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A life of permanent displacement had left Hawke with a very peculiar set of skills—the most frequently used of which was the ability to be confidently drunk in strange places.
No matter where she laid her head, some truths were constant. Every backwater tavern was nothing more than its own tiny fiefdom, complete with codes of conduct and local dialects. After years of diligent practice, Hawke could unobtrusively size up the clientele, map the exits, and make an educated guess as to the weapon hidden behind the bar, all within the time it took to pour a pint.
The Herald’s Rest gave her plenty of information, none of it particularly interesting. The little building was warm, well lit, and almost distastefully clean. Varric had endorsed it enthusiastically enough (“it’s not the Hanged Man,” he had shrugged), and Hawke had spent enough nights finding rest at the bottom of a pint that she was well past enjoying the solitude.
Admittedly, were Hawke any kind of respectable personage, she’d have been asleep two candlemarks past. The sun had long since slunk to bed, dragging the inquisitor’s returning expedition behind it, Varric included. The clamor that Hawke had spent the evening studiously avoiding had gone completely mute; the training yard was silent, the freezing stars had winked to life overhead, and the handful of souls not at their post or in their beds were en route from one to the other. Varric, exhausted and (in a twist of irony Hawke doubted he could properly appreciate) sunburned as he stood in a knee-high snow drift, had begged out of their ritual self-poisoning to catch a few meager hours of rest, leaving Hawke to park herself in a corner and people-watch until her subjects dwindled to nothing.
The barkeep, for his part, had spent the duration of the last trying to glare a hole in Hawke’s head. She gracefully ignored the attempt, reasoning that it was hardly her fault that he couldn’t keep a brisk business even with a local monopoly.
She swirled the dregs of her ale, now only a finger deep. That puddle of liquid was the only excuse left standing between her and a much-overdue letter to a certain someone who, Varric insisted, would very much like to know where she was. She had just about resigned herself to a night of failed drafts when a creak of hinges from the far wall broke the silence.
Varric’s letters had always imbued the inquisitor’s presence with the flavor of divine intervention, managing to be factually accurate while still hinting at the sounding of trumpets and hordes of faithful falling to their knees in rapture. But even discounting for the dwarf’s authorial flourishes, the reality of her appearance--a thin elf shuffling through a creaking doorway--was something of a disappointment.
The elf barely seemed to notice Hawke as she folded against the bar, a sigh too big for her small chest escaping from her lips. “I’m sorry, Cabot. I know it’s late, but please tell me you’ve still got some of the good stuff.”
Cabot’s demeanor immediately changed from “murderously gruff” to “deferentially gruff,” and he bent behind the bar. “Of course, Inquisitor,” he said, and rose with a bottle in one hand. “Fresh shipment came today.”
A weak but genuine smile crossed the inquisitor’s face. “I owe you a great deal, Cabot.” She tipped the bottle against the light and made a small, surprised sound. “It’s unopened. You managed to keep this from the Iron Bull?”
Cabot shrugged. “When the Nightingale tells me to set it aside, I set it aside. No exceptions.”
Lavellan huffed a small sigh, and her lips twisted in a humorless grin. “I suppose I owe her as well.”
Hawke hummed, and the inquisitor started almost imperceptibly. Hawke looked away and pretended she hadn’t noticed the reflexive alarm. “Rough trip, I take it?”
Lavellan’s laugh was lighter and clearer than Hawke expected. Hawke glanced over to see the elf turning the bottle between slender fingers. The neck was sealed with a wax stamp that Hawke recognized as belonging to a Wycome brewery, and for a moment she felt a tug of homesickness for the Free Marches.
Lavellan sighed. “Reconnaissance in the Hissing Wastes. No worse than usual.”
“You say that, but what I’m hearing is ‘nightmarish, with a side of sunburn.’”
A laugh escaped the elf’s throat, a quick bubble of sound that crinkled the vallaslin along her temples. “Varric said he has enough material for a serial or two, though he did complain that he’s run out of synonyms for ‘sand.’”
Hawke hid her smile in the last of her pint, watching with some satisfaction as the tension in the inquisitor’s shoulders loosened.
“I apologize for not getting to do this sooner,” the elf said suddenly. She turned to Hawke and held out the bottle, a glimmer in her eye. “But allow me to buy you a drink.”
