Chapter Text
If anyone were to ask Carver when he decided to join the Templars, he would have said it was in a moment of spite. However, the truth of it was that the idea came to him in the Blooming Rose, his hands fisted in the blonde locks of a woman whose name almost certainly wasn't "Candescence" as she diligently licked and sucked him to a rather mediocre completion. Still, Carver wasn't going to complain overmuch, you got what you paid for after all, and he didn't have much in the way of coin left after his darling sister had taken the fifty sovereigns necessary to fund the Dwarven expedition and then left him behind like he hadn't sacrificed just as much as she had to get where they were.
She probably would have been disgusted with him to know what he was up to at the Blooming Rose. She'd known about his patronage of the place as they worked off their contract over the last year, and had never failed to make her disapproval known. He'd never bothered telling her that the only reason that he'd gone before was because the other smugglers took him along, and it was easier to fit in, even if you only had a drink at the bar, if you did so. He couldn't get along with magic. He had to work hard to fit in.
In fact, he thought, with a distinct lack of amusement, the only way she could possibly disapprove of him more was if he went and joined the Templars.
Of all the thoughts that went through his head as he lay there on the just-about-clean sheets, that thought was the only one to stay with him as Candescence finished her task, and he went through the process of redressing, straightening his hair, and flipping her an extra silver piece as a tip. Her eyes lit up as she caught it, and in spite of her lack of clothing it disappeared quickly. Quite a trick.
He took his time meandering out of Hightown and down into the Lowtown hexes. He had no particular desire to rush back to Gamlen's horrid little shack, to be subject to his uncle's disdain or his mother's constant worry about her eldest child. At least his sister had taken the dog with her. He wasn't sure he would have been able to take its constant whining crying at the loss of its Mistress. He doubted that they'd even miss his presence.
He thought about going and seeing one of his friends about the city, though, the more he thought about it, they always seemed to be his sister's friends more than his own. Still, Merrill might enjoy a visit, and Isabela was always good for a laugh and a pint, but he found that the thought of socialising with them sat ill with him. Maybe he was just in a bad mood. Maybe the thought of being 'Hawke's little brother' knotted his stomach tighter and tighter until the frustration of it made him want to scream.
He wasn't sure when he was consciously aware of turning away from Lowtown, but he found himself moving away from the stone stairways and towards the passenger boats that ferried citizens and visitors between the city proper and the Gallows. There were more than a few Templars standing around, almost all of them recruits, standing around with their helmets off, laughing and talking, moving away and through into the city to visit the markets, maybe, or the Chantry.
What am I thinking? he wondered, and turned over that niggling thought that he had been holding in his mind since he'd left the Blooming Rose. It was a stupid idea. He was just mad at his sister.
Deliberately, he turned away from the boats, and made his way, in more or less a straight line, into Lowtown, back to Gamlen's shack. His mother was sitting by the fire, repairing shirts with a furrowed brow, a small job she did to bring in a little extra coin. She barely raised her eyes from his needle and thread to murmur, "Hello, dear," as he entered. Gamlen wasn't about. Presumably he was busy gambling or drinking away what little coin his schemes brought him, or that mother gave him out of pity.
There were a few notes for his sister on the desk. Two from Isabela, one from Merrill, one from Fenris, a few others from various people around the city. Nothing for him. He scowled and the notes and resisted the childish urge to sweep them all onto the floor. He glanced over at mother, who had her attention firmly fixed on her sewing, ignoring him.
He opened a drawer, retrieving a cloth and oil, and took his sword and retreated to the tiny room he had to share with his sister. He sat, cross-legged, on his bunk, laid the sword in his lap and began the process of carefully cleaning, sharpening and oiling the weapon. It wasn't anything special. It was a solid, well-built weapon that had been purchased at one of the stalls in Hightown. His sister's weapon was a stave passed down from their father, an ancestral weapon that reflected the line of mages in the Hawke family. He thought that it had probably been a surprise that between the Hawke lineage and the Amell blood that he wasn't a mage.
He paused briefly, in the middle of rubbing the whetstone in his hands over a dent in the edge of the sword, and reached under the bed, retrieving a small metal box, unlatching the top and staring at the folded, yellowed pages inside. He hesitated a long moment. He'd read the papers so many times that their contents were committed to memory, but he unfolded them anyway and laid him out on the mattress as he picked up the cloth, beginning to clean and buff the metal of his weapon.
