Chapter Text
Wrist, neck, upper arm, none beat with any conviction. For a moment, his skin crawled and flickered blue. There was no pulse, and even his healing magic no longer ran clear - the impurity of malice tainted even that.
“Patients,” he called them. They would be little more than the dog-lord dead meat the Marchers took them for if things went on like this.
The breath on the wick is not yours, Justice reminded him. Anders tried not to think about how life beyond the Veil was corroding his friend, just as surely as this City of Chains was grinding his own convictions down finer than any lyrium sand. Only a single grain is needed to slip the neck of the hourglass and draw the hour near. But who holds the glass?
The boy’s heart stuttered, then leapt and bound like a rabbit out of a foxhole. Anders doubled over from the effort and the relief only to feel his skin stippled with blue once more. The boy’s father steadied him and probably thanked him but he could not hear him over the blood pounding in his ears. Vaguely, he perceived the approach of several imposing individuals, all of whom were armed.
“Stop! I have made this place a sanctum of healing and salvation! Why do you threaten it?”
The woman, equipped with a keen-edged halberd, stepped forward. “I looked for the lit lantern, healer. I see I was not lead astray.” She had a peculiar look about her, of partial Rivaini descent maybe - swarthy-skinned and silver-haired, with eyes the color of burnished gold. Like the Kirkwall Chantry’s Andraste Exultant come to life.
“Another delicate mage flower? Figures.” This one was likely her brother, with the same high cheekbones and dark complexion. He made no secret of his mistrust as he stepped toward her with his hand on the hilt of the broad-edged greatsword that ran the full length of his back.
She touched his arm gently and he flinched, but the tension in his huge shoulders relaxed. “Carver, please. The Deep Roads won’t map themselves.”
“That’s my girl. Always getting straight to the point.” The dwarf to her side was far less jumpy and eyed him in a way that seemed friendly enough, though the wicked crossbow over his shoulder was anything but.
Anders scowled. “If you’re here on Grey Warden business, you’d best leave now. I didn’t sail all the way to Kirkwall only to be dragged underneath it.”
“Ser, I’m well aware that you’re a Warden no longer and your business in Kirkwall is your own. I’m here about my business.”
Ser. He almost laughed aloud. No one had called him that in his entire life. “Oh? And what business might that be? Speak quickly, I’ve patients waiting.”
“Of course. My associate, Varric Tethras, and I have set out to finance an exploratory expedition into the Deep Roads. We’ve no knowledge of nearby entrances however, and were hoping you might help us with that. It’s a fair-minded request, is it not?”
He considered this. The hour was late, and it was worth risking being ratted out to the Templars if it meant enlisting capable help. “If you’re a fair-minded lot” - he paused to give the brother a significant look - “then you’ll agree that one good turn deserves another. I do have a map, and you shall have it, if you’ll come with me tonight. I’m here in Kirkwall for a friend - a mage. I mean to save him from the Gallows. But I cannot do so alone.” The brother glowered silently, but the dwarf remained impassive and the woman seemed merely attentive.
“I’d been exchanging letters with him via maidservant, but the templars must’ve found us out, because his letters stopped coming. I fear the worst…I must go to him tonight.”
“Do you mean to make him an apostate, like yourself?” Her tone was careful and even, but still he could feel his hackles rise.
“Andraste said magic should serve man, not rule him, but I’ve yet to find a mage who wanted to rule anything. It goes against no rule of the Maker for mages to live as free as other men.”
“Forcing mages into servitude is not the way to prevent the rise of another Imperium.”
It was said without hesitation and with a readiness that suggested total sincerity. “That’s…not usually the response I get.”
“Small wonder, that,” scoffed the brother.
“It’s a deal, then?” She took his hand with callused fingers and shook it firmly. Familiar calluses.
“Deal.”
“Then meet me at midnight in the Chantry, beneath Andraste Exultant. And come prepared for a fight. You may call me Anders, Messere…?”
“Just Hawke, thank you kindly. Marietta Hawke at your service. With her surly brother Carver and best mate Varric Tethras in tow.” The brother rolled his eyes at that and the dwarf smiled. They melted into the soot-laden gloom of the Darktown corridor beyond his clinic, but she lingered behind.
“I just wanted to say that what you’re doing for these people…healing their hurts, delivering their children, easing their passage to the Maker’s side - that is the greatest protest against the demon-ridden maleficar the Chantry would make us out to be.”
“’Us?’”
“Yes.” She grinned as in the palm of her hand a ball of flame flickered into life. “I am not so fortunate as yourself. My magic’s no good for healing. But I fully intend to use it to protect you and your friend in the Chantry tonight. Any templar who might cross you will spend their final moments bathed in Andraste’s eternal flame.”
So that’s where the calluses came from. Her face, with its wicked grin, was a thing of frightful beauty lit by light of her own making in this place of creeping darkness. He returned her smirk with one of his own.
“A fitting end, though it is perhaps more than they deserve.”
“Poetry over penance, I always say.” He laughed for the first time in too long a while.
Now she, too, receded into darkness, her flame out so quickly he wondered if she’d ever really been there. He’d had some blackouts lately, but he’d never hallucinated, so she must’ve been real.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Carver’s grip on the tarnished silverite doorknob outside Gamlen’s garret was such that against all logic, Marietta Hawke feared he’d crush it. It was one of many articles their uncle had “reclaimed” from the old Amell estate.
“Careful, brother, that’s the most expensive piece of the house you’ve got there in your meaty hands.” She nudged him gently aside and jiggered it open with a graceful gesture that just made Carver more annoyed.
