Chapter Text
Hawke was lounging on the visitor's chair in Varric's office, not an uncommon occurrence these days. The fact that Varric's office was in the Keep now that Varric had been appointed as Viscount was an interesting new development since they'd both made it back to Kirkwall, but Hawke really was happy for him. And as much as Varric bitched and moaned about the work—as Varric was always wont to do, in any situation—Hawke knew that he loved it. Varric loved being able to make some meaningful change to the shithole of a city that meant so much to him.
At the moment, Varric was asking him to help look at some magical artifact the Inquisitor had sent him for Hawke to investigate.
"Yeah," Varric said, "I don't know what Jen was thinking asking you to investigate this fucked up foggy mirror thing, it's not like you're an expert on the subject by any stretch of the word. I just figure that she and Curly didn't want potentially dangerous magical artifacts around their newborn, and sent it out the first chance they got."
Hawke's face lit up, "Aww, she had the kid?"
Varric grinned, "Yup! Just got the letter with the mirror yesterday! It's a girl, and her name is Elaina Cassandra Rutherford. After Curly's mother and the Seeker."
Hawke's face softened with the simple joy of Cullen having a daughter. For as much as he and Hawke would bicker and get on each others nerves back when Cullen was in Kirkwall, Hawke knew that Cullen would make a great father.
Then he smirked, "What do you wanna bet Cassandra sobbed when she found out they were naming the kid after her?"
"Oh, without a doubt."
Hawke sighed, grin softening, and then falling completely when he looked towards the mirror-like object. He pulled a face that told Varric he was concentrating intently.
"It's got a weird energy." He said, looking contemplative.
"Does it?" Varric asked, peering closer at it, "It just looks like a shitty mirror that doesn't reflect things to me."
"Yeah…" Hawke said, "It's absolutely bursting with magic. I get why Jen didn't want it near the baby."
He reached towards it, glancing at Varric in a 'May I?' gesture.
Varric nodded.
Hawke fiddled with the mirror for a minute, twisting and turning it in his hands, but what exactly he was doing was unclear to Varric.
"Have I ever explained what magic feels like? To me at least."
"No, though I heard plenty of it from Chuckles." Varric said, voice going a little tetchy at the mention of the elf that had abandoned the Inquisition without real explanation.
"Well I know it's different to different people—Bethany always said it was swelling from within her and had almost tactile sensations to different magic. In any case, whatever magic felt like to Solas, to me, I feel like there's a… taste? I guess? To different magical energies. Like electrical magic has a sharp taste up in the roof of my mouth, healing magic starts salty right at the tip of my tongue and moves back to the back and it gets sweeter. Fire is just hot deep in my throat, always feels like heartburn. And ice magic makes my teeth hurt with that feeling like you eat too much mint. Then you get into the weird stuff."
"Oh we're just getting weird?" Varric muttered, but Hawke knew he was just kidding. He was clearly fascinated by Hawke's explanation, which never failed to make Hawke feel pleased.
"Veil magic tastes fuzzy. You know how some reeds have seeds that expand when you touch them? It feels like that, but in my mouth and throat, even though there's nothing there. Having blood magic done on me, or even around me, always tastes—surprise surprise—metallic and syrupy. But then there's this." Hawke looked down at the mirror again, "It's nothing like I've ever experienced. It's like… bright and citrusy. And it feels like vertigo." He stared into the mirror for a moment.
Finally, he shrugged, put down the mirror in the middle of the desk, and slumped further down in the chair opposite Varric.
"I'll look at it closer later. Merrill might have some ideas about it." He said with a grin.
Varric scoffed, "I love Daisy to death, but if this turns out to be another freaky Elven mirror, I'm gonna be pissed at Jen for handing it over to me."
Hawke laughed, that reaction being exactly what he'd been aiming for. He put Varric out of his misery soon enough though, "I don't think it's Elven. There's some runes on the reverse that look to be something with ancient Tevene."
