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The first missive comes just as the dozens of others that find their way to the Hawke Estate, these days.
“Letter for you, messere!” Bodahn’s chipper as ever. The door hasn’t even fully closed behind her. Hawke’s shoulders sag, just so.
The heavy parchment has her dreading a summons to the Chantry or the Viscount’s office. But when she turns the missive over and her fingers trace the blue wax seal, a different trepidation settles like a cold, hard stone in the pit of her stomach.
She breaks the griffon’s wing in half and braces.
Serah Hawke,
It is my privilege to inform you of the successful Joining of one Carver Hawke this fifth day of Cloudreach, 9:31 Dragon. The process was completed without complication and Warden Hawke will assume the duties of our Order without delay.
Correspondence, should you wish to send it, may be directed to the Warden stronghold in Jader.
In peace,
Warden-Lieutenant Jean-Marc Stroud
Her knees go weak with relief that she doesn’t really have a right to. Selfishly, she lets herself feel it anyway. Despite it all, despite Bethany and Carver and Mother and everything, she is glad. She may never speak to him again, may never even see him again— but he is alive. Somewhere across the Waking Sea, he lives and breathes, and is almost certainly making some Orlesian’s life as hellish as he always made hers.
She casts the letter into the hearth without making note of the Jader address and watches the embers eat through the ink and fibers.
It will do, for now.
Carver sends only a single letter himself. It starts off bitter and ends the same way and Hawke suspects that will be the last she hears of him until the path he’s on ends in death.
She is wrong.
The second missive comes when he’s completed his training. Re-stationed in Montsimmard, with another address that she won’t use. The third, after an excursion into the Deep Roads, a commendation of Carver’s skill and determination. And the fourth, which follows too quickly to be a coincidence, an injury report.
Each politely formal, each signed the same way: In peace, Warden-Lieutenant Jean-Marc Stroud.
She doesn’t reply, at first. Perhaps it is a normal thing, though she’s always heard that joining the Wardens was a sentence to silence, to long gaps of absence and unknowing. Perhaps it is simply a quirk of the Order in Orlais.
It doesn’t occur to her until much later that perhaps word of their family’s good fortune has made its way to Warden ears, that this may be a favor born of standing and prestige. And that— she does not want that.
When the latest missive arrives, she is ready with one of her own.
Warden-Lieutenant,
While I appreciate your updates, I would not presume more of your time than is strictly necessary— I can only assume that it is in high demand.
Barring news of my brother’s passing, I invite you to turn your attention to other matters, as needed.
Hawke
His reply is swift, and unexpected.
Serah Hawke,
Years ago, the Wardens spared another as we have spared your brother. Another impulsive, headstrong young man, with little regard but for anger, and those lost to him.
Unlike your brother, there was nothing and no one left for that man to return to. There may come a time when the young Warden Hawke mourns the bridges he’s burned.
I would preserve at least one path back for him, and for you. Just in case.
It is no great burden on my time.
In peace,
Warden-Lieutenant Jean-Marc Stroud
So the missives continue, and she does not protest again. She deals with the Viscount, and the Qunari, and Mother’s thrice-cursed attempts to find her a suitor. There’s a mage in her bed, and then an elf, and all at once it does not matter whether or not Mother approves.
She arranges the funeral. And when the Wardens appear, amidst flame and horned corpses, she does not mention Carver’s absence at it, and he does not mention her failure to write.
Eventually it goes to pieces, as it was always going to. The Chantry burns, and the city with it. Fenris walks away; the remaining mages and templars pick up the pieces. Hawke keeps her head down— the city has had enough of her help, and she no longer opens missives with a reluctant sigh, no longer straps her staff across her back, no longer trudges through decrepit sewers or along the Wounded Coast. Most of her correspondence goes straight into the hearth, unopened.
Until her fingers catch on blue wax, and she cracks open the griffon’s wing—
Serah Hawke,
If the dark rumors out of Kirkwall are true, I hope this letter finds you in one piece, or mostly so. My condolences, and my apologies, for it is those dark rumors that lead me to make a request of you.
Reports of red lyrium have drawn concern in the South— I believe you are familiar? For reasons better shared in person, I must look outside the Order for assistance, and am hoping that you will prove amenable to providing what you are able.
I will wait a fortnight at the address below. Either you or your refusal may find me there.