Hawke pressed a hand to her chest. “Inquisitor, what kind of slander has Varric been feeding you about my drinking habits?”
Lavellan scoffed. “Let’s just say I know better than to offer my personal collection to someone who won’t appreciate it.”
Hawke pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Varric always did say that every hero needed a good vice or two,” she mused.
Lavellan opened her mouth to respond before a loud crash cut her off. Hawke’s hand immediately went for the staff beside her.
The griffon insignia on the intruder’s breastplate stilled Hawke’s hand. Although short, travel-worn and visibly irritated, her padded blue armor and somber economy of motion unmistakably marked the elf that stalked through the door as a Grey Warden. A single, wicked scar carved a valley through her lips as it stretched from cheekbone to jaw along the right side of her face, but her face was otherwise unmarked. Eyes the color of sun-bleached leather glared at something in an unseen distance, sweeping the room without the faintest sign of acknowledgment.
Recognition sparked in Hawke’s mind at the same instant Lavellan’s back went ramrod straight.
“Warden Commander Tabris,” the inquisitor started, forced joviality barely masking the timber of anxiety in her voice. Hawke furrowed her brow; Varric’s letters hadn’t mentioned that little detail. Considering the trivialities he usually included, the only rational explanation Hawke could latch onto was that the warden had arrived with the returning party.
“I didn’t realize you were still awake,” Lavellan continued, extending her hand as if by reflex. “Did you find your quarters acceptable?”
The warden ignored the hand and gave a small grunt as she reached the bar. “Fine. Fancier than I’m used to, but can’t complain.” She leaned over the counter. “Tell me there’s a bloody keg tapped in here.”
“Uh, no, but,” Hawke interrupted smoothly over the inquisitor’s flushed expression. “We were just about to have a drink and talk about our feelings, if you’d care to join us.”
The warden snorted. “Maker, no. I prefer my liquor without tears.” Her eyes raked over Hawke. “I didn’t catch your name.”
“Hawke,” she responded, extending a hand. “Apostate, ne’er do well, alleged scourge of the civilized world.”
Tabris’ mouth twitched in a fleeting grin, and she gripped Hawke’s hand. Lavellan looked mildly offended. “I’ve heard all about you, Champion.”
Hawke swallowed a sigh. “Yes, well, I’ve placed that title in storage for the time being, recent events being what they are.”
A polite cough drew both women’s attention to the inquisitor, who raised the bottle in offering. “Shall we, then?”
Hawke learned three things in rapid succession. First: that the liquor that the inquisitor had squirrelled away shone like liquid bronze and smelled like pinewood. Second: that the odor, while not unpleasant, was nothing but window dressing on one of the vilest things she’d ever drunk. And third: that polite small talk could not stand up to the assault of what Hawke was beginning to suspect was nothing more than a putrefied spruce tree, slurried and crammed into a bottle.
Which was not to say that the inquisitor hadn’t made a valiant effort to keep up a veneer of formality. Hawke embraced the rare moment of being out of the spotlight to admire the legendary stamina of Lavellan’s attempts to engage the terse warden, who looked more interested in finishing a bottle than having a chat.
Strangely enough, it seemed to be working. By the third glass, some combination of Lavellan’s persistence, Hawke’s strategic dry wit, and the paint-peeling fumes of the liquor had managed to file down the sharper edges of the warden’s expression until they began to resemble something approaching good humor.
As Lavellan carried a one-sided conversation about the state of affairs in the Free Marches, Hawke couldn’t help but wonder (and not for the first time) at how Maker-blessed tiny the Herald of Andraste really was. It wasn’t her height—there was maybe a head’s difference between them—so much as her impossible leanness, the delicate curve of her back and the soundless way her feet trod the floor. Hawke knew from experience that archers had a peculiar build, their strength largely invisible where it was hidden in their back and chest, but no amount of unusual musculature could erase the fact that, up close and stripped of armor, the Herald was barely more than a child.
Oh, Hawke knew that “child” was an incredibly relative term. She had always been bad at guessing the ages of elves, but if pressed, Hawke admitted that the inquisitor was about the same age as she herself had been when she fled Lothering, trailing loss like a pattern of blood drops in the earth. But Hawke had been a refugee, running to survive; this woman, this “Herald of Andraste,” had been dumped unceremoniously onto the throne of a nation so vast, and so powerful, that it treated borders as an inconvenience Armies sang her name like the Chant as they roamed the length and breadth of Thedas, unquestioned and unhindered.