"Yeah, cause that makes me feel so much better." Varric grumbled as he reached down and pulled a bottle of liquor from a desk drawer and offered a glass of it to Hawke, who took it appreciatively. Then Varric studied Hawke for a moment, sipping his own liquor contemplatively.
"You look like shit, Hawke." Varric told him, blunt, but not rude, "Have you ever heard of, I dunno, getting some rest? It isn't like the old days anymore. Kirkwall's not just gonna fall into the Waking Sea or total anarchy. Not even if you take a break."
Hawke shifted a little uncomfortably.
"Yeah. I know." He said, taking an extended sip of the drink Varric had handed him to avoid saying much else.
Varric continued to stare him down appraisingly.
Hawke huffed in frustration as he gave in, sooner than he would have usually done. He was tired.
"It's just… I've been thinking about my dad recently. It's coming up on the 15th anniversary of his death and… After everything with Corypheus… I dunno. He tried so hard to prevent Corypheus' chaos. And then I got involved and fucked that all up. I just wish—"
Hawke interrupted himself suddenly, eyes fixed on the mirror in front of him, no longer foggy.
It was crisp, and showed a man who Hawke recognized immediately as Malcolm Hawke.
They'd always looked similar, but now Garrett Hawke's full beard completed the picture in a way that Malcolm had never gotten to see when he was alive.
It was odd. It was still a mirror, like any other, reflecting the office around him. But instead of seeing Hawke himself, his father stared back at him.
Hawke was reaching for the mirror before he even realized what he was doing.
Varric made a nervous sort of noise as Hawke picked it up, but seemed to relax just a smidge when nothing happened.
"Hawke…" Varric said warningly. "I don't know what you're seeing there, but that mirror seems like some pretty powerful magical shit to be messing with. Just don't do anything stupid."
"You know me, Varric." Hawke replied, sounding a little dazed, distracted. As if he were replying fully on reflex. "I'm always stupid."
He brought his fingers up to brush against the glass.
Varric made a startled noise, alarmed.
Hawke, as if he'd forgotten Varric was sitting across from him, flinched violently. They both watched, as if someone had slowed down time, as the mirror burst apart, all of the excess magical energy inside of it shattering it entirely.
And time sped up again, as everything went bright, and green, and deafeningly loud around them until it was too much to look at, to hear, and they succumbed to unconsciousness.
Hawke was lying facedown on the grass.
Someone was jostling his shoulder.
"Garrett?" Asked the woman. She had a thick Orlesian accent.
Hawke groaned, his head felt like it was splitting in two. Who the fuck was calling him 'Garrett'?
He hadn't been called that since Gamlen died. And even then, Gamlen usually called him 'Hey you' or 'Boy'.
"That's it, Garrett. Slowly. Don't force it."
Hawke was immensely grateful for the Orlesian woman (whose voice was so familiar, like the answer to who it was was hovering just out of reach).
Hawke finally shifted, pulling himself up to sitting position. He was surprised to note that his muscles and joints didn't scream in pain, or creak and pop in discomfort. His head was still a very different story, though. It throbbed as he cracked his eyes open to the bright daylight. When his vision finally cleared, the Orlesian woman came into focus, crouching next to him and looking concerned.
"Leliana?" He asked, brow furrowing in confusion. He hadn't seen her in the Chantry sister robes that she was wearing now since…
Since…
It hit him with a new crash of horrible pain shooting through his head, and sickening nausea. He was sitting in the field behind the Chantry building in Lothering. And there were people.
It wasn't busy by any standards, but it never had been. The very fact there were any people at all was…
It hurt.
He felt happy to see it all like he remembered, but it was almost completely overshadowed by the pain of the memories of seeing his home falling apart as they fled the Blight.
Hawke never expected to see Lothering again, certainly not like this. He and Carver had asked each other once, in one of their rare vulnerable moments, if they thought they'd ever go back to see the damage. At the time, Hawke had said he wouldn't want to. The pain had been far too fresh back then. More recently though, Hawke had considered taking some time to go visit Ferelden; he'd even considered passing through the ruins of Lothering.
