make Hawke’s breath catch in her throat. The sword is still at his back, a wicked ornament that ought to hinder one’s movements, but the hunter doesn’t appear hindered, nor does he reach to draw it from its sheath. Instead there’s the gleam of a gauntlet, painted silver-blue in the light of the moon, before he drives it through the creature’s chest.
The snarling howl cuts off abruptly, before the beast slumps with a soft whine, a dead weight on a dead street, the cobblestones soaking up the dark blood like rainwater.
The newcomer doesn’t move, even to clean the blood off the gauntlet. It runs rivulets down the once-pristine metal, to drip from still fingers. Hawke is oddly mesmerised by the sight.
“You are not from here.”
She feels some pride at not having startled at his voice – for it is a man’s, deep as the drum in her veins, a rich thing ill-suited for the sick and dying city around them. It’s a strong and healthy voice, the sort belonging to the ploughing of golden fields beneath cornflower skies.
The memory of home is a sharp knife, and she feels starved when she draws her next breath.
“No,” she says, voice smooth even though it’s been weeks since she last spoke to a living being. “I am not.”
The stranger is silent. Or perhaps she is the stranger here, she muses. The thought is a novel one.
Those moss-green eyes shift, letting hers go, and though her instinct is to step back, Hawke holds her ground. “You are hurt,” he says.
Hawke blinks, breathes deeply, and – “Oh.” Pain blossoms just below her ribcage. How did I miss that?
The hunter seems to consider his options, and Hawke’s hand itches to grab her pistol. But he doesn’t move to attack – to finish her off before her wound can. “Come,” he says instead, and before Hawke has the chance to protest, turns to walk down the street. He doesn't wait for her to catch up.
Hawke hesitates for exactly three heartbeats before she follows.
.
.
.
“Ferelden?”
The latch falls into place, followed by two more. In another life, Hawke would have found the thought of locking one’s front door ludicrous, but here in this city, even three separate locks feels insufficient.
The hunter turns with the ease of one who knows the dark, and a kerosene lamp flickers to life in the corner. Hawke takes in her surroundings, the cramped room with its lone bunk. A single armchair by the small fireplace. Better lodgings than any she’s managed to claim for herself so far. It’s not Kirkwall’s finest neighbourhood, if there ever was such a thing, and the trip had been no small feat, most of it involving travelling by way of the rooftops.
She realises she’s been quiet for some time. “Yes,” she says at length. The name of her village sits idle on the tip of her tongue, but she cannot bear to speak it.
He deposits his sword by the armchair. “You are far from home.”
The snort comes before she’s able to stop it, but it only earns her a raised brow. “You could say that.”
He considers her a moment, takes in the blood-soaked coat, her assortment of weapons. “And you have joined the hunt. Why?”
There are words on her tongue, sticky against the roof of her mouth. Words telling of plans gone wrong, of being stranded in a strange city with no options but to adapt. Of slowly forgetting about green fields and cornflower skies, and that such things ever existed.
Her answer is flippant, but her voice too thick to completely hide what she feels. “What else is there to do in this place? A little inhospitable for tourism.”
He doesn’t offer an answer, nor does he counter her jest with another. Instead he begins to unfasten the buckles of his coat, shrugging it off and hanging it by the door with movements that hints at a familiar routine. Hawke watches with curious interest the display of an inexplicable but wary trust (his hand is not far from the pistol at his hip, or the knife she can see peeking up from his boot). But it's more than she's earned, and his reasoning eludes her.
He removes his hood last and without ceremony, but Hawke finds surprise stir in her chest as a braid tumbles loose to fall against his neck. Pale hair, moon-white or quicksilver, it’s hard to tell in the weak light of the room’s only lamp, but it’s such a strange colour she can’t tear her eyes away.
Her host appears unperturbed by her blatant staring, depositing the hood with the rest of his gear. The simple shirt and breeches that remain make for a much less imposing figure, but there’s a prowl to his step that makes Hawke keep a careful distance, though in the small room, there’s not much to speak of.