In peace,
Warden-Lieutenant Jean-Marc Stroud
Hawke exhales a breath that might have been in her lungs since— since before everything. She’s considered leaving, once or twice or a thousand times. Never quite managed it. Stuck here amidst shadows and ghosts, rotting away like the corpses that haunt her dreams. Where else would she go?
There’s an answer to that, now, and more than enough motive— she won’t subject Varric to the Chantry’s demands again, or anyone else. It’s only him and Aveline and Merrill left now, but they all deserve the peace her absence will bring them.
She tucks the letter in her pocket and goes upstairs to pack.
She fells the last of the bounty hunters with a slice of her staff blade across his throat. Before his blood can spatter her face, she’s stitched herself through the Fade and kneels at Stroud’s side.
“Let me see,” she insists, peeling his hand away from the wound. They both hiss— her, in anger; him, in pain.
She’s not a necromancer, but she briefly considers bringing them back, so she can kill them again.
“Hold still,” she insists, later, once they’ve made it to a cave. The blue light from deep mushrooms casts eerie shadows across their faces.
“It is hardly a scratch,” Stroud murmurs, but he doesn’t move as she wets a cloth from her canteen and gentle dabs away dirt and blood from his arm. Her fingers flare and the needle glows, white-hot.
“Scratches don’t need stitches.”
“And neither does this.” His mustache twitches as she slides the needle through his skin. “I have seen worse.”
“You have. Here—“ her fingers catch a scar on his shoulder blade “—and here—“ another one over his abdomen “—and here—“ another on his thigh “and—“
“Yes, yes, you’ve made your point.”
“So, let me stitch you up.”
“Have I stopped you?”
Hawke pulls the suture taut and bites her lip, focusing on the neat, precise stitches— certainly not what Mother intended from her needlework lessons, but infinitely more useful. She ties the end off. “You slowed me down.”
“A capital offense.” Stroud catches her wrist, drawing her reluctantly away from the half-packed med kit. “Do allow me to make amends.”
It’s familiar, the slide of his lips against hers. His fingers trace up her arms; hers lace at the nape of his neck.
She hadn’t meant for it to happen, it just did. Proximity or persistence or some greater vision of the universe—
She’s learned not to be too particular, when a thing works. When it is good.
Her hair curtains around them as she draws back, leans her brow against his. “Clarel’s getting desperate, to have gone outside the Wardens in pursuit of you.”
“It is not like her,” Stroud frowns. “She has always been reasonable. Level-headed. I dread what it means of the knowledge she is so bent on keeping us from.”
“Considering you started at immortal darkspawn and followed up with red lyrium, it was never going to end well.” Hawke stretches, rolls a day’s worth of aches from her shoulders, and goes to ward the cave. It’s as good a place as any to camp until nightfall.
“We have a few hours yet before the sun is up. We should press on to—“ She silences Stroud’s protest with a pointed glare at the stitches in his side. “I am well enough for travel, Hawke.”
“You’ll tear those stitches out, if another group catches us,” she retorts. “Or if the wildlife keeps up with how friendly it’s been thus far. We’re not going anywhere.”
Stroud doesn’t smile, but his moustache twitches. “Missing the city, are you?”
“Maker, yes.” They clear as many rocks from a section of the cave floor as they can and Stroud spreads the bedroll out, settles on it, and makes a space for Hawke at his side. She pillows her head against his chest, sighing as he traces idle circles over her hip.
“Wishing you hadn’t left?” Hawke tilts her head back and summons a smile. The days old stubble on his jaw is rough against the press of her lips.
“Absolutely not.”
It’s not until the sky splits open that Hawke deigns to check her messages.
The thing is, she’s enjoying it: the silence, the freedom, the absence of nagging and summonses and expectant requests. Which was probably where she went wrong— as soon as she enjoys something, the universe is bound to take it from her.
She arranged the system before she left Kirkwall. A slew of inns across both sides of the Waking Sea, enough gold to guarantee the owners’ discretion. Largely for Aveline’s benefit, for when Carver inevitably did something asinine and needed someone to pull his ass out of the fire. A handful of others were trusted with the knowledge; they’ve all been smart enough not to use it.
Until now.
The sky splits open and they kill more demons than happy hour at The Hanged Man; she keeps her hood up, head down, gathers as many rumors as she can.