But here, in a musty tavern in the corner of a freezing mountain keep, draped in an ill-fitting tunic and clutching a glass of liquor like a lifeline, she looked thin enough to shine a candle through.
A drop caught in Hawke’s throat, and she coughed violently. Lavellan jumped, startled, and Tabris reached over to thump Hawke on the back. “Easy, shem,” the warden said with a touch of amusement. “No need to keep pace with a couple of knife ears.”
Through the blur of tears, Hawke noticed with no small annoyance that the elves, already a glass ahead of her, seemed utterly unaffected. “This tastes like a burning stable smells,” she rasped indignantly.
Lavellan gave an eager smile and leaned on one elbow. “Alas’enaste. It’s fermented in ironbark barrels in the back of an aravel. That’s where it gets that earthy taste.”
“’Earthy’ is… descriptive,” Hawke conceded, peering distrustfully at the remnants of her drink.
“Of course Dalish liquor would taste like trees and dirt,” Tabris snorted. Lavellan fidgeted uncomfortably, and Hawke fought the urge to roll her eyes.
When Lavellan spoke, her tone was cautiously diplomatic. “Do the elves in Denerim have a home brew?”
Tabris’ answering smirk carried only a distant hint of humor. “In the alienage, if it ruins your day, you drink it." She furrowed her brow, as if blowing the dust off a long-buried memory. “There was one old coot who made his own hooch. Stole half-rotted rice from garbage piles, skimmed off the worst of it, and stuck it in a barrel in the basement. It was done when it ate a hole in the wood,” she added matter-of-factly.
Hawke whistled in admiration, and Lavellan made a face. “That sounds vile.”
“Oh, the vilest. But it got the job done.” Tabris paused. “People used to drink it under the vhenandahl. They said having a leaf land in your cup was good luck.”
“Was it?” Hawke asked, flashing a mischievous grin.
Tabris snorted. “Hardly. Only time I ever caught one was the day I joined the Wardens.”
Lavellan’s eyes were soft as she refilled Tabris’ glass. “Well, the rest of us were certainly lucky.”
Tabris didn’t respond, and Hawke threw back the last of her cup against the uncomfortable silence.
“I’m not really sold on Orlais,” Hawke hummed, her legs swinging a lazy rhythm from the bar. “The last time I was surrounded by Orlesians, I spent most of it trying to grow eyes in the back of my head.”
Lavellan snorted into her cup. “The better to see their knives,” she muttered.
Tabris raised an eyebrow at the other elf’s sudden wryness. When the inquisitor didn’t elaborate, she turned to Hawke. “You can’t leave it at that, Champion. That’s the start of a story if ever I heard one.”
Hawke waved her glass vaguely. “Nothing remarkable—ate some cheese, helped out an elf assassin working for the Qunari, dropped a nobleman off a cliff.” She shrugged. “Rather dull for an Orlesian fete, I’ve heard.”
Curiosity flickered across Tabris’ face. “This assassin—did he by any chance have long blond hair, and a tattoo?” She drew a finger along her left temple in imitation of a curling pattern.
Hawke hummed. “No, our friend was a redhead with an… unsettling knowledge of nug calls. But now that you mention it,” she said, brows furrowing, “I have met someone by that description, back in Kirkwall. An Antivan Crow. Entirely too suave for his own health.”
A grin split Tabris’ face, and she slapped a palm against the bar. “Zevran, that silver-tongued hound!” The expression—Hawke could only call it fierce affection—pulledthe warden’s face into lines to which it didn’t seemed accustomed. “I heard he was making his way up north, but what in the Maker’s name was he doing in Kirkwall?”
“Wait,” said the inquisitor, blinking. “Zevran Arainai?”
“Resolving a labor dispute with his employer, apparently,” Hawke continued over Lavellan’s interruption. “A competent bunch, if rather unpleasant. It was a shame we had to kill them.”
“You killed a detachment of Antivan Crows.” Lavellan’s voice had gone flat in disbelief.
“Andraste’s knickers,” Tabris said with a laugh. “So you’re the friendly apostate he was talking about. He wrote me about that whole escapade. You caught his eye,” she added with a not-so-subtle waggle of one eyebrow.
“I’m flattered,” Hawke said, pressing a hand to her chest with a flourish. “Though I got the distinct impression that most women catch his eye.”