But a show of trust is not to be dismissed, not in this city, and so she begins to unbuckle her own coat, leaving it on the floor. Her hat follows, and her hair feels coarse and sticky from her hunt, but she won’t ask for a bath, even as a jest.
“Over there.”
She looks up to find him pointing across the room, to a small table with a large porcelain bowl. “For your face,” he adds, and Hawke wonders if she imagines the brief flicker of a smile.
“There’s no need for rudeness,” she retorts, making for the bowl. The water is freezing, and she grimaces as merely wiping her brow has the clear liquid bleed a vicious red. She must be quite the sight.
Turning back, she finds the hunter waiting. “What?”
He nods towards the bunk. “Your wound.” There’s a roll of bandages in his hand, but Hawke doesn’t move.
At her hesitance, he offers a raised brow. “If my plan was to kill you, I would not have gone through the trouble of rescuing you.”
Hawke balks. “Rescu–” But there’s a small smile on his face now, fully visible, and her ire dwindles as quickly as it had flickered to life. “I would have handled it,” she asserts, moving to take a seat on the bunk.
The hunter doesn’t respond, not to deny or agree with her claim, but follows silently, lighting a candle as Hawke begins to unbutton her shirt. It’s a clean cut across her stomach, large enough to need stitches, and she watches wordlessly as he holds a needle over the candle flame.
“So,” she says, drawing a deep breath to keep from looking at the wound, or the needle. He takes a seat beside her on the bunk. “You do this often?”
He doesn’t answer, which she has come to expect by now, and she hisses as he wordlessly makes the first stitch. “Bring strange women back here, I mean.” She tries to make her words light, but the pain in her voice ruins the effect somewhat.
It doesn’t seem like he's planning on saying anything at all, when, “Only the pretty ones,” he says, entirely serious, and never taking his eyes off his task.
Hawke laughs – a short, startled sound. “Must be quite the feat telling them apart through all the leather and blood. How did you deduce that I was pretty, pray?”
At that he looks up – meets her eyes in a flash of green. The hills just outside of Lothering, she decides. Wild and lovely, but deceptively beautiful, hiding adders in the grass.
“Your eyes,” he says simply, and leaves it at that.
Hawke doesn’t breathe. “Well.” She clears her throat with some difficulty. “Lucky me.”
The last stitch finished, she breathes a little easier. He wraps the wound in silence, slender fingers grazing her skin, and Hawke bites her lip and tries not to blush. Nearly three decades on her back, but it’s been months since she’s had this closeness with another human being, and the reek of blood and sweat bedamned, he’s warm and alive. No foul blood, and no madness in his eyes. This is no farmhand’s fumbling fingers either, and Hawke feels dizzy, suddenly, exhaustion creeping with cold hands towards a tired heart. It’s been so long since she’s had the opportunity to relax, without feeling the need to look over her shoulder. The three locks on the door don’t appear nearly as measly now, as she considers the room, the heavily barred windows and the thick smell of incense. Perhaps it wouldn’t be too much to ask to stay for a little while…
“You have lost a good deal of blood,” he tells her, shifting on the bunk, before a smooth glass vial is pushed into her hand. “Drink.”
Too tired to consider the thick red liquid for what it is, Hawke downs the contents without a word. It slides down her throat without resistance, and though some of the dizziness clears, the heavy lethargy of the slowly warming room persists.
Sensing her intent, the hunter rises to his feet. “You may have the bunk, if you wish.”
Hawke considers the offer, and the stranger before her. So many months of being alone, of watching her own back, and it seems almost too good to be true, to have someone keep watch while she sleeps. Perhaps it is too good to be true, but oh, she is tired, and there are far worse fates to befall one in a city such as this than human treachery.
“Thank you,” she says simply, and hopes it is enough. “Will you be alright?”
He nods. “Rest. The hunt will not.”
She doesn’t protest, tugging off her boots as he turns to change the water in the bowl. With his back turned, Hawke slips her dagger beneath the pillow. A precaution, if her fragile trust turns out to be misplaced.