Objectively speaking, dodging the Chantry and their little Conclave is feeling like a fantastic move on her part, just now. But she doesn’t get to enjoy it— Stroud’s nightmares wake them more often than not and the Wardens double, triple down on their efforts to bring him in. They go to ground; there’s no hope of continuing their research, and she can tell from the steely set of his jaw that there’s something he isn’t saying.
Hawke wraps a joke around the tension like a bandage on a bleeding wound. Something stitches the sky back together and she exhales, thinks now it might be safe to check, without getting pulled in.
Really, she should know better.
“We don’t have to go,” she says, the contents of Varric’s letter hanging between them like storm clouds on the horizon. Her fingers press too hard into the parchment and leave their imprint in soot when she discards it, frustrated. “Maker knows I had to figure everything out on my own. This inquisitor is already better off. They don’t need me— us.”
“You do not mean that,” Stroud murmurs. He’s reclined against the headboard, eyes closed, gloved fingers pressing idly at his temple.
“Maybe I do.”
“You don’t. Perhaps you wish you did, but you don’t.”
“It would be easier if I did,” she grumbles. A tired smile tugs at the corner of Stroud’s mouth; it twists something in Hawke’s heart, to see it, for how rare it is these days. And for how it throws the lines on his brow, the dark circles stamped under his eyes, into sharp relief.
“Has easier been in the cards for people like us, even once?”
Hawke huffs and settles next to him. Coaxes him sideways so his head is in her lap and her fingers can take the place of his, teasing the headache from behind his brow, offering them both the comfort of skin against skin.
“I’m eternally optimistic.”
“We might have been driven to Skyhold soon, anyhow. Very little recourse is left to us otherwise, with the Wardens closing in and—“
His lips clamp together, catching a secret at the back of his teeth. Hawke’s fingers still.
“And?”
“And the civil war on the plains, and the rifts and demons that yet linger.” Reasonable things to be concerned with, but they fall awkwardly from his tongue— the edges of them rougher than whatever he’d originally intended to say. Hawke’s lips press thin and she swipes her thumbs across his forehead.
“You’re right, of course,” she sighs. “Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“Of course not.” Stroud steals one of her hands from his head and holds it between both of his, the roughened pads of his thumbs tracing the lines and callouses and scars that tell a story on her palm. “You should go without me.”
Like a bowstring, Hawke tenses. Makes a fist between his palms, knuckles pressed against his caressing. “Absolutely not.”
“You will be able to move freely, faster and farther, without needing to dodge the Wardens and hide your face.”
“I’ll still be hiding my face,” she snorts. “Old habits die hard. Besides, if it is Corypheus, you have just as much information that they’ll need. More, even.”
“Information? Non, what I have is theories. Supposition. Hypotheses based on extrapolations and Clarel’s overreaction to my objections. You, as Varric so astutely put it, have fought Corypheus before.”
“And apparently failed to kill him.” Hawke’s head thuds dully against the bed frame as she tips it back. Already she feels as exhausted as she’d been every night in Kirkwall. Like her body remembers the demands of the world ending. “Not sure that’s the kind of advice that will really help them.”
“It is more than they have now, I expect.” Stroud peels each of her fingers out of their fist and laces them with his. Brings their knuckles to his lips; a kiss, a sigh. “Go to Skyhold. Give them the help they seek— if it goes beyond that, come back for me. I’ll keep my head down until I hear from you.”
Hawke presses her palm to his jaw. Traces the outline of his lips, the ragged edge of his beard, the silvery scar that’s only visible in certain lights, close up. “Will you?”
Stroud lays their joined hands over his chest; his heart beats, steady and reassuring against her skin. “On my honor.”
“You were supposed to wait,” she snaps, angry, but relieved to find her lover in one piece. The relief doesn’t last; the anger does.
They ride back to Skyhold in stony silence. Even Varric, impervious to tact as he sometimes is, glances between them only once. He spends the rest of the trip with his nose in a journal, scribbling away.
They slip into the fortress overnight, up a side staircase, through the dormant kitchens, to a suite of prepared rooms. Varric mutters something about supper and letting Ruffles know they’d arrived, but Hawke barely hears him, barely notices him leave.