Tabris gave her a sidelong grin. “Not just women. He also went out of his way to mention an elf that was traveling with you. Zevran was quite taken with his tattoos.”
Hawke’s cheeks went a little pink despite herself, and she shrugged. “Well, I certainly can’t fault him on taste.” Amusement curled at the corner of the warden’s mouth, and Hawke’s neck flamed hot.
Lavellan’s fingers were rubbing small circles at her temples. “Just… hold on. You both know Zevran Arainai?” she asked carefully.
Hawke and Tabris glanced at each other, then at her.
“Do you?” the warden asked.
“Yes. Well, technically, no. Sort of.” She rubbed at the space between her eyebrows. “He’s an asset of ours in the north. He contacted us a few months ago and offered his help.”
Tabris tapped her finger against the bar and hummed thoughtfully. “You’re lucky to have him. Zevran’s a rare breed, and he knows it.”
Hawke hummed and leaned into Tabris until their shoulders touched. “And how does a Grey Warden come to be in the confidence of an ex-Crow, hm?” she asked in a conspiratorial drone. “You don’t strike me as the type to buy a hired blade.”
It may have been her imagination, but she thought she saw the tips of the warden’s ears turn pink, even as their owner shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, first he tried to kill me,” Tabris answered. “We ended up traveling together after that. He was with me when the archdemon fell.”
Hawke made a pleased noise. “And here I thought I was the only one who befriended my attempted murderers.”
Tabris scoffed. “If I’m going to be fighting alongside someone, I’d want to know if I can take them one-on-one. Makes it a lot easier to trust someone at your back when you know which of you would win.”
The look Lavellan gave them confirmed Hawke’s suspicion that they sounded like a pair of raving lunatics. “You two have a very strange definition of friendship.”
Hawke waved the comment away. “Come now. You’ve picked up a sizable pack of strays yourself, haven’t you?” She batted Tabris lightly in the shoulder. “Take it from two veterans; there is no weapon more powerful than a motley crew of loyal misfits.”
The warden snorted and leaned over the bar. Her voice carried up between clanking glass. “She’s not wrong. I trust Zevran with my life. He…” Glass clattered loudly against glass, and the warden swore. Hawke glanced over and saw the tips of the warden’s ears flush a light pink. “He, ah, stuck with me. When others wouldn’t.”
Hawke arched an eyebrow, and a sly grin curled her mouth. “Is that so?”
The reply was brusque. “It is.” Tabris did not straighten from behind the bar.
A moment of uncomfortable silence was all the hint Hawke needed to change the subject. “It seems,” she said lightly, “that Skyhold is only a few heads away from a family reunion. Have you had a chance to speak with Nightingale or Morrigan? I understand that she has her son with her. Can you imagine raising a child in a place this big?”
The warden’s spine stiffened almost immediately. The sounds of rummaging stuttered almost imperceptibly before resuming. “I don’t think I’ll be staying long enough,” she said, voice schooled to a careful neutrality.
Oh, Hawke thought, now that’s something. A response was halfway to herwhen Lavellan cut her off with a sharp shake of her head.
The warden straightened, a full bottle in one hand, and quickly wrenched the cork from it. “That’s better,” she intoned, voice a strained imitation of wryness, as Hawke and Lavellan exchanged glances over her shoulder.
Hawke groaned. “It was a high dragon, yes, but one dragon does not a horde make. Unless you’re counting the little ones that kept coming to help it,” she added, a small frown forming at the memory.
Lavellan’s face twisted like she’d just bitten into something sour. The disgust was somewhat mitigated by the dark pink flush that mottled the lines of her vallaslin. “Dragonlings,” she said, and stuck out her tongue.
It was such a childish, unguarded gesture that, drunk or not, Hawke instantly loved her for it.
The warden’s chair clunked back against the stones as she crossed her ankles on the tabletop. “Vicious little blighters. Still better than fighting an adult pair, I suppose.”
Hawke snorted. “I suppose we’re lucky that dragons don’t subscribe to the Chantry’s teachings on monogamy.”
Tabris raised her cup. “To high dragons, and other loose women.”
“Here here,” Hawke said, returning the gesture. She took a long drag—longer than was really wise (not that drinking at all was wise at this point; they’d cleared one bottle and were a few fingers in to the second)—and rested her elbows on the table. “So, my dear Warden Commander…”
The warden grunted. “Just ‘Tabris.’ I’ve had enough of that title to last a lifetime.”
