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Sebastian doesn’t leave Marceline’s room for three days. She allows him the weakness, the brief mourning before she tentatively leans over his back and asks if he’s going to help with the rebuild. It’s chaos. There’s no Viscount and no Meredith and no one quite knows who to listen to.
They’re listening to you, aren’t they?
That was precisely the problem because Marceline could see the Viscount’s seat hurtling towards her like an ogre in the Deep Roads but wasn’t selfish enough to stop helping because of it. Varric was sinking a significant amount of money into care of refugees (oh and look there, we’re all the way back to the beginning again) and didn’t trust anyone to sink his money responsibly, so it fell to her to try and juggle everyone’s concerns.
On one hand, the nobles were actually the ones in the most immediate need. Hightown had been destroyed thoroughly, however they didn’t seem to understand that Marcy was not there to restore them to their former positions. Those that had other homes were encouraged to seek them out— people left for sunny Antiva and glamorous Orlais en masse, trusting that their broken toys would be repaired and replaced in time for their return.
Unfortunately, the broken toys in question were servants and runners and mistresses and people who weren’t going to flee to a vacation home for the grueling months ahead. They had to deal with their main source of income leaving without them, try to navigate the streets full of bent and broken bodies to make it back to Lowtown where… there was yet more destruction. Buildings hit by debris that were even less prepared than Hightown to suffer an assault, overcrowding from refugees fleeing Hightown, and fighting in the streets for resources spread thin.
And no clinic in Darktown anymore.
“You know I hate to say it, but it might boost morale to see you there. You’re all that’s left,” she whispered, kissing his shoulder.
“Aren’t I always?”
He agreed to leave the house, though, just as she’d expected him to. Even better, he threw himself into relief efforts without waiting for direction, alternatively helping with the gruelling physical labour of trying to dig people out from underneath buildings and leading the off-duty workers in the Chant. There were yet a few Sisters there to relieve him, who had been collecting alms in Lowtown during the time of the explosion. They seemed just as lost as Sebastian, but no less determined to do what they were able to.
. . . . .
“I’m going to reopen Anders’ clinic,” Merrill said, standing the doorway as if she were prepared to bolt. Marceline’s mind flooded with ways that could go terribly, terribly wrong all at once— impressive, as there was hardly room in there for more worst case scenarios.
“Take Aveline,” she said flatly, not looking up from her desk.
“Why, so she can make sure I don’t kill anyone?” the elf demanded hotly. Varric assured Marceline that it was only around her that Merrill became so defensive. Because no one else makes her feel like shit quite like you, he’d said disapprovingly.
“So she can make sure no one kills you,” she corrected.
“I can take care of myself.”
“Just do it,” she snapped and Merrill squared her shoulders.
“I survived my whole life before you came along, Hawke, and I can keep doing so without a minder. If you bothered to come down from Hightown, you’d know that the people are begging for a clinic,” she said shortly. “They don’t care where it comes from.”
“Bring Isabela then, just don’t go down to that place by your damn self!” Marceline hardly knew where the rush of protectiveness was coming from— she had never approved of Merrill in any way. Her blood magic, her mirror, her behaviour in her clan… it hadn’t been her place but this was her place now. To make sure that the wretched clinic didn’t open up without proper regulations this time.
“Isabela hasn’t been in Kirkwall for a week, which you’d know if—”
“—if I came down from Hightown, I know.” She knew, which was the worst part. It was so much easier to argue with Merrill when she could at the very least pretend that she was in the right. “Take Varric and I’ll redirect some funds your way.”
“Fine, but only if you don’t visit personally.” That was a no-brainer sort of deal. Marceline didn’t want to go back into the hovel under her home, didn’t want to remember that she didn’t do what she should have when she found out there was an abomination inhabiting it. He runs a clinic, she’d told herself. You can hate him all you like, but don’t hobble Darktown again because of it.
Look where that had got her.
“Agreed,” she said shortly, then looked up. “No blood magic.”
Merrill straightened and left without another word, and Marcy figured she probably deserved that. Varric would watch her, she knew— not to Marcy’s standards, but enough to make sure that Merrill was safe and not hurting anyone. Varric would never believe that she’d try.
. . . . .
Her house had remained mostly untouched by the blast. Windows had been broken and doors blown off their hinges, but somehow the building had managed to avoid any debris. Sebastian and Fenris, of course, were not so lucky. Neither was Aveline, but Donnic had property in Lowtown that they could retreat to in lieu of a proper barracks (Maker, that would be her problem soon).
Fenris bought a suite in the Hanged Man, politely refusing Marceline’s offer of board. Thank-you, but I prefer to live on my own for now. She supposed the fact that her house had been a former front for a slaving ring did not endear it to him, nor did the Tevinter sculptures Leandra had been so proud of.
Sebastian had accepted, and she suspected it was because her home was so close to the Chantry ruins. She caught him sometimes standing in front of the window and staring west. The broken arches still obscured most of the destruction from view, but they all knew it was there. Sometimes he would just slow to a stop and watch the spot where it’d all happened, where he had become the only survivor of a second family. “Why is it always me?” he’d asked her once, sensing her presence.
“Maybe the Maker—”
“Don’t. Please. Not right now,” he begged. She put an arm around him and he leaned into her.
“I’m glad you’re not dead,” she said instead, quietly. It seemed like something horrible, given the circumstances, but it was true. She’d lit a candle at their ramshackle temporary Chantry set up where what seemed like a million years ago, Bartrand had organized his expedition. Thank-you for not taking him too.
He didn’t respond, still staring out at where the Chantry had stood. “We’re the last. Both of us,” he pointed out. Marceline nodded, because what else was there to say? The last Hawke, the last of the Vaels, the last of their line and neither of them particularly inclined to try and bring any of it back. It wouldn’t be the same, even if they were the type; a baby wouldn’t breathe life back into those already lost, and Marceline didn’t want one and Sebastian… well he barely seemed to want to be alive.
“There’s a finality in that,” she said quietly, following his gaze. “Proper martyrs. We’ll put an end to it and… that will be that.” It was comforting for her, at least, to know that once she met the Maker there would be no more Hawkes. Maybe Charade would keep the Amell line going for a while yet— or maybe not— but she was the end of something. No more Malcolm. No more Marcy.
“A poor note to end on,” he said, his gaze dark.
“A strong one,” she corrected. “And not for a very long time.” She was content to be the closing act on the brief legacy of the Hawke family, but she didn’t think she could stomach the end of him.