She leans against the wall and crosses her arms, iron bands over her chest. A shield and security, all at once. She isn’t sure what they’re keeping inside, anger or fear or something more tender, more sorrowful, but they’re definitely keeping her together.
“Were you even going to tell me?”
Stroud’s fingers slip on the strap of his chest piece. He doesn’t answer right away. Takes the moment to regain his grip, pull the armored plate over his head, and lay it atop the chest of drawers. His hands curl around the edge of the wood grain and he leans into it, the line of his back tense and taught.
“Not if it could be avoided.”
“Why?”
“It is not real.”
“You thought it was,” she snaps. “You thought it was, you couldn’t have known— and one day it will be real. Are you going to keep it from me then, as well? Will I wake to an empty bed, a note saying you’ve gone—“
Whip-quick, he eliminates the space between them. Grips the steel she’s made of her shoulders and turns the sharp sincerity in his eyes into a knife that he drives deep in her chest. “No. No, I would—“
Something chokes in his throat. And she wants to relax, wants the reunion that this should have been, but anger that is really fear has calcified over her like a second skin. She cannot.
Stroud inhales, shaky. Almost closes his eyes, but catches himself. “I wanted to tell you. I… could not find the words.”
He catches her chin between his fingers. “I am sorry, Hawke. For keeping this from you, and for what you will inevitably go through. You deserve a more certain future.”
Just like that, she melts. Slides her arms around his waist and buries her face against his collarbone. “My future has never once been certain,” she mumbles, muffled. “Don’t see why it should start now.”
His fingers stroke up and down her spine, soothing, grounding. They stay there, half-armored, exhausted and sore, but neither quite willing to shatter the fragile comfort of the moment. Until a quiet knock on the door announces the runner with their supper and Stroud extricates himself to fetch the tray.
“So, the Western Approach.” Hawke flicks a crumb from Stroud’s mustache as he speaks, and he chases her fingers with a kiss. “What are your feelings on sand?”
Hawke groans.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you’re giving me twice as much champagne as you’re taking for yourself,” Hawke says, even as she accepts another flute. Stroud presses his smile to her cheek.
“Ah, but I was already at a disadvantage,” he says, taking her arm and continuing their circuit around the ballroom. “Intoxicated by the mere sight of you in this ensemble.”
“It isn’t armor, that’s for sure.”
“Ah— it is armor of another kind.”
She supposes that might be true. If nothing else, it cost as much as a good set of leathers, though Lady Montilyet hadn’t even batted an eye at the seamstress’ bill. It must be nice, Hawke thinks, to buy favors from the Inquisition’s coffers and not her own pockets.
Not nice enough that she regrets missing the Conclave, but still. Nice.
In truth, the champagne is a welcome respite— the Winter Palace makes the balls Mother used to drag her to in Kirkwall seem like afternoon tea, and the buzz of alcohol in her veins keeps her relaxed enough to be the type of distraction that the ambassador has asked her to be. After all, if everyone is focused on the long-absent Champion of Kirkwall and her new suitor, who will bother noticing the Inquisitor, climbing trellises and disappearing into private wings? Cleaning blood from her boots and tucking stray wisps of hair back into place before the second bell?
They round another corner and Hawke ducks her head to whisper in Stroud’s ear, only just holding back a smile at the murmurs and titters that follow them from the clusters of Orlesian nobles they pass. “Do you think we’re being distracting enough?”
Stroud hums. “Perhaps. Of course, for full effect—“
He steals her champagne flute, mid-sip, and discards it on a passing servant’s tray. Laughter bubbles on her lips as he sweeps her, grip proper on her waist and hand, out to the dance floor.
“We could be more distracting,” he murmurs, slightly breathless, mostly triumphant at the flush rising in her cheeks. The orchestra strikes up a tune and he turns them, swiftly disguising the stumble of Hawke’s feet.
“Would my falling ass over mask be distracting enough? I definitely don’t know this dance.”
Stroud breaks step, pulling her closer than propriety dictates. His hand slides to the small of her back and he kisses her knuckles. Guides her through the throng of nobles—watching, gossiping, scheming—certain and steady, like a ship cutting across a foggy sea.
“Fear not, my lady,” his breath ghosts over her ear, warm and familiar and intimate. A shiver slips down her spine. “I would suffer disgrace before I let you fall.”