“Tabris,” Hawke conceded. “They say you’ve valiantly slain more than your share of high dragons.”
The warden snorted. “‘They’ say a lot of things.”
“At least six of which, I’m sure, are wild falsehoods. Most of the rest are about dragon killing, and those are the ones your adoring public demands.”
Tabris rolled her eyes, but Hawke caught the crinkle of a smile at the corner of her eyes. “If you’re dying to know, there were four; one at the Temple of Sacred Ashes-”
“Maker rest its blessed stones,” Hawke muttered, as Lavellan wiggled her fingers with a small “poosh!” noise beside her.
“-Morrigan’s mother -”
Now that wasn’t right. Hawke blinked blearily at the elf across from her. Beside her, she felt Lavellan rock unsteadily to attention.
“Wait, wait,” the inquisitor said, giving her head a shake as if to dislodge something. “Asha’Bellanar? You... killed Asha’Bellanar.”
Tabris shrugged. “Tried to.”
Hawke dragged a hand over her hair and down her face in an attempt to push sobriety back in. Maker, but the room was tilting. “Bad news there, I’m afraid. I, uh, may have brought her back.”
Tabris looked at her levelly, and shrugged. Hawke wasn’t sure what reaction she expected, but that certainly wasn’t it. “Stranger things have happened,” she said noncommittally.
Oh, but Hawke was going to have to hear this woman’s stories.
The warden continued as if the incredibly strange digression had never happened. “One in the Dragonbone Marsh, and… one in the Blackmarsh. Sort of.”
“‘Sort of’?” Now Hawke was sure she was hearing things.
“It was already dead.”
“So you didn’t kill it?”
“No, I killed it. Again.”
“…I’m sorry, you’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Hawke said with a very hard look at the bottle. When had it gotten so blasted low?
“Enough of my record,” the warden said, turning to the inquisitor, who was beginning to lean a little too heavily on her elbows against the table. “I’ve heard tell that you’ve faced a few high dragons as well, O Herald of Andraste.”
Lavellan nodded solemnly, and glanced at her hands. Her fingers uncurled one at a time, deliberately, and when she was satisfied, she held them up.
“Ten?” Hawke asked, dumbfounded.
“Shartan’s balls,” Tabris breathed. “You can’t be serious.”
Lavellan’s brows furrowed, and she raised one finger. Hawke and Tabris followed its curve above them until their eyes landed on the head of a massive dragon, preserved but most certainly real, hanging directly above their heads.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Tabris said, leaning to refill Lavellan’s cup.
There were three empty bottles now—or maybe it was four; Hawke couldn’t be entirely sure, since they’d left at least one downstairs, possibly two, and carried another two with them up the narrow wooden stairs that seemed to sway more like a rope swing than proper wood planking.
“Always loved Sera’s room.” The inquisitor’s tongue, thick with liquor as it was, carried a pleasant lilt that seemed much more at home in her round-cheeked face than her earlier strained formality. She leaned into the colorful pillows and stretched her absurdly long legs in front of her.
Hawke stared openly, befuddled. How are the Dalish so damn lithe?
Lavellan, if she noticed Hawke’s gaping at all, said nothing. “Why’d’you have th’ key, Tabris?” she asked.
The warden melted back against the cushions with a sigh, stretching her shoulders across the mound behind her. She had, on their stumble up the stairs, shed her armor and stripped down to breeches and a breast band—prompting a flurry of sputtering from Lavellan and a suggestive eyebrow waggle from Hawke. The flush in her cheeks traveled down her neck and burst in a fiery pink around her chest.
I knew it, Hawke thought with a twinge of victory when she spotted the blush. Bloody thief just stashed her ale face out of sight.
“Sera’s an old friend of mine. Grew up together, back in Denerim.” Tabris unhooked one arm and laughed darkly into her cup. “She saw the whole ugly scene.”
The sound the inquisitor made meant she didn’t have to ask, and neither did Hawke. All of Thedas knew some version of the story: an interrupted wedding, a kidnapping, all culminating in a daring rescue or a murderous rampage, depending on who was doing the telling. It was all very dashing, until you bothered to count the empty hours between the abduction and the escape.