But here, with people milling about… people that Hawke knew for a fact were dead.
It hurt him more than he realized it would have. It hurt more than the dreams he'd had of Lothering, mostly back in the early days in Kirkwall.
Leliana put her hand on Hawke's cheek, and turned his face to look at her.
She looked extremely worried. "Garrett?"
Hawke blinked a few times and tried to stumble to his feet. Leliana held onto his elbow to stabilize him.
He looked around, taking in Lothering. For all its flaws, and for however much he wanted to get out and do something else, anywhere else, when he'd actually lived there, all Hawke could feel as he looked around at the place he called home for the entirety of his childhood was gut-wrenching grief. It had all been ripped from him when he was still so horribly young. It hadn't felt like he was so young at the time, but even though he was over twenty then, looking back he had basically still been a child.
His eyes gravitated towards the Hawke family home, his heart aching as he saw all the little things, the things that he could have almost forgotten after so many years away. His mother's little flower box garden with the carefully tended to herbs and flowers, the worn patch of grass just next to the cobblestone path where Dog had always lain outside basking in the sun, and the shoddily painted green door that been painted because Bethany had so badly wanted a pretty painted house. Their dad had known that she and Carver would only end up willing to put in enough effort to paint a small portion before they realized that painting a whole house would be harder work than they'd thought, and had convinced them that the door was an acceptable compromise.
Hawke could remember watching the twins painting the door, bickering about every decision along the way, and he couldn't help but feel a nostalgic sort of warmth bloom in his chest as he thought about it, even though he'd been so annoyed with them and their antics at the time.
The door in question creaked open and oh…
Leandra Hawke stood there looking around until she caught sight of Hawke.
And Hawke felt his knees weaken and his legs start to wobble. Without any real warning to Leliana, Hawke collapsed, falling to his knees and beginning to gasp out sobs before the tears had even started coming to his eyes.
He heard Leandra gasp, and within a moment she was right there next to him, her arms tight around his shoulders, "Garrett, sweetheart, what's wrong?"
Hawke couldn't even choke out any sort of response.
He sat there on the grass, sobbing into his mother's arms for what might have been hours.
And even after he'd stopped actively crying, he held her tightly, terrified that one wrong move would take her away from him again.
Varric woke to the sounds of heavy footsteps and bustling outside his door.
Stupid Seneschal Bran and his stupid ideas about 'A viscount needs to wake up in a timely manner, ser. How else is he to best serve his community?'
(The funniest thing about taking over as Viscount for Varric was that he got to watch Bran's face contort like he'd eaten something unpleasant every time he had to call Varric 'ser' versus the more informal 'serah' that Bran had always used for him throughout the years.)
He rolled over and buried his face into the pillow, hoping to block out some of the noise that Bran was trying to passive aggressively make outside to get Varric up. It wasn't doing anything good for his splitting headache.
Varric wasn't being lazy here, honest, he was just trying to teach Bran a lesson about speaking his mind, and not relying on passive aggression to get Varric to do as he was needed to do. He was doing this as a favor to Bran.
Yeah. A favor.
Sounds as good an excuse as any…
A violent knocking at his door woke Varric with a painful start.
His mouth moved before his brain could catch up, "I'm getting ready, Bran, I'll be out for the meeting with Lady Kenric in just a minute!"
He was pulling on pants, shrugging his coat on, running fingers through his hair to try to force it into something that didn't make it look like he was hungover.
How much do you have to drink to forget that you went out drinking?
There was an almost cruel laughter from beyond the door. Varric froze.
"What the fuck are you on about, Varric? Your contact from the Merchant's Guild is here, but I don't think that he's any 'Lady Kenric'."
Varric's first thought is, absurdly, that he must be dreaming. Surely an entire shift in the world's understanding of how dwarves were able to interact with the Fade was easier to process than…
Bartrand.
