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“Aren’t you finished yet?"
Isabela chuckles, low and rumbling like thunder just on the edge of the horizon. She slides the blade in her hands through another finger-width of Hawke’s hair, shearing off the length and letting it fall to her feet. “Think maybe you should be a little nicer to the girl with a knife practically at your throat?”
As a reminder, she presses the cool flat of said knife to the newly exposed nape of Hawke’s neck and watches with satisfaction as the gooseflesh rises across her bare shoulders and down the slope of her arms.
“You could just answer the question,” Hawke huffs, feigning indignation. Isabela shakes her head fondly, returning to her task. The over-sharp knife slides easily, even through the thick, dark mass of Hawke’s hair; once, twice more. She sighs, fidgeting slightly with restless energy.
“You used to be so sweet you know, so patient,” Isabela teases, hardly looking up from her work. “What happened, eh? Getting surly in your old age?”
“Maybe it’s a natural defense against your horrible sense of humor.”
“Ooh,” she hisses. “And here I was just about to tell you I was nearly finished you ungrateful little turnip, I shoul – ah! Shit.” Isabela jerks her hand away as the last piece of hair falls, along with the knife, to the floor. A thin but deep red line of blood appears along the length of Isabela’s thumb. Hawke twists on her stool, concern painted across her face as Isabela gives her stinging hand a shake and instinctively sticks her thumb in her mouth; the coppery tang of her own blood floods her senses, familiar and yet still deeply unpleasant.
Hawke shakes her head, tut-ing quietly. “Here, give it here you big baby,” she says gently, reaching for Isabela’s wrist to pull the offending hand into her own.
“Quite the bedside manner you’ve cultivated as well.” She can tell when Hawke opens herself to the fade – the sensation of too-cold air in her nose, enough to hurt, and something imperceptible that makes the hairs on her arms stand at attention – even before her hands start to glow their tell-tale, calming blue. All at once, the cut on her finger vanishes beneath a swipe of hawke’s own, nothing but a singular white scar left in its wake, so faded it could have been there for years rather than seconds. The evidence of her magic disappears as quickly as it had come, leaving them facing one another in silence, Isabela’s hand cupped gently in both of Hawke’s.
“There. No harm done,” Hawke says, lifting the digit to her lips and placing a barely there kiss to the faint mark. The gesture sets Isabela’s heart beating rabbit-fast in her chest, threatening to jitter itself straight up her throat and out her mouth if she dared open it. She settles for bending quickly at the waist, gathering up the fallen blade and scraps of hair and placing them on the crate-come-side table beside them.
“Sure, play nice now. Too little too late, sweet thing, I’m on to you.” She’s proud of the way her voice hardly wavers at all, despite how much it wants to. “Go have a look then, see what you think,” Isabela says with a cough, nudging Hawke in the direction of the polished mirror hanging beside the porthole.
She watches as Hawke touches the mostly even ends – barely level with her chin now where before it had almost brushed her shoulders – with tentative fingers, scowling slightly at her likeness. Isabela steps up behind her to wrap hands around her bare middle, blowing a wayward hair from her skin with a quick puff. “You don’t like it?” she asks their combined reflections. Hawke turns away from the mirror so they’re front to front again, her arms coming to rest over the tops of Isabela’s shoulders.
“It’s fine, really. Exactly what I wanted.” Still, she looks unconvinced, even from this close where Isabela can only focus on one part of her face at a time. “Thank you for doing it,” Hawke says. Then she is kissing her, slow and with purpose, and Isabela can’t help but melt into it. The breast band Hawke wears, the only thing keeping her top-half decent in comparison to Isabela’s fully clothed-ness, is soft under Isabela’s hands as they trail upwards, hungry and wanting. Hawke pulls back before she can unclasp it, giving her a wry smile that says she knew exactly what Isabela’s intentions were.
“What, don’t I get more than a kiss in thanks for my services?” she asks, pressing her cheek to Hawke’s collarbone instead. “I was injured in the line of duty after all.”
