Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fenris -

I’m sorry for leaving, and I’m sorrier for getting angry that you didn’t want me to. I know you want to be with me, to protect me from what’s to come. I also know that what you could most protect me from is also what could most hurt you. I can’t have that. We protect each other, right?

I’d have you with me if it wouldn’t kill me to see you hurt.

The Inquisition has been looking for me, and Varric has held them off long enough. I guess I’ll find out why it was so important for them soon, but I know for me it’s Corypheus. We were both there – and I’ll never feel safer than when you have my back – but this is a burden of my own. It was my father’s blood that locked him away and mine that set him free. I feel I should be able to know him, understand at least the little my father must have, but I’m just as clueless as anybody else. I just know I can’t sit by and watch him happen to someone else. I hope you can forgive me.

You haven’t said, but I know I’ve been hurting you. I’m not sure why I don’t know how to live without something like this to turn to, to throw myself at. But I won’t drag you into it with me. It doesn’t mean I love you any less, and it doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t ache to be away from you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it some of the time. When you’re just gone for the day I’ll turn to tell you when you’re not there. I love your humor, even when you’re laughing at me. I love your anger, even if you’re angry with me now. I love your happiness, and I can’t be sorry enough that it’s not what I’m leaving you with.

You’re with me, even if I didn’t let you be. I’ll be thinking about you all the time. I’ll be dumb enough to forget I left you behind. But I’m leaving my heart there with you.

Make sure nothing happens to it, if it’s not too much trouble.

- Hawke

Fenris -

Varric hasn’t gotten anything from you, but I hope you’re reading this anyhow. I know you hate letters going through him (the nosy rat), so maybe you’re waiting to say whatever it is when I get home. I hope I’m not too long to hear it.

Everything here reminds me of you, even the Inquisitor! She’s not much like you, but I suppose I see an elf glow and I get misty in the eyes. In all seriousness, she’s kind of lovely once you get past the weight of the world on her shoulders. She even got me talking – I told her a couple stories from when it was all of us, and even about that hawk I brought home once. I still have the scar from where he bit me and you didn’t even appreciate the likeness. Still sore about it!

She got me to talk about you, too. But that’s not particularly difficult. What’s the opposite of a sore subject?

Varric’s the same as always, but he seems to feel the weight of Corypheus too. I know I shouldn’t tell him to back off, but come on. That’s my burden! The blood of my father trumps being the guy who came along, in my most expert of books. He’s also in trouble with a seeker here for hiding me for so long. Well. I suppose I’ll take a punch for him, if it comes down to it. Even though he didn’t tell me that CULLEN is a COMMANDER in the INQUISITION!

I couldn’t believe it either! They let him within an egg’s throw of command again? But alas. It’s just like old times, only instead of staring in judgment across the gallows it’s across fields of burly men, or a particularly robust table.

There hasn’t been much action yet, though we’ve gone to see our warden friend. I suppose there’s more than corruption in the ranks, if Corypheus has anything to say about it. I can only be glad Carver’s still in Highever.

Blood magic’s abound, there’s a Tevinter altus (as he so insists) trouncing about the library, and I can’t step three times in any direction without knocking into a templar. But as much as I’m glad you aren’t having to deal with this, I do wish you were here. I miss you more than I can say. Maybe that’s selfish of me. Sorry. You can be cross with me about it when I get back.

I love you! I hope you’re doing well. I always hope you’re doing well.

Don’t forget to walk the dog! I wouldn’t mind if you killed a couple of snakes in my honor, if you’re already at it.

All my love

-Hawke

Fenris,

I’d have given anything to not have to send you this letter. I’d have given anything to send him back home to you. But there was no fighting this. Fighting him.

Hawke is gone.

We were fighting something impossible. The fight had dragged us into the Fade, and that’s where we left him. We couldn’t go back. You know I would have if I could. I’d have been lost right along with him if the rift hadn’t closed behind us.

He slipped from my grasp, gone before I could do anything. The Inquisitor says he stayed behind to save her, shoved her through so she couldn’t even look back, and stayed to fight on his own. He liked her well enough. They got on like a house on fire. Maybe he thought it was something we would have been proud of him for. I’d just have wanted him alive. I know you do too.

He was staying in one of the rooms and I found a note on top of the mess he’d made of his desk. It doesn’t say it, but I know it’s for you. He was wearing his token, though, so I can’t send it with you.

I’m sorry.

Varric.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to throw this away, or it might be some sort of something I bring with me when I come back home. A reminder, maybe, of how much I wish I was there with you. Something to knock me over the head with if I ever decide to leave again. I still hope you never have to read it.