The Inquisition marches on Adamant Fortress, and that is a dance to which Hawke knows the steps. She and Stroud cut a swath through the demons, through the foolish Wardens who summoned them, saving the warriors and rogues where they can, granting the mercy of death when they cannot.
It is taking a toll on her lover, she knows. But the Order has left them no choice.
The tide of victory is familiar— they climb the fortress, crossing paths with the Inquisitor and her party, trading potions and poultices to sustain the fight. With Clarel in their sights, she knows: it is almost over. It must be nearly over.
Apparently, she has learned nothing in the decade past. Least of all when defeat is about to snatch everything away in one fell swoop.
But there it is: fire and the bloody archdemon, and really it isn’t fair. No one else in history has had to outrun more than one. But she supposes she’s just the Maker’s favorite sacrificial lamb that way.
She’s running— no, she’s falling, a scream tearing from her throat, nausea and static and power thrumming around her like a raw nerve, like an open, bleeding wound.
And then—
It stops. Like slamming full force into a brick wall. Regrettably, she is an accurate source on that.
“If this is the afterlife, the Chantry owes me an apology,” she quips, “This looks nothing like the Maker’s bosom.”
She gets dropped in a puddle of Fade goop for her insolence.
It’s just another in a long list of impossible circumstances her life has spent defying, until the graveyard. Until her name on not one, but two headstones, until she stops seeing spiders and starts seeing corpses— a corpse.
She doesn’t even care what her own grave says. She grabs Stroud by the collar and crushes their lips together, needy and desperate and begging. Pressing their fears and desires and every single what if in this slice of a moment between them. She’s long since stopped expecting anyone out there to be listening, long since stopped believing prayers will be answered.
So it’s not a prayer. It is a promise.
It will be okay. It will be okay.
She tells the universe, weaves her will into the vow. It will be okay.
She will accept nothing less.
“We’re not going to make it!” Trevelyan is shaken, pale from both the fight and the revelations. Shadows cover them— too many legs, laughter with a maniacal edge.
“The rift— it’s just—“ Someone says; who isn’t really important— something else is rushing in Hawke’s ears, something like realization, acceptance. Resignation.
They’re not all going to make it. But some of them can.
“Go!” she grabs the Inquisitor’s wrist, pulls her attention long enough to gesture, brandishing her staff. “I’ll cover your escape!”
“Like hell you will.” And it’s an odd thing, to hear such crassness in the voice she loves, the smoothness of his accent pulling taught around the harsh edges of words far more direct than his insults usually favor. Stroud steps between them, jerking Hawke’s wrist away and forcibly spinning her to the Inquisitor’s side. “I will cover your escape. This is the Wardens’ mistake. A Warden must pay for it.”
Oh, she’s going to kill him. She’s going to gut the Nightmare and break her way out of the Fade, just so she can string her lover up by his teeth. His Maker-damned sense of honor and justice and—
“It is not— it is my mistake, my father’s mistake. If not for us—“
“I will not turn my back as you walk into danger,” Stroud snaps. “If you stay here, I will remain, and the world will lose us both.”
Something lances through Hawke— something cold, and sharp. She’s too raw to keep it from slashing across her face. “And you think that I would?” she demands. “You think that I would go, and leave you here?”
Stroud sheathes his sword; his gauntlets catch at her cheeks, uncaring, for once, of how they tear her skin, leaving bruises, marks. He tastes of Fade and fear and he kisses her as though she is the blade and he is the bleeding wound.
“Do not ask me to live in a world without you,” he rasps. “Do not make me.”
She holds his head against hers, sweat on grime on brow pressed to brow. “But you would ask it of me?”
“I would greet Death as an old friend, knowing that you yet lived.”
“And I would greet Him as a guardian, a protector. He cannot touch you, as long as I breathe.” She is unmovable, she is iron, she is steel—
They do not have time for delays. Neither of them will yield— but he has honor, while she is not above playing in filth. She holds her staff between them like a barrier and catches the Inquisitor by the straps of her armor.
“There are a great many Wardens on the other side of that rift,” she reminds her. “They will need a Warden to lead them. Direct them. If they are to be of any use to you—“
“You cannot—“
Hawke’s cutting gaze locks on Trevelyan’s— Trevelyan, who has made more than her share of impossible decisions, who has already experienced the fallout, the highs and lows of power and control. And something passes between them. Some understanding, some deeper level of knowing.
