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Hawke could spit. Her skin is too tight, flush with magic she doesn’t want to use. What she needs, what she really needs is to feel something break beneath her hands. To find something whole and rend it into little shreds. Then burn the remains and spit in the ashes. She crosses the Maker-forsaken courtyard of the Inquisition’s rotten fucking keep, her steps graceless.
The training grounds, the tavern, all the places she’d consider bleeding off the hateful energy only fan her fury. They are tainted, those places. Their places, Varric and his precious, wonderful Seeker.
Gouts of flame drip from Hawke’s fingers like blood. Grass sizzles and smokes as she passes by the training grounds and the tavern. She climbs higher, hands clenched, teeth clenched, her whole body held tighter than a fist trying to keep her rage in check.
Chill wind nips at her skin. She doesn’t feel it, doesn’t care enough to. Besides, the fire in her blood warms her, burns away anything other than the yawning hole in her chest.
The Frostbacks gnaw at the horizon, endless and utterly indifferent.
She could scream. It builds behind her teeth.
I’m sorry.
Varric’s words echo in the emptiness of her ribcage.
He isn’t sorry. Sorry he’d gone too far to pull back, sorry he’d been caught in a lie.
Maybe he is really sorry that he loves the Seeker more. It doesn’t seem likely.
Her fingers scrape at the parapet’s edge. The wind tears the moisture from her eyes.
Hawke had cried, that first day. Curled up on Aveline’s lap like a baby and sobbed. Not after, never again after. A combination of stubbornness and burning emptiness that she struggles to not be proud of. It hurts, and the hurting is all she feels now. Hurt and alone, as Varric and the Seeker resume their normal lives, their love unaffected by her pain, by their role in this unending agony.
Her mouth quirks up, humourless. It is not quite fair of her to say that, and one must be fair.
She hates that, too. Hates that the Seeker’s perfectly within her rights to leave, to stop talking to her. Hates that it’s not truly their fault. Varric had tried, had written letter after letter full of trying. The Seeker too, until the morass of Hawke’s misery had finally chased her away. They had tried and isn’t that all anyone could ask?
Words words words, and none of them enough. Empty promises and desperation, and in the end it still hadn’t been enough to fill the gaping hollowness of her.
Hawke’s palms singe the stone.
***
Regret, Hawke learns, does not burn or sear. It haunts. Echoes around the corners of her mind in silent moments. When the smoke clears, when the gaping sorrow masquerading as anger finally burns itself out, there is nothing left. No going back, no going forward. In the end there is just inevitable forward movement, with regret dogging her footsteps across the landscape. The Seeker is gone, and Varric’s infrequent, brief letters are filled with nothingness. Everything around her is ashes. The life she’d built vanished in a puff of smoke. The name she’d taken, the words she’d spun, the friendships she’d craved. All ashes.
Skyhold is nothing to her now. A building of busy, righteous people who all love the Seeker and Varric. It feels wrong to stay there. But there is always work to be done, a cause to struggle for. Hawke leaves, under the pretense of work. She flees across Thedas, and her regret follows, a dark cloud on a bright day.
Everything fades. It is so hard to remember that, to believe that one day the pain will go away. Hawke wakes one morning to a clear and cloudless day, and smiles.