The mattress is not comfortable in any stretch of the imagination, but it’s better than anything she’s had in a long while, and for all her suspicions, rest is not hard to find.
“Does it ever end?” she asks, as sleep pulls on unresisting limbs. “The night – the hunt?”
He is silent a long while, and she watches the sharp cut of his nose, the white criss-crossing of scars on his hands. A hunter longer than she, if Hawke is any judge. She wonders if he will lie, and if he does, if she’ll believe him.
But he doesn’t.
“No,” he says, voice grave and thick, and she catches a last glimpse of his eyes before she drifts off, green moss that reminds her of fields teeming with life, not blood and death. She allows the dream to take her there, and imagines she feels his gaze on her face as she succumbs.
“It never ends.”
.
.
.
She wakes, and the moon is still out, barely visible between the planks nailed to the windows. The night has not ended, but she’s become used to it, in the odd way one grows accustomed to things. A fire crackles in the hearth, but the warmth is slow in creeping into her bones. The wound in her side throbs a steady rhythm, but the pain is bearable, and no worse than anything she’s had before.
The hunter is in the armchair by the fire, a glass of what looks like wine at his elbow. Of course, it might very well not be wine, but Hawke does not allow her thoughts to linger long on that.
“Did you sleep at all?”
He doesn’t appear surprised at finding her awake, and doesn’t answer her question. “If you are hungry, there is food in the cupboard.”
She does not feel hungry. She rarely does, after a hunt. “I’m fine.” Rising from the bunk, she makes to cross the small room. He doesn’t look up from the book in his lap.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” she says then. It’s not a question. She knows not to ask questions in this city, for they are rarely answered. And if they are, it’s usually for a price.
Green eyes meet hers, and she wonders what he’s thinking, this strange hunter that’s come to her aid – that’s taken her in and patched her up and let her sleep in his bed without concern. In all her months in Kirkwall the only other hunters she’s come across have been hostile, quick to draw their weapons and unconcerned with asking questions. She’d been just another beast to them, indiscernible from those that prowl the streets.
"Fenris," he says at length, the name rolling off his tongue with care, as though he rarely speaks it.
Her eyes widen, just a little, but she doesn’t bother hiding her surprise. “The Wolf.”
A pale brow quirks, and Hawke spots honest intrigue on his grave face. “You are…informed.”
She snorts. “And you are as ruthless as they say you are. I should have figured, with that little stunt you pulled on the scourge. Most of us use weapons, not our bare hands.”
A small smile greets her words. “You are conventional, for a hunter.”
Hawke shrugs. “I’m an out-of-towner, if you remember. Haven’t been in the business long enough to become unconventional.”
“Evidently.” He considers her a moment. “And what would be your name? Or is ‘out-of-towner’ all my hospitality earns me?”
Hawke hesitates. In another life, ‘Marian’ would be a quick response, uttered without thought and accompanied by the charming smile that is her father’s legacy. But Marian lived the quiet life of a farmer’s daughter, picking roses among the briars and ploughing fields under the sun. There’s no room for Marian in Kirkwall.
“Hawke,” she says instead. Then, with a small smile, “And that’s without a title, I’m afraid.”
“Hawke the Conventional,” he says, eyes glittering with a mirth she has sorely missed, and had forgotten existed.
“Ha. And here I’d pegged you as the sombre sort.” Taking a seat on the small footstool, she flicks her eyes towards the glass. “Wine?”
His lips quirk. “Perhaps.”
Hawke hesitates only a second, before curling her fingers around the stem. It is wine, and it burns a dearly familiar taste on her tongue, a rich flavour that makes her think of better things, of nights that come to an end and the pale morning mist over Lothering.
“I came here with my family,” she says at length, when there have been no words exchanged between them for some time. “I – they didn’t make it.”
“You have been alone?”
She shrugs. “I had no choice. This city isn’t exactly welcoming.”
“For a good reason,” he counters smoothly. “Visitors are rare.”