Being alive, and sane, and there.
Varric flung open the door, now face to face with his brother, gaping stupidly at him.
"Bartrand." He said, mouth still running without his brain's input, "Merchant's Guild, right. Yeah, I'll be right there. Lemme just grab Bianca."
He shut the door again.
He let himself breathe for a moment, struggling to figure out what all was wrong with the picture.
Bartrand. That was the obvious one.
But there was also the room he was in. It was the one he'd used at the Hanged Man back before he'd left for the Inquisition (been dragged to the Inquisition, thanks so much for that, Cassandra). Especially before he'd come back to Kirkwall, and had become Viscount.
Finally he slung Bianca over his back and headed out to meet, apparently, the contact from the Merchant's Guild. He forced himself not to look at Bartrand on his way out.
He wasn't sure if he would be able to keep walking out the door if he saw Bartrand's face.
His brother was a bastard, but… nobody deserved the fate that the red lyrium had brought him.
It wasn't until halfway through his walk-and-talk meeting with this contact, that Varric remembered the mirror.
Varric was having to use a not-so-insignificant amount of his (already considerably reduced) brainpower on his bullshittery skill so that he might be able to follow along with this conversation at all, what with his still ringing ears, and still pounding headache, and the fact that he barely remembered having ever met this man at all, let alone having agreed to start up business deals with him. All in all, it really made it more difficult to confidently bullshit his way through the conversation than Varric was used to.
But… the mirror.
He blinked a few times, hearing Hawke's words echo in his ears:
"There's some runes on the reverse that look to be something with ancient Tevene."
Varric had first jumped to thinking about Corypheus, especially when Hawke had seemed to bridge that gap himself.
Now, though…
Now, Varric wondered if this was more of Dorian's area of expertise.
If Sparkler has anything to do with this, I'll rip that ridiculously stylish mustache off his face.
If it really was Dorian's area, that meant that whatever Varric had thought might have been happening when he woke up, he really was in his old rooms in Kirkwall.
Bartrand really was there, and alive, and sane.
Which begged the question of when he actually was.
After some time, Hawke seemed to come back to himself somewhat, starting to actually feel the aches in his legs from the position they were curled up in underneath him when he'd fallen to the ground.
Hawke took a deep, somewhat shuddering breath, finally pulling back from Leandra slightly.
She put her hand on his cheek, wiping some of the tear tracks from it, "Oh Garrett…"
With a detached sort of realization, Hawke noted that his beard was patchier. Certainly not in the full majesty he was used to it being.
He ran a hand over his chin to feel how smooth it was as his brain sluggishly tried to kick into overdrive to catch up with what was going on.
Hawke took a deep breath, and he tried to steady himself.
If this were some illusion, he would have noticed by now. It certainly wasn't the fade, it didn't have that fuzzy, peach-skin like quality to it that was absent here.
But that mirror…
Varric had said that the Tevinter mage, Dorian, had invented some sort of time magic. Could this be something like that? Varric said that the Inquisitor and that Dorian fellow had ended up in the future. Was there a chance he was actually back in time? In the past, in Lothering, with his mother? If so, he had to tread very carefully.
He took another deep breath.
"Sorry, I didn't mean to frighten you, mother." Hawke's voice was rough from his sobbing.
"Oh," Leandra cooed, "There's no need to apologize, sweetheart. What happened?"
"Just, uh, an ill-timed afternoon nap and a rather… intense nightmare." Hawke said, figuring it was as good a lie as any.
At Leandra's look of deep concern, Hawke backtracked slightly, "Ah, nothing… sinister."
He didn't want her thinking demons were involved, after all.
Leandra nodded, and pulled Hawke into another hug.
"I've got you, Garrett." Leandra said quietly, stroking his hair comfortingly.
"Thank you." Hawke whispered.
"I'm always going to be there for you, you know that?" Leandra said, clearly meant to be a comfort.