“Oh yes, you poor dear.” Hawke laughs, stroking a hand through Isabela’s hair. “A truly vicious wound.”
“It stung.”
“Mmhm, I’m quite sure.”
Isabela grins into Hawke’s soft skin like she can’t help herself, and really she can’t. It drives her bonkers most times, the things Hawke does to her, makes her do and feel, but for now she lets herself bask in it. When Hawke moves a minute later, she moves with her, following her down onto their shared bed – her cheek pressed back to Hawke’s breastbone and Hawke’s hand back in her hair.
A hazy silence falls over them like a blanket, disturbed only when Isabela deigns to ruin it by whispering into the quiet: “Do you really have to go?” She blurts it out almost without meaning to, Hawke’s comforting touch having lulled her into a place of complacency and sleepy, drunk-like honesty. Hawke stiffens, nearly imperceptibly, but with their bodies pressed from hip to chest as they are it’s impossible to miss.
“Don’t tell me you’re worried about me?” Hawke teases, but Isabela can hear the change in her heartbeat, the quick th-thump, th-thump that belies her outward calm, echoing loud in her ear like the ocean trapped in a shell.
She lifts her head to look Hawke in the eyes. They flicker away at first, nervous, but eventually they hold, green flecked golden-brown nearly glowing in the lantern light. “I thought we talked about this already,” Hawke says, quiet, resigned.
She’s right of course, they had. Months ago. After Hawke had finally divulged the secrets passed between her and her mysterious Warden friend over a bottle of wine. Isabela hadn’t thought much of it at the time, hadn’t even considered what it might all really mean, too caught up in the delirious joy that came from having Hawke at her side and the open sea at her beck and call. And then the bloody fucking sky had gone and ripped itself a new arsehole, and suddenly things were too serious, Hawke had said. Too dangerous. Something had to be done, and done now, and of course it had to be done be her. When didn’t it?
Now here they are– docked in Cumberland, ready to hoist anchor and finish the journey to Jader by nightfall the next day, with the reality of Hawke’s shorn hair sitting on the bedside table heavy in her belly, and Isabela busy making an ass out of herself asking stupid questions she already knows the answer to on what is likely to be their last night and– Maker take her…
Isabela sits up, too fast, the motions too jerky to be casual. Hawke’s hand slips from her hair to the mattress with a soft thump, and she gazes up from the pillows, brow pinched with worry.
“Bela?” Hawke whispers her name, placing her fallen hand on Isabela’s thigh where it straddles her hips. “Bela what–”
“I’ll never understand you, you know,” Isabela says on a harsh laugh, shaking her head even as her hand finds Hawke’s against her thigh and squeezes it. “This– this insatiable need of yours to fix everything.”
She can see Hawke’s throat bob when she swallows, see the slight hitch in her chest as she breathes in and out.
“I’m sorry, I–”
Isabela shakes her head again. “Don’t– don’t you dare apologize for it, that’s not…”
Hawke frowns, but stays silent until Isabela speaks again, slow and with her face twisted up like every word is gravel in her throat. “It’s just you make me crazy with how good you are, you know that? Every damn circle you’ve dragged me to, every refugee camp, even the ones they chased us out of… I’m not meant for that sort of thing, but you… you just give everything, even when it’s none of your damned business, even when you’d be better leaving well enough alone. You’re always so insufferably you sometimes it makes me want to toss my cookies and I–” She is at a loss for the rest of the words. So rarely without something to say, she laughs at herself, trailing the thumb of her free hand across Hawke’s cheekbone, down her nose and over her slightly parted lips, memorizing them. The digit tingles with residual magic, it likely will for days, but Isabela almost wishes Hawke hadn’t bothered to heal it at all; that she had left it an open wound to twin the one being left in her chest by Hawke’s leaving, to pulse and bleed with every beat of her damned fool heart.