She takes another sip. “I can’t imagine why,” she offers drily. But her heart aches at the memory of her mother, eyes full of hope for a better life, ears deaf to the rumours about the ever-dark city, and the fell things that lurk behind its walls. The Amells were old blood, and her mother had wanted so badly to believe they still were. Instead what they’d found had been an empty estate, looted and covered in corpses. And blood, old and dry, a grotesque remnant of the city's downfall.
“Hunting…” Hawke says then. “Hunting was a way of surviving, at first. Now, I suppose it’s a reason for living. A bit lonely, though. And I could have used your fancy hand-trick quite a few times.” She tries to smile, but it feels brittle.
Fenris frowns. “You are not part of a covenant?”
Hawke snorts. “The only one I’ve come across so far that hasn’t tried to kill me is the Chantry’s, and I doubt they’d let me in their ranks if I asked.”
He turns his gaze to the fire, and for a moment Hawke wonders if she’s said something wrong. There’s a contemplative look on his face, his brows furrowed beneath the fall of his hair, coloured pewter in the dim light.
Then – “Are you fit to run?”
Hawke blinks. “I – yes, I think so. Why?”
Rising to his feet, he makes to grab his coat. Hawke watches, perplexed, as he turns, takes the glass from her hands and downs the contents. “Get dressed,” he says, as he begins to don a rather impressive assortment of weapons.
“There is someone I think you should meet.”
.
.
.
They don’t go by way of the rooftops this time, but make a slow progression along a narrow side-street, winding down into the heart of the city. Hawke has been there only on one other occasion, and barely made it out alive. A dangerous place for lone hunters, as she’d quickly discovered, but Fenris walks a path out of memory, and she can only follow, wary and with a hand clutching the hilt of her blade.
The lower levels of the city thrive with beasts, and Hawke’s heart has made permanent residence at the base of her throat. The air is damp with rain and the smell of the sewers wafting up from below, but none of it appears to hinder her companion, and she is suddenly loath to do poorly in his presence. The jest about her “rescue” hit a sore spot, one that has not been touched since her brother was alive, and she feels it sputter to life in a place thought long abandoned.
But this is not the time for such things, and Hawke reins in her errant thoughts, focusing instead on following Fenris through the winding streets on the level above the sewers. He keeps a manageable pace, though impressive considering the weight of the broadsword, and with considerable care they manage to skirt past most of the creatures in their path.
But not all of them, and on their way into Lowtown he stops before a corner, motioning for Hawke to come close. “Listen.”
Hawke does, picking out the laboured, snarling breaths. Torchlight flickers against the cobblestones around the corner, before it disappears. “Huntsmen,” she breathes, recognizing the loping gait. “The furry sort.” And the worst sort, too. “They carry torches.” Looking around the street, there doesn’t seem to be any other routes available, unless they backtrack. “How do we get around?”
“We don’t,” he says, calmly. “We take them out.”
Hawke rounds on him. “Are you mad?” she hisses. “I’ve never gone up against two at once, it is suicide–”
“If you are alone,” Fenris cuts her off quietly. “But you are not.”
Hawke says nothing, but considers him in the dark. With his hood on it’s hard to get a read on his expression, but his calm, even breaths speak of a confidence she can’t quite reciprocate.
But she’s always thought with the mind of a lone hunter. This is the first time she’s had the chance to cooperate on a hunt.
“Alright,” she says then. “What do we do?”
He takes a step closer, seeming to listen. The torchlight moves close again, before disappearing. “A diversion,” he says then. “I’ll draw their attention.” He motions to the sawblade in her grip. “You move in from the rear. The first should be easy.”
Hawke breathes. “And the second?”
She imagines the quirk of his lip beneath the hood. “We shall see.”
Hawke wants to protest, but Fenris is already moving, rounding the corner with a deceptive carelessness, and with an oath she follows, blade at the ready as the creatures' heavy breaths turn to snarls. The first has its back to her, attention firmly on her companion, and she moves without thinking, the blade striking with deadly precision. And she is pushing onwards before the body has hit the ground, pistol lifted and ready to tackle the second, heart beating a frantic pace against her ribcage.