Hawke knew how those stories went, and she suspected that what came in between was something none of them would ever discuss.
Which is why she was just as surprised as anyone when she heard herself say, lightly, “Your reception was certainly one for the history books.”
A beat passed in which the room sat, silent. Hawke’s back tensed. Somewhere, she thought she heard Varric groaning and pressing his face into his hands.
Suddenly, and without warning, Tabris laughed. Not a snort, or a hitch of the shoulders, but a full-body peal of carillon laughter. The inquisitor huffed, quietly at first, before crescendoing into a fit of drunken giggles—and Hawke, feeling the tension drain from her shoulders, pinched the bridge of her nose and threw her head back with a snort.
“Oh,” sighed the warden, a long, relieved sound that rushed from her chest. “Andraste’s tits, I haven’t laughed that hard in ages.” She dragged a hand over her face, her shoulders still hopping unevenly as the amusement subsided. “I needed that.” And, with a smile that seemed far too genuine to be real, she added, “Thank you.”
Hawke made what she hoped was a grand gesture. “Anything for cheap laugh, that’s my motto.” Lavellan hiccupped beside her, slapping Hawke’s thigh weakly with the back of her hand.
Tabris settled back, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “And what about you, Serah Champion of Kirkwall? Any wedding plans I should know about? Happy to free up a Warden detachment to stand guard.”
Hawke snorted. “What, against a sudden griffon attack?”
“No, no, we’re the ones on the griffons. What you really need to watch out for is a dragon. So little experience with ‘em, it makes me worry you wouldn’t last an ambush.”
Lavellan held up one finger unsteadily. “Perhaps you’d best leave that part to the Inquisition,” she muttered from where she lay with one arm over her face. “Promise me there’ll be a table with those little almond cakes, though. I love those.”
Hawke cooed. “Oh, those little square ones with the sugar flowers?” Lavellan pointed a finger at her in agreement. Hawke closed her eyes at the thought. “I do love those. There’s a place in Hightown that makes them with raspberry jam.”
Lavellan rolled onto her side with a groan and buried her face against Hawke’s hip. “Now you’re jus’ making me hungry.”
“All this,” Hawke said, waving her hands around unsteadily to indicate… whatever it was. “All this, and you can’t conscript a bloody baker?” Hawke rested a hand on the inquisitor’s head and waved the other in a grand gesture. “’Little tiny pastries in every ration pack.’ You’d have Orlesians standing in the snow outside Skyhold’s gate to enlist!” Lavellan threw one of her arms blindly into the air in triumph, and Hawke peered at the fist unsteadily before slapping it with her open palm.
“So no Chantry bells, then?” Tabris asked smoothly. Hawke’s eyes found the warden, and she tried her damnedest not to peer at her openly. She had the flushed cheeks and unfocused eyes of a drunk, but even reclining against a mountain of pillows her back was still straight as a lance. Tabris was a bloody focused drunk.
Under any other circumstances, Hawke would have liked that enough to tease her about it.
Instead, she shrugged noncommitally. “Not really honeymoon season, what with the sudden lich bloom,” she said with a deliberately lazy nestle against the pillows. “Besides, I hear Orlesians are very strict about wearing shoes inside the Chantry. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Fenris, but footwear is not exactly his forte.”
The warden’s eyes focused at that, and Hawke tried her best to steady herself against the sudden weight of her gaze. “So it’s true, then—you and the escaped slave.”
“Whatever you’ve read is completely false. Unless it isn’t, in which case, no comment,” Hawke responded flippantly.
“Does he know where you are?”
Hawke closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Parrying was getting her nowhere, and she knew, somehow, that the warden wasn’t going to give up the assault. She mustered what nonchalance she could summon, and shrugged. “If you must know, no,” she said. “He doesn’t.”
Tabris hummed quietly to herself. Hawke felt her shoulders ease at what seemed like a temporary victory—until she noticed Lavellan struggling up onto one arm beside her.
Oh, but Maker’s breath, the look in her eyes was unbearable. For a brief, paralyzing moment, Hawke was ready to retract every bit of snark she had ever committed if it would only make the puppy eyes stop.
“He has no idea?” Lavellan’s voice was barely more than a whisper. “How…?”
“Not all of us have the luxury of building a fortress around our paramours,” Tabris interrupted, voice cold.