The letters between his father and his Templar friend were necessarily couched in cryptic phrases, no doubt too much at risk of being intercepted by those less sympathetic to escaped mages than Carver's namesake. But there was a genuine affection on display in those scrawled words, a friendship that seemed at odds with what he'd been brought up to think about the Templars. They'd moved constantly while they were little children. The longest place they'd stayed was Lothering, and there they had attended Chantry services regularly, on the ground that a family who avoided the Templars was infinitely more suspicious than a good and pious family who revered the Maker as the Chantry commanded. He remembered Ser Bryant, the head of the Templars there, and his cheerfully friendly attitude towards Carver and the other village boys. Father had never liked him spending too much time hanging around the Templars, and had kept him at home a great deal.
His life, his friends, had always been secondary for what had been important to his father: his sisters. He was the one who had to give up his friends every time they moved, the one who couldn't do anything to draw attention to himself, never allowed to excel. He'd enjoyed the chance to go and join the King's army. For the first time, he'd been able to put the only skill he had to good use: the ability to swing a sword. And no one had looked over his shoulder and asked where his sister was.
He looked down at the sword in his hands, and realised that he'd finished cleaning it at some point, and was now just rubbing the cloth over it pointlessly, more at risk of wiping away all the oil he'd just carefully applied than anything else. He sighed, and set aside the cleaning tools, carefully laid the sword on top of the barrel by the wall, and folded up the letters neatly and tucked them back in the lockbox, returning it to its position under the bed. Then he laid back on his bunk, and stared at the underside of the mattress above him.
He felt restless, discomforted. He never really been without something to do with his time. After the King's Army, there had been the flight to Kirkwall, then the year with the Red Irons, who had always been up to something or other, then the attempt to make enough money to join the expedition to the Deep Roads, and now... now...
Carver twisted around on the lumpy, uncomfortable, mattress. It was this same feeling of being frustrated and without direction that had driven him to the Blooming Rose. While his time there had taken the edge off his dissatisfaction, it was starting to return in full force now. He wanted to hit something, to kick something and scream in its face.
Well, there was one place he could do that.
~*~
Carver ducked the swing of a particularly mean-looking bruiser of a man, and kneed him in the stomach. The man doubled over, enough for Isabela to smash him over the head with a ceramic tankard. It shattered satisfyingly, and the man dropped. Isabela crowed in delight, and then yelled a warning, in time for Carver to be hit in the back by a chair. It staggered him, and he turned just in time to see his assailant rearing back for another swing. The man was slowed by drink, and Carver had no problem delivering a sharp punch to the ribs. He was certain he felt something crack, but whether the man did was another matter.
Starting a brawl in the Hanged Man was a little like sending a pack of hungry mabari crazy. Except instead of tossing a bone, you only had to hurl an insult, and suddenly fists and drinks were flying in equal measure. Corff didn't even looked perturbed by the ruckus. He kept the glass bottles out of reach for the times when fights broke out, and was leaning against the wall, cleaning a mug with a dirty rag and looking bored.
Isabela had given him a sultry smile and an arched eyebrow when he'd entered, purring, "Someone looks itchy." She'd propped her head on her hand. "Need some help scratching it?"
The idea had been appealing, he had to admit. But after a brief consideration, he'd said, "It's not that sort of itch."
"Oh," if anything, her grin had broadened, "Well, sweetling, if it's that sort of scratching you're after, then may I recommend Hurley over there? He's six sheets to the wind, and rather oversensitive about his hair."
It hadn't taken long to kick off a brawl after that. Carver hadn't so much fun in weeks.
He had no idea how long it went on, but at some point there was an almighty bang as the door crashed opened, and authoritarian bellowing of, "Alright! Break up it! BREAK IT UP!" as the guard arrived and started separating combatants. Isabela grabbed his wrist, eyes bright and alive, and said,
"Come on! Back door!"
She pulled him through the drunken sots who had yet to realise that the guard had turned up to end their fun, and were too busy decorating the floor with their teeth and blood, and out into the alley behind the Hanged Man, a place that, if it were possible, smelt worse than the inside of the tavern. Isabela giggled, high-spirited, and they kept running, twisting and turning and passing through at least half a dozen hexes, and were somewhere halfway between Lowtown and the docks when Isabela turned to him and said, mischievously, "Think we lost them?"