The broadsword is out, she notes with surprise, and it swings with enough force to knock the creature off its feet. The move leaves him wide open, but Hawke doesn’t wait, diving in to deliver the final blow. A sloppier weapon, hers, but lighter and much more aggressive. The snarls are silenced, the torch clattering against the stone of the street, and Hawke pulls the blade back out with some effort.
Sheathing his own, Fenris kicks the torche into the sewer, throwing the street back into darkness. Turning towards her, he nods. “You did well.”
Hawke tries to reel in her frantic heart. The rush of exhilaration makes her smile despite herself. “For an outsider?”
“For anyone,” he says, and is already moving, seemingly unaffected by the encounter. Hawke can only shake her head and follow suit.
The exertion makes her feel almost giddy, the adrenaline making her forget about the wound, and she keeps a steady pace as they move through the lower levels. But it’s a long trek, and her breath is ragged and her back slick with sweat beneath her heavy coat when Fenris finally motions for them to stop.
A large wooden door looms at the end of a dark alley, and Hawke smells the incense even from several paces away. Fenris doesn’t motion for her to follow now, and she keeps a small distance between them as he approaches the door.
Three sharp raps against the wood yields silence, before footsteps from inside reach Hawke’s ears through the door. A pause, then, “State your business.”
Fenris sighs. “Varric.”
“Is that your business?”
“Varric.”
“Alright, alright.” The door opens, just far enough for them to slip through, before it swings shut behind them and Hawke hears the turn of keys in several locks, five altogether. The one who’d let them in throws her a surprised look over his shoulder, but before he can open his mouth, Fenris beats him to the punch.
“I vouch for her.”
The man – short and sturdy in build and with a cunning look in his eye, looks amused rather than angry. “I kind of figured, since you brought her here. You’re not exactly the one whose judgement is under question.”
“Oh now I know you’re not talking about me, Varric,” another voice speaks up, and Hawke turns to the room to find a woman sauntering towards them. But it’s not the woman that pulls her gaze, but the room itself.
It’s a tavern, dimly lit but holding a handful of occupants, all looking in the direction of the front door.
“Well,” the voice purrs, before the woman slides into Hawke’s line of vision. “What’s this? Fenris bringing a girl home?”
The shorter man offers Hawke a lingering look. “You better believe it, Rivaini.”
The woman grins, and Hawke’s attention is drawn to the copper skin, the gold links of her choker and the deep blue tailcoat. Not a native, and in unconventional attire for a hunter, surely, but the half-moon daggers gleaming at her hip tell a different story. “And they say there are only beasts to be found in this city these days. Lies, apparently, or you’re the prettiest beast I’ve met.”
Between her confusion, Hawke finds a smile. “I’ve had worse compliments.”
The woman barks a laugh, a rich and throaty sound. “Oh I like you. Hardly any good humour left in this place. Whatever worth mentioning shrivelled up and died along with the rest of it.”
“Charming,” Hawke drawls, casting another glance about the room. Aside from the two come to greet them, there are three more at a table by the bar, watching their interactions with visible interest. A woman with russet hair and freckled cheeks and a wary expression, and on her left a wee, dark haired thing, with eyes too big for her face and a curious smile that seems altogether too cheerful for Kirkwall. On the other side of the table sits a man, wearing a blond ponytail and a concerned look that seems a bit more fitting to the situation.
The one called Varric and the woman move into the interior, and Hawke takes a tentative step to follow. “Are you all hunters?”
“Hell, no,” the short one announces. Despite his denial, there’s a crossbow strapped to his back, Hawke notes. “Can’t all be hunters – there wouldn’t be enough business to go around.” A grin accompanies the words, and Hawke feels – oddly welcome.