Neither of them chose how they got into this. If Hawke can choose her way out—
Maybe Trevelyan can, too.
Her hand, green and glowing, falls on Stroud’s shoulder. When he moves to shake her off, snarl, Hawke grabs him by the chin. “They need you, my love. Go with them.”
“Not without—“
She cuts him off with a kiss— stale and bloody and vicious. Swallows his protestations and sorrows, trades them for certainty and resolve.
A promise— it will be okay. And as it settles around her, the decision, the certainty, the slice of the guillotine in slow-motion—
It will be. She knows.
Determination steels her; she shoves, and Trevelyan catches, dragging Stroud, all protest and struggle, through the rift. She doesn’t turn to face the Nightmare until they’re gone, swallowed back into reality. And she doesn’t put any apology in her gaze.
She isn’t sorry. Not for this.
He needs to return to Weisshaupt. Ostensibly, that is his assignment, now. Or as close as he will come to one— there is no one left, no one who outranks him, no one to tell him what to do.
So he lingers here, in the last place that he held her, where the barkeep takes one look at the sorrow that breaks from him like ice off a melting glacier and fills his glass without comment or charge.
He stares into the whiskey and tries not to think of how it looks like her eyes, caught in the sunlight, golden-brown.
He fails.
“They said I’d find you here.”
Varric sidles onto the stool next to him, drops a sovereign and takes the glass that Cabot pours. But he doesn’t drink, not right away; he swirls it, ice clinking.
“This isn’t—“
“What do you want, Tethras?” he snaps. Too exhausted, grief-stricken, beaten down to be bothered with propriety. There is a story, somewhere in the Chant, of a mage who gave himself wings, and fell when the sun burned the enchantment away.
That is how he feels, now. The magic she brought, the way she buoyed him, higher and higher, up and up and—
Now he’s fallen. And the landing didn’t even have the grace to kill him.
He tips the rest of his drink back in one go and shoves the glass forward for a refill. Except Varric catches it, palm over the rim. As Stroud glares, red and glassy-eyed, Varric throws a sheath of parchment on the bar between them.
Stroud picks it up, and scoffs. “It’s blank.”
“Well, you see, I set out to write a letter.” There’s something acerbic, bitter, hurting— something that reflects, painfully, the beast sitting on Stroud’s own chest. “I set out to write a letter, to let someone know what happened, to let someone know that she was gone—“
Stroud’s fist, teeth clench. His heart snarls, retreats, sends sharp blades up his throat to protect itself.
“—and I realized, as I set my quill to ink, that I had no sodding idea who I was sending that letter to.”
“She has plenty of friends.” Stroud refuses to rise to the bait. If Varric wants something, he can say it. “An uncle. A brother.”
“None of whom had heard from her since Kirkwall. Years. She might have been dead in any one of them, and they wouldn’t have known.”
“Your point?”
“They wouldn’t have—“ Varric pauses; probably not for dramatic effect, but it’s hard to say, with him, “—but you would have. You would have known. And cared.”
Stroud raps his knuckles against the bar. He needs something to hold onto; something to burn away the tears he’s working hard at keeping back. Cabot slides a fresh glass across the bar. Once it’s in his hands, he exhales.
“I suppose I would have.”
It’s silent— a beat, two, and then Varric slaps the bar. Scoffs.
“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?”
“You’re looking in the wrong place for a soliloquy.” The alcohol stains his throat; relief, and punishment, all in one. “What we had—“
“Yes?” And it’s funny— Hawke always said that Varric has this voice, a way of words catching in his throat, that sounds exactly like a quill poised over paper. He’d never believed her, but he hears it now. His fingertips press against the blank page and slide it back toward the dwarf.
“What we had was ours. Consider, Master Tethras: there is a reason she did not share it with you. Who am I to go against her, now?”
He stands— hesitates, swallows. He is not ready to leave, but he no longer wants to stay. What he wants—
“You’re not the only one who lost her,” Varric mutters. Stroud closes his eyes.
What he wants is no longer within reach.
“Perhaps not. But she is lost, nonetheless, and I—“ his grief catches, a dagger in his throat, his gut, cutting up his spine. “I am the only one who could have saved her.”