Maybe it was the heaving of her bosom in such an eye catching fashion, or the way her skin was flushed with exertion. Whatever was the impetus behind his decision, he hadn't realised that he'd moved to press her against the scratchy stone wall, shadowed by the dimness of evening, until the moment his lips pressed against hers, one hand coming up to tangle in her hair. She certainly didn't seem to object, making appreciative noises, and pulling him closer, her hands roaming across his back.
The feeling didn't last. After only a few moments, he pulled back. Isabela didn't seem offended, only looked at him sympathetically. "Did that help?" she asked, running her fingers through his hair.
"A bit," he admitted.
"I've had men like you on my crews," she said, thoughtfully. The feeling of her nails across his scalp wasn't entirely unpleasant, and their bodies were still pressed flush together. Carver wasn't really up to moving at that precise moment in time. "Antsy. Being cooped up on a ship for weeks on end is why we have shore leave, you know. Don't often see it in a lad on dry land. Feeling your sister's absence, hmm?"
And that was enough to kill any last vestiges of desire that had been swimming in his veins. He pushed away, though not roughly, and stalked away from her a few paces. There was the shifting of cloth and a small sigh as Isabela rearranged her clothing and hair.
"My sister," he said, in a harsh, bitten off tone, "Has nothing to do with me."
Isabela chuckled, lightly. "Of course, sweetling. Which is why you've been prowling around the city like a wounded bear cub for the last few days. Don't think I haven't noticed. I'm an observant girl." She winked at him, and he turned away from her in vague embarrassment, although, really, considering they had been about half an inch away from an act of outraging public decency, he shouldn't have been.
"Maybe you should check out the Chanters board," she suggested, and rolled her shoulders, tilting her head one way then the other. "It'd keep you busy, if nothing else. Worked for she who we shall not mention."
"Maybe," he said, though the thought of going and filling odd-jobs off the board filled him with a vague sense of misery. Was his life going to be nothing more than doing the work no one else wanted to do, running behind after his sister and his worth measured by how well he could swing a sword and nothing else?
Why did it suddenly just not feel like it was enough?
Isabela settled a hand on his shoulder. "Look," she said, with a sympathetic smile, "I don't know what's gotten into you at the moment. But if experience has taught me anything, it's that new opportunities are right around the corner. You just have to reach out and grab them before they can run off. And if you don't find any opportunities, you make them for yourself."
She patted his shoulder and then withdrew her hand. "I'm going to see if Corff's managed to clear up the bodily fluids. There was a delightfully fluffy Orlesian mercenary in tonight, and she rather looked like she was planning to be there all night. Will you be back later?"
Carver sighed. "No," he said, "I don't think so. Give your Orlesian friend my regards."
"Will do, sweetling, will do." And then Isabela was gone, leaving Carver alone with the slowly developing chill of the night air.
He made his way back to Gamlen's shack. His uncle was still gone, and his mother was napping by the fireplace. He crept past her and went to his bedroom, his alone until his sister returned. He knew, in some part of him, that if he kept going on like he had the last few days, he'd probably wind up getting killed, either by starting a fight with the wrong person, or getting drunk and stumbling into a gang. He wanted to do something with his life, something that had meaning, something that didn't involve running around in his sister's shadow.
I'd have to be a Templar for that to happen.
The thought returned to him from earlier that day, but this time there was nothing to distract him from it. Not all Templars were bad, evil monsters. In fact, Carver told himself, he severely doubted that any of them were the boogeymen that father had made them out to be to keep he and his sisters scared away from them. They were respected in Kirkwall, and throughout Thedas.
And, he thought viciously, it would probably give his sister a heart attack to see him dressed in the armour of a Templar. How better to set himself apart from her, his apostate sister, than to join the Templars? He wouldn't turn her in, after all to do so would probably kill his mother in a quite literal sense, but he could make a mark for himself that didn't involve her.
It would be nice to show Aveline up. No discipline indeed. Carver would show her, and his sister, exactly what he was made of. That was the moment when Carver realised he'd made up his mind, and, with the decision that he would head to the Gallows in the morning firmly made, he slept soundly for the first time in days.