He turns towards her then, like a man who owns the place, if anyone but the beasts own anything in this city. “Varric Tethras, at your service,” he greets smoothly. “Resident chronicler and – well, anything else you need. And this is Bianca,” he adds, patting the crossbow fondly.
Hawke’s gaze flickers to the weapon before meeting Varric’s again. There are stranger things than naming the weapons that keep you alive, but the reverent look on his face tells her it’s more than that.
But Hawke doesn’t ask. Instead she counters the elaborate greeting with stark simplicity. “Hawke.”
A brow raises. “Just ‘Hawke’? And here I’m handing out all my names like Chantry sermons. You sure there isn't another attached to that?”
Her smile widens, just a little. She decides she likes Varric. “For now, just Hawke will do,” she says, and can’t tell if it’s a promise or not, but he only holds his hands up.
“Alright. Hawke it is, then. Got to know these things – for my chronicles. The Great Hunt, by yours truly.”
Hawke does not see, but doesn’t ask about that, either. There can’t be a big market for literature in a city with more resident beasts than humans, but Varric appears entirely unconcerned about the fact.
“Want a glass?” he asks, nodding towards what looks like it used to be the bar. “There’s not much to brag about. It’s not a working tavern per se, more…a place for us to store whatever drink we come across. It’s a bad world if you can’t share a drink with friends.”
Hawke is tempted to add that it’s a bad world whichever way one looks at it, but holds her tongue. “I’ll take whatever you’ve got, so long that it doesn’t tear a hole in my stomach.”
“You know, I don’t think you’ll find a lot of that around these parts. Of course, most things that’ll tear through your stomach have claws, but I wouldn’t trust half the stuff we’ve got stashed in the back if you can’t hold your liquor.”
“Not that,” Hawke says. “But my stomach has gone through enough already. I figured I’d go easy on it for once.” She chances a glance at Fenris, but he’s looking elsewhere. He’d done a good job patching her up; the wound feels far from pleasant, but despite their little trek, the stitches seem to be holding. Although at the thought of their jaunt through the remnants of Lowtown, Hawke is made aware of the exhaustion lurking beneath her skin.
Seeming to sense the shift in her mood, Fenris nods towards the table. “Take a seat.” Then, looking at the shorter man. “Varric?” Silent words exchanged, they move to the other side of the tavern, leaving Hawke with the strange woman and three pairs of eyes watching her intently.
“So,” Hawke says, acutely aware of the weight of the pistol at her hip, and wondering how long she’ll last if whatever conversation Fenris is having with Varric does not go in her favour.
“Who are you people, exactly?”
.
.
.
As it turns out, she’s being recruited.
“The Champions of Kirkwall?”
“Varric picked the name,” the one called Aveline sighs, lifting her mug to her lips. “It’s understandable if it makes you hesitate.”
“Oh, I quite like it,” the little one, Merrill, chirps. “I think it’s got a nice ring to it. Don’t you think so, Hawke?”
Honestly, Hawke doesn’t know what to think. It’s an odd group, to say the least. Three hunters, a blood-letting heretic, a chronicler and a rogue Chantry blood healer, but the city has shaped them – pieced them together to forge a living, breathing weapont. Not all carry their personal armouries in plain sight, but Hawke is, quite despite her better judgement, impressed.
“It’s…certainly unique.”
“You’re too polite,” Aveline declares, throwing a look in Varric’s direction. “It’s ridiculous, whichever way you look at it.”
“Hey, no one forced you to join,” he counters smoothly. “You could have just said ‘no’.”
“Because there’s a right baker’s dozen of covenants looking to recruit these days.”
“Oh lighten up, big girl, it’s not like anyone actually cares what we call ourselves.”
Merrill’s face falls. “They don’t?”
“Oh no, kitten, I’m sure the beasts are all quite invested in the naming practices of Kirkwall’s resident hunters,” Isabela adds, patting the girl’s shoulder with a smile.
“They might be, for all you know,” Merrill shrugs. “I imagine they must do something when they’re not…doing beastly things.”