The inquisitor pulled back like she’d been slapped, and Hawke felt her face flush. She turned a slow warning glare at the warden, who was too focused on the bottom of her cup to notice.
It wasn’t exactly news, true, but the inquisitor’s silent confirmation of Varric’s rumors added the weight of reality to what had been, until then, idle gossip. He was a good man, and the inquisitor was no child, but Hawke couldn’t deny the fierce twinge in her chest.
She reached out to smooth her hand over the intricate tangle of braids holding back Lavellan’s hair, making a mental note to have a very serious discussion with Cullen before she left—possibly involving a light roasting of his desk chair, just to drive the warning home.
Hawke’s fingers trailed over Lavellan’s hair, smoothing down errant strands. It was a gesture her father had used, calming her with the warmth of his palm until the tears subsided. There were no tears on Lavellan’s cheeks, but the guilt welling behind her eyes meant that she was not far off.
“There was no reason to risk both our lives,” she said, as much to herself as to the woman whose hair she soothed like a child’s. “Fenris is safe where he is, and I was needed here.”
Tabris’ eyes were venomous. “What a load of shit,” she spat.
Hawke’s hand froze. A small but bright spark of fury lit in her chest, and she could already feel the needle of pain building between her brows. Her cheeks were flushed with Dalish liquor and her heart was drunk on the Fereldan instinct to protect, and yet she managed, through some miracle, to keep her voice light.
“I’m sorry, I thought you took your liquor without tears,” Hawke said, voice steadied by the thought of this woman—this bitter, vengeful, solitary ass—dragging the conversation any farther into her own cryptic lap. Lavellan simply stared, thrown off-balance by the sudden spike of hostility.
Tabris growled—actually growled—and leaned forward. “Do you honestly think that leaving your lover without a word of explanation is going to keep him safe, or do you simply enjoy lying to yourself?”
The words were out of Hawke’s mouth before she could stop them. “Why don’t you tell me, since you seem to be the expert on abandonment.”
The crack of Tabris’ fist on her jaw was almost instantaneous. She had no time at all to react before the rest of the elf was on top of her. Hoarfrost raced up Hawke’s arm, and she swung her hand blindly. A hiss and crack of connecting skin, and she could feel the ridges of Tabris’ exposed ribs as ice spread across them fast as fire. She was barely aware of Lavellan’s shouts as Tabris tumbled to the side and rolled, springing to the balls of her feet. She crouched like a cat, hair on end, and Hawke pulled herself to her knees as electricity crackled in the air around her and through her throbbing jaw.
A sharp whistle of air and thump of metal on wood knocked her back, and she stumbled back into the pillows. Lavellan stood by the door, bow in hand, a second arrow nocked and drawn even as the first one trembled its death throes in the wall behind them.
“Enough!” the inquisitor barked, sharp and clear as the cry of an eagle. Her entire body was tense, eyes flashing a warning, and even with the considerable amount of liquor that flowed through her, she held her arms as steady as an oak on a windless night. None of them moved.
The small Dalish that had so confounded Hawke at the bar was looming over them, tattoos curling across her livid red face like living vines. “Have you both taken leave of your senses?” Her jaw was clenched, and her eyes darted between the other two women with a burning fury. Hawke had to try very hard not to let her eyes fall on the flaring green light that rose from the woman’s left palm where it curled around the bow.
Tabris eased back against her heels. The sour tang of mana drained from Hawke’s mouth, and she held up her hands.
The bow dipped, but only an inch. “Elgar’nan’s ashes, has it never occurred to you that we have all suffered?” Hawke blinked once, twice, before realizing that the redness in Lavellan’s face had crept into her eyes. “The world judges us. We need not do its work on one another.”
Hawke felt her throat clench, and a sudden surge of affection rise in her chest. She and Tabris exchanged glances, and she knew they both felt it; not the gentle nurturing that fluttered in Hawke’s throat, but a shared, primal need to protect.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Hawke said, with a conceding smile toward the warden and a loose shrug. “We saviors of the world need to stick together.”
Tabris snorted, though it lacked force. “Worst part is, it’ll be men who write our stories when we’re gone.” She flopped inelegantly to the floor and folded her legs loosely. It was a child’s pose, and Hawke took the movement for what it was; a concession, and a gesture of trust. The affront was not forgotten—scars picked at never healed, and Hawke had no doubt that the one she had lashed out at had been reopened countless times—but the worst was past. “The same asses who can barely manage to admit that Andraste had tits will be the ones responsible for telling our tales.”