But fuck if that wasn't just heartbreaking.
"You ready to go home, sweetheart?" Leandra asked.
Hawke thought about Bethany, about Carver, about his father, and his mother.
"Yeah," Hawke said, feeling suddenly very old and tired, "I'd like to go home."
Leandra kissed Hawke's temple, and hugged him one last time, before they started making their way together towards Hawke's childhood home.
When they arrived, Hawke could feel his heart pounding in his chest. How was he going to face his family as a whole without completely breaking down again?
He'd always loved his mother dearly, and hers was the death that he blamed himself for the most, and he just hoped that he could keep his shit together for long enough to just not make everyone worried for him.
Bethany and Carver were bickering when they got inside. Or rather, Carver was complaining to Bethany, and Bethany was doing her best to ignore him.
"Mother!" Carver complained, "Bethany took the book I was reading."
Immediately, instinctively, Hawke shot back, "You know how to read?"
Bethany smirked, but didn't take her eyes off the book.
Carver scowled at Hawke for a moment, but didn't take his eye off the prize—Bethany still had the book.
Leandra sighed heavily, "Does everything need to be an argument with you two?"
"It doesn't have to be. If she didn't keep stealing my stuff." Carver said, crossing his arms over his chest.
At this, Bethany finally looked up, "It wasn't your book in the first place, Carver. It was my book that you stole from me last month."
And then Hawke heard his father's voice from the other room, "If you two don't stop arguing about it, it's going to be my book from now on."
Hawke ground his teeth together to stop himself from gaping in utter shock.
Bethany and Carver looked at each other for a moment, before starting to argue extremely quietly.
Leandra gave a huff of annoyance, and threw her hands up in the air. "Malcolm, you deal with this."
Malcolm came in and plucked the book from Bethany's hands.
"Wha- Father!" Bethany said, "It's my book! I was just taking it back after Carver stole it from me."
Malcolm inspected the book for a while before announcing: "Mystery! I love mysteries. Looks like nice bedtime reading." He smiled amusedly at Hawke for a moment, before tucking the book under his arm.
Hawke laughed, in total shock. He didn't know how to react to coming face-to-face with his father after just so many years without him.
That guilt that he'd talked to Varric about, concerning Corypheus, was flaring up. He felt the apology at the tip of his tongue, but was able to stop himself before he started nonsensically apologizing for something that he shouldn't know anything about.
"You alright, Garrett?" Malcolm asked, before Leandra gave him a warning look.
"I'm fine. Just… just a little tired. I might go take a nap." Really, Hawke just needed to get out of there. Having everyone, his whole family there, alive, all at once… it was way too much.
He walked the familiar path to he and the twins' room, and just fell onto the bed.
Hawke had no idea what he was going to do. He just lay there breathing, trying to remain calm. If this was something to do with that mirror, then how would he be able to get back? The mirror shattered, he remembered that. And had Varric also been affected by the magic?
Maker, I hope that he is. I don't want to be alone in this.
And then he felt guilty for the instinctual thought. If he was scared and confused, then Varric probably was as well.
He didn't want to wish that for Varric, but… the instinct for Varric's company was so ingrained in Hawke at this point that he just wanted him there.
But either way… he would have to reach out, send a letter to Varric. Something non-obvious that he wouldn't question if he hadn't also come back, but that he would immediately recognize as Hawke if he had.
And he knew exactly what he should do.
Hawke was out of bed in a moment, and he started penning a letter.
Dear current resident,
Are you feeling like your partners are underwhelmed by your performance? Are you belittled for your small package? If yes, try Hawk Bone Supplements! Found only in Lothering.
You can be proud of your manhood! Just take Hawk Bone Supplements and you will be! Satisfaction or your money back*!
*All parties involved in the sale must be dissatisfied in result for money back
After writing the tiny print at the bottom, Hawke folded the letter and shoved it in a pocket.
He'd send it out later, but for now, he really did need to nap.