“Tonight’s schedule – first, prowl Darktown proper, then off to tuck the scourge cubs into bed,” Aveline says, lifting her glass to her lips. “I shudder at the thought.”
“Do you think they’re organised?” Isabela muses, a shining coin weaving in between tanned fingers. Hawke follows it with her eyes, before it vanishes, and Isabela throws her a wink.
“Beastly unions, you mean?” Varric asks.
The one called Anders grins. “They do seem to like forming groups.”
Hawke glances over at Fenris seated on the bench beside her. “Are they quite serious?”
A sigh. “I am afraid so.”
"What about you, Hawke?" Merrill asks. "What do you think?"
"About unionized beasts?" she asks. They are all watching her now, and she feels as though she's on trial -- that's she's been subjected to a test, to be passed or failed.
Fingers closing around her glass, she offers a smile. "Health care must be a bitch."
Uproarious laughter greet her words, and Hawke catches Fenris hiding a smile behind the rim of his own glass. A strange warmth settles in the pit of her stomach as she sits back to watch the conversation progress. There’s no room for humour in a city paved with coffins, but no one seems to have told these people. Or perhaps they just don’t care. Either way, theirs is a different world, one far removed from the rest of Kirkwall. Except these are not people who shy from their fates.
It’s -- strange. And Hawke feels the inexplicable urge to be part of it.
It’s hard to keep track of time with the windows barred and a night that never ends, but as the hours tick by, the group disperses, one by one, weapons checked and held at the ready as the latches are removed from the front door. Quiet words are exchanged before their departure, and Hawke catches only snippets – Anders’ ‘she’d make a good addition’, and Merrill’s soft ‘you don’t think she’ll turn us down?’ Varric and Isabela use the tavern for lodgings, and by the time Aveline and Anders have left and Merrill slipped away through the back window, Hawke finds herself alone at the table, save the man that brought her.
Fenris has spoken little, quiet even in the midst of his companions’ chatter, and Hawke looks up from her nearly empty glass to find him contemplating the bottom of his own.
“Why do this for me?” she asks then, quietly despite the fact that the tavern’s two remaining occupants are across the room, engrossed in their own conversation. “Why arrange this? You’ve nothing to gain from it, as far as I can tell. There’s been no coins exchanged over my pretty corpse.”
He is silent a moment, fingers tapping idly against the stem of his glass. “You don’t survive long on your own in this city.” His eyes raise to catch hers, before dropping back to the remaining pool of wine. “I am surprised you have lasted this long.”
Hawke hesitates. Then, “Were you ever alone?”
A nod, slow and deliberate. “For a time.”
“But you survived.”
He doesn’t contradict her, Hawke notes. But, “Not like I do now.”
She breathes out, and tries to gather her thoughts – to understand the motives of these people, who live as though the city has not gone to hell around them. “So, is that what I am then? A charity case? A bird with a broken wing, taken in to nurture?”
A pale brow raises. “We are not the nurturing sort.”
Hawke can’t quite stifle the smile. “No, I don’t suppose you are.” Taking the glass, she takes a moment, to make sure she remembers. Her mother’s stubborn hope, strong and vibrant to her last breath. The twins, huddled against a door that won’t hold, and claws rending the wood asunder. Screams in the night. And blood. Blood in her mouth and her lungs and her soul. One hundred and sixteen days with only the sound of her own heart beating in her ears.
Fingers curling around the glass, Hawke downs the last droplets, before placing it down with deliberate care. The liquor burns a vicious path down her throat, but it’s a good pain, and when she meets his eyes next she’s made her decision.
“I suppose it does beat hunting alone,” she says, and offers a smile. It’s a pale imitation of true joy, nothing like those she’d been known for, once, but it’s all she has left. No coin, and only scraps of her humanity, but the city has yet to beat the last ounce out of her bones. It hasn’t made a beast of her yet. And there are few good things left in this dark world, but she is not so far gone she cannot recognize hope when it greets her at the door.
And Hawke cradles it with the reverence of a dead woman walking, who has just been granted a few more breaths.