“Oh, I don’t know about all that,” Lavellan said, suddenly mild, as she leaned the bow against a bookcase and lowered herself to the cushions beside Hawke. “Andraste’s tits seem to come up a lot around here.”
Tabris snorted. “I’d rather not have my name live on as a shem cuss.”
Hawke grinned. “Oh come on, you’d love it.” Tabris tried to hide the grin that tugged at her mouth by turning to grab the last remaining bottle. “Ages from now, grizzled soldiers can miss their swing and shout ‘Tabris’ hairy cunt!’”
Lavellan doubled over with a snort, pivoting into the pillows to hide her laughter. Tabris lifted her chin and sniffed as she poured a glass. “I’ll have you know that my cunt is as smooth as a baby’s cheek.”
The women each took a glass. “Oh, is it now?” Hawke asked with an exaggerated waggle of her brows.
“I am an elf, you twat, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“No one has forgotten,” Lavellan said, her eyes shot through with warmth and more than a hint of pride.
Hawke hummed. “Good,” she said firmly, nestling back amongst the cushions with a warm satisfaction. “Let them never forget that they were saved by a Denerim slum rat.”
Tabris grinned. “They won’t, so long as a filthy, rabbit-eared pagan sits on the throne of the most powerful force in all of fucking Thedas.”
Lavellan raised her glass at Hawke. “That rabbit-ear could not have done it without the help of a dangerous, radicalized apostate who breaks bread with known terrorists.”
Hawke clinked her glass with Lavellan’s. “Uppity bitches, one and all.”
“Here here,” Lavellan echoed, and Tabris added, “To uppity bitches.”
“Kinda pathetic, innit?”
“What’s that, Buttercup?”
“Well, I mean look at it. Big heroes, completely legless, droolin’ over a bunch of frilly pillows.”
“Buttercup, I’m surprised at you. There are three devastatingly attractive, incredibly murderous women asleep in your room, and the first thing you think is how pathetic they all look?”
“D’ya hear me complainin’ about the view?”
Varric hummed a concession and straightened from where he had been leaning against the doorframe. “Fair enough.” All three women were huddled, asleep, amongst the cushions. The inquisitor’s head was in Hawke’s lap, while Hawke, in turn, was turned at an angle that was comfortable only to children and the very, very drunk. The warden—half-naked, for reasons he wouldn’t even begin to speculate—was sitting sideways, legs curled under her and head pillowed on her arm not far from Hawke’s shoulder.
All three were, in fact, drooling a little.
Sera’s hand paused on the doorknob, and Varric glanced up. Her face was set in something he recognized as her peculiar brand of gratefulness—an emotion almost always tempered in her case by a profound anger at whatever had set things wrong in the first place.
“Something on your mind?” he asked.
Sera’s face scrunched as she searched for a way to frame the unfamiliar sentiment. “Yes. No. Jes…’ weird, seein’ ‘em like that. ‘Specially Tabris. I mean, I know it’s been ten years and all, no way ‘round that, but…”
Varric’s eyes fell on Hawke. He felt a familiar, painful tug in his chest. “She’s been through a lot,” he supplied.
Sera huffed. “That’s just it, innit? Absolute piss. World couldn’t give two nugshits about ‘em ‘til they pulled Thedas’s arse out of the fire.” The disgusted noise she made as she closed the door and turned away didn’t quite match the sadness in her eyes. “Can’t be a woman and happy. Gotta sacrifice.”
Varric couldn’t find an argument in him, even if he’d wanted to. They started down the stairs together. “You know, Sera, there’s something that’s been bugging me since we got back.” Sera plopped herself on the banister and slid down to the landing, where she hopped off with a bored flourish. “You and the warden were huddled pretty close together on the way back, and since we arrived, I haven’t seen Morrigan or her son anywhere.” He glanced at her casually; she was kicking a discarded, half-eaten biscuit down the stairs. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Sera shrugged, but did not return his gaze. “I know you get off on knowin’ everyone’s sadnesses, but it’s not my place to ask, yeah?” She glanced at him in warning. “Jes’ doin a favor for a friend. So drop it.”
Varric raised his hands. “Fair enough. Now, what do you say we get a few pitchers of water ready for when they wake up?”