“You’re not going to lose me,” Hawke says finally, shocking Isabela with an answer to her unasked question. She shouldn’t be surprised, Hawke knows her inside and out by now; every gilded edge, every nook and cranny, even the musty cobwebbed corners where thoughts like this nestle and wait.
“That’s what you said back in Kirkwall,” Isabela replies, mouth twisted into an almost grimace.
“And here I am.”
Parts of you, sure, Isabela thinks. Minus the bits you leave behind with everyone you help, everyone you meet, the pieces of you I lose every day to this or that. But she knows she’d rather have this much of Hawke, this much that has been so unjustly allotted to her and her alone, than none at all. She’s always been selfish though, once a thief always a thief, afraid of Hawke slipping through her fingers more and more every time she’s re-cut into something else right before her eyes – from refugee to noble, champion to traitor, fugitive, to inspiration, to legend; the acute pain of loving something that does not solely belong to you sharp and bright in her chest. So she just nods, shifts to make space for Hawke to sit up as well so they’re nearly of height again.
“At least back then I was with you, keeping an eye on your sorry ass.” There’s no heat to her words, in fact to Isabela’s own ears they sound almost hollow. Hawke takes her other hand in hers so that both of her hands are held vice-like in both of Hawke’s.
“You belong here,” she tells her, gesturing with a tilt of her chin to, Isabela assumes, the entirety of her ship and possibly all of Thedas itself (except wherever she’s going of course). “Doing what you do best. Waiting for me to come home to you, just like in all those tragic sea shanties you’re always humming to yourself when you think I can't hear.”
Isabela snorts. “Pretty sure you’ve got that backwards dearest. The sailor isn’t usually the one doing the waiting.”
“Well I know that’s not true, just because you don’t hear about it in the songs doesn’t mean anything,” Hawke insists, a fledgeling smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. On impulse, Isabela leans in to kiss it, greedily claiming a part of that smile for herself too. Hawke makes a small sound deep in her throat and deepens the kiss with fervor. The smile eventually slips away, only to be replaced by something nearly better– chapped lips, gently worrying teeth, the sweet slide of her tongue against her own.
After too long, not long enough really but Isabela supposes breathing is somewhat important, she pulls away. Their foreheads press together for a moment, their noses bumping companionably, as Hawke breathes a sigh of both contentment and resignation. Isabela stares curiously as she lifts her hands, still entwined in her own, and bestows each with a single kiss. Then one on her forehead, and a last placed lightly on her lips again– it’s almost reverential in its purposefulness, and Isabela can’t help but feel anointed, like she is made some kind of holy thing under Hawke's touch.
Isabela does not pretend to always understand Hawke, but in the silence she recognizes these kisses for what they are, these promises Hawke is pressing to her skin: I love you. I will come back. I am always yours. She accepts them, turning their wrists to brush mirror image kisses across Hawke’s knuckles and to her mouth: Thank you. I hope so. I love you too.
The next night at the port in Jader, bathed in soft moonlight on the deck of her – their – ship, Isabela is the one to take Hawke’s hands first.
“You’d better come back,” She chokes out, trying to look severe but knowing she’s failed. "If you don't, I'll have to kill you."
Hawke laughs wetly, nodding, obviously not trusting herself to speak. Isabela gives her hands a stern squeeze, then drops them in favor of wrapping arms around her and kissing Hawke with a desperation she would never willingly admit to later. Hawke returns the kiss just as fiercely, fingers digging into Isabela’s biceps hard enough she is certain to have bruises later; more mementoes to keep.
“All right, go,” Isabela gasps, tearing herself away from Hawke’s mouth at last. “Before I change my mind and tie you up to keep you here.”
Hawke bites her lip, looking for all the world like she’s considering it, but eventually she shakes herself back to reality and slips from the circle of Isabela’s arms like sand through a sieve. The weight of the promises left on the backs of Isabela’s hands sit heavy as she watches her go; watches as her silhouette clears the gangplank, disappears into the hustle and bustle of port, and then all at once is gone.