“Always with the deflecting! Etta, this is serious. You can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a templar, and you want to go running right into their arms? Have all the years of your life on the run - all the years of my life - taught you nothing?” They sat around Gamlen’s rickety card table, Hawke idly shuffling the cards in preparation for their evening game of Wicked Grace until the daggers Caver glared at her proved too deadly to ignore.
“As if you’d let me go with you anyhow! You’ve always got to be playing the hero and lording it over your little brother like you’re the Queen of Ferelden-”
“That’s enough,” she snapped. “You know very well that the only person who wants you out of my shadow more than you is me and it’s mother who doesn’t want you going. I’ll not stop you. I didn’t ask to be the one holding this family together but how could I avoid it when Mother’s every word to me is weighted with the kind of gentle resentment only she can bear so gracefully? I didn’t ask to be the eldest, I didn’t ask to be a mage, and I certainly didn’t ask you to set up camp and brood in the shadow of my abilities, but I am, and you did.”
Carver fell silent, his expression hard and unreadable as it so often was these days. She put a hand on his.
“We’re more alike than you think,” she said. “I know you can’t abide an injustice, and I can’t abide this one. I can’t ignore a fellow mage in need, and we need those maps.” He groaned and rolled his eyes but for once, he didn’t push her hand away.
“One day, you’re going to get us both killed.”
“Both?” Hawke grinned.
“Of course. I’m with you, like it or no,” he replied, expressionless, but there was a smile in his eyes. He tossed her the card deck. “But first, let’s see how much more money you can cheat me out of.”
“Wouldn’t be a real afternoon if I didn’t.”
She arrived precisely on time, emerging from the shadows of the Chantry courtyard as quiet as you please, her golden eyes as hungry and intent as those of the cats he watched prowling the abandoned mining tunnels of Darktown. He was surprised to see that her brother was there too, as was the dwarf.
“Are you ready?” he whispered. “Were you seen?”
“Not that I could tell,” Varric replied, “and believe me, I can tell.”
“Very well then. I will go to Karl while you keep an eye out for templars.”
“I’ll do you one better, Blondie. I’ll throw the second eye in free of charge.” Anders smiled. He was going to like this guy.
Hawke walked toward the Chantry’s towering gilt doors. “We’re ready.”
They entered, the huge golden hinges making no sound and their footfalls echoing only faintly. It was said that the magister who used to sit in state here had enchanted it to be nearly silent, for his own peace of mind.
The red velvet carpeting of the steps leading up to the second level swam before Anders’ eyes. He had been getting more dizzy spells like this lately, usually when he was tense or anxious. It was troubling. He reached for the bannister to steady himself.
“Are you alright?” Her voice cut to the quick of his consciousness like a knife.
He stood up straight. “I will be. Let’s get this over with.”
On the second level, they turned a corner and there he was - the back of him anyhow. There was more grey in his hair maybe, but he still stood as strong and tall as Anders remembered him.
“Karl, it’s me.” But he wouldn’t turn.
“Anders, I know you too well. I knew you would never give up.” Karl’s voice had always had a certain mellifluous quality to it that Anders had never tired of hearing. But it was flat and toneless now and that could mean only one thing. Oh Maker, not that. Anything but that.
“What’s wrong? Why are you talking like-”
He turned, the rusty orange brand of Tranquility a stark contrast to his fair skin. He could barely hear Karl’s monotone above the rush of blood in his ears. “I was too rebellious, like you,” Karl said carefully. “The Templars knew I had to be made an example of.”
“No…” The dizziness was back, along with something thick and bilious in the back of his throat. Karl’s droning continued.
“How else will mages ever master themselves? You’ll understand, Anders. As soon as the Templars teach you to control yourself.”
His skin flickered and crackled blue. The last thing he saw was Hawke’s halberd, in reality a dark wooden stave tipped with a dull orange orb she drew from her trousers and locked into place, a cruel blade at its base. Fire sprung into life at her fingertips just as everything else went dark.
“Anders, what did you do?” The first thing he heard was Karl’s voice, his real voice. “It’s like you brought a piece of the Fade into this world. I had already forgotten what that feels like.” Anders fully came to, head aching and fingers tingling. The others watched them in silence. Hawke and Carver were covered in blood, but the dwarf bowman was nearly spotless. He’d tend to all of them later.
“It’s like a gateway to the Fade inside you, shining like the sun.”
He tried speaking, though his throat was raw and his mind reeling, but he managed it. “I have some…unique circumstances, yes. But more importantly, Karl, what’s happened to you?”
“The Templars here are far more vigilant than in Ferelden. They found a letter I was writing you. You cannot imagine it, Anders. All the color, all the music in the world, gone. I would gladly give up my magic, but this - I’ll never be whole again. Please, kill me before I forget again! I don’t know how you brought it back but it’s fading!”
“Karl, no…” Hawke moved across the room towards the two of them.
“There’s no need for that.” Her eyes were glassy in the luminous cast of the Chantry’s many candles. “Perhaps we can find a cure.”
“Can you cure a beheading?” he replied more harshly than he’d intended. “No, the minds of Tranquil mages are forever sundered from the Fade. They will never dream or feel again.”
“Please, Anders.” Already his voice sounded more distant, the look in his dark eyes more remote. “It’s fading already. Be swift and sure.”
“Help him.” Hawke’s voice was barely above a whisper. Karl blinked slowly and the others looked on in silence, the set of Carver’s jaw as sharp and stiff as the blade on his back.
“Why do you look at me like that?” Karl was gone. He could not kill what was already dead. Anders drew a dagger from within his cloak.
“I was too late. I’m sorry, Karl.” He was swift and sure.