I’ll do anything I can to make it back, I’m not giving up. It just seems like this gets bigger and bigger in my head every day I’m here. You know I’ll throw my lot in with anything I believe in even if it gets me nowhere good. It got me you, though, so it can’t all turn out bad.

This might be the most important thing I’ve ever done, but right now all I can think of is you. I’m still sorry for leaving you, for hurting you and not letting you be with me. I’m also sorry for being glad you’re not here. That feels like the worst thing I’ve ever done, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye to you to your face. And you deserve that, if you can’t have a promise kept.

I’m not sure I’ve ever told you how proud I am of you. You’ve been the strongest person I've known since I met you, and you knew my mother. It’s a pretty high bar. But you don’t have to be strong all the time. You can hate me, never want to think of me again, and I’ll still love you. My heart is still there with you whether you choose to bury it or not. I’m not sure I’ll ever live up to how I wish I could love you, but I love you all the same. I still turn to tell you when you’re not here.

-Hawke

Chapter Text

(written in different sections at different times. There’s a whole piece of one of the parchments torn out)

Myrna,

It’s not your fault.

There it is! The only thing I have to say for myself in the event that I don’t make it back from any of the hundreds of things we might do and whatever number of things we may fight over my stay here with the Inquisition. I hope you never have to read this, but I also hope that if you do, you’ll listen to me. It’s not your fault. Okay?

I know what it’s like to be put on some sort of pedestal. A hero of myth and legend and all that, when you boil them down a bit, turn into just another person with just another life who are forced to solve - or make - problems far beyond their ken. (Although, if I’m honest with you, Varric was much less effective at making a hero out of me as the Inquisition does you. Which must only make it harder.)

So many people died in the mess that I and the people I love made - some I know about and others I’ve never even heard of. I ruined people on purpose and I ruined people on accident. I decided things for people I’d never met without even knowing their names. I know how huge and overwhelming it is to feel responsible for a city, let alone a whole world. But just because we can’t help but step on people doesn’t mean you stepped on me. I walked in with my eyes wide open. I always do.

That’s the thing about me you may or may not have had the chance to learn know. I got so used to having my actions mean something that I run to the next biggest thing in the room. Especially when it’s something I had a hand in releasing. I could have just let Varric keep lying about me, just keep living, but I decided not to. I know that sounds bad, but I think you get it. Or you will, maybe. It couldn’t have been me off living again when I could have helped anybody again. Just once, it’s my turn to die.

[Page torn here]

I hope I don’t! But I also hope I helped, if you’re reading this. I hope any of it meant anything. And, actually, I hope you never come to understand. Ignore what I said before.

I suppose all I’m trying to say is I know how it is versus how it’s supposed to be. I know the guilt that comes from you taking one step and everyone else rushing to finish the mile for you. The different you’s that live neatly constructed in everyone else’s heads. It’s terrible to meet the person you fear you’ll become so nestled into how a stranger thinks of you. People will see you and think they get it. In fact, I’m seeing you and thinking I get it! What if you read all this and scoff? You’re projecting, Hawke. It is, in fact, just you!

And well. That’s all I can hope for, isn’t it? That you weren’t already blaming yourself for my death, or don’t think about the absolutely vast height the fall from that pedestal is. I’m writing all this because you’re a good friend. Because you care. Because I love you. And because I would have really wanted someone to tell me it wasn’t my fault that they died. I never got that, but I can be that for you right now.

Varric gets it and he doesn’t. I’m sure your Josephine gets it and doesn’t, or your… Cullen. The thing is that you aren’t allowed to forget it because of all of them, but you also aren’t allowed to let it drown you. Because I said so, and really I’m quite a bit older than you and therefore smarter, so you should listen to me. Consider it a warning from a man who runs towards danger signs.

I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know how to let myself wake up the next day, and the next, and the next, and keep on doing that without drowning. It’s a point of pretty huge tension in my life currently as of writing this. (I’m in the Inquisition and not making, like, sweet sweet love to my husband. As you can see.) But as much as I see myself in you, I also see a better you, and a better me, maybe. I hope, since you’re reading this, that at least one of us can figure it out.

Hawke.

P.S. Meeting you isn’t what damned me. I enjoyed it, in fact! There are many more people out there who will catch you when you fall, because you do it for them in return. You may think you didn’t, but you already did for me.

P.P.S. If you ever get a dog, name it Dog in my honor. Please. Please.