Her vision went black, and red, and black.
“What could you have done?”
"I could have changed things." Really, why are you asking?
Was Meredith laughing? S he could hear it, like bells . Her eyes opened to the red courtyard and Meredith's triumphant smile. The blade came free, glossy red and dripping. Marian fell back with the other woman's armoured boot against her chest. Pain blossoming in her insides like fire. Her life leaking out in rivers of crimson. Even so her Daggers were clutched rigidly in her hands as she staggered back.
Meredith's eyes were cold and harsh, a dull crackling of red. Hawke smiled, harsh and crooked with a mouth full of red teeth to show how little this affected her. Not at all, not at all.
Anders would have a field day with this injury-
Oh Anders.
Then the sword and Meredith were gone. Hawke’s vision faltered, darkness circling into her peripherals. I'm passing out, it was a slow realisation, I shouldn't, I can’t. I need to stay here. But her feet staggered despite her protests and she fell.
She met a shoulder instead of the ground. A hundred hours of sparring and fighting back to back told her who it was without having to see him. A strong shoulder and strong arms, the spikes of his hide armour rough and reassuring. The heave and fall of his breath against her back. Fenris had caught her.
Good. Thank you Fenris.
"Maker this hurts," she said instead. “I shouldn't have sent Anders away.” I should have made him stay. Why does everyone leave decisions to me. How were we supposed to get through this without a healer. The words went on and on but if they were said or unsaid she didn’t know.
"Shut up Hawke," not his usual battle calm. Don't worry Fenris. Remember the Arishok? Remember? This is nearly identical. ha.
She tried to say the words, say anything at all, she really did. But blood racked out of her mouth with a painful cough. Spattering bood down her chin and leathers. Her breathing hampered by blood and unseen damage she couldn't begin to fathom.
"Please, Hawke." He was dragging her. Her head lolled back to his shoulder. She could just see his eyes, green and determined, but edged in panic. She could see it in the little twitches at the corners of his too wide eyes, his lips cut in a fine pale line, his breathing too ragged to just be exertion.
"Fenris." It was little, gurgled, too small for her voice. Her breath caught, if you could call it breathing at that point, but her hand met his face. Leaving a streak of red. Sorry Fenris. His eyes were glossy and green and wide, a note of colour discordant to all the rest, red on red on red but his eyes were soft green, almost hazel. Don't Fenris. Please don't.
Her world was reduced to Fenris eyes as her boots scraped on the stone. Her body made of burlap and lead and pain as he took her from the battle. The clang of metal on metal ringing all around them shouts and cries and the crackle of Merrills magic.
Red sparked from somewhere in her peripheral, brighter than all the rest, crackling and violent. She felt the shockwave and stumbled, as well as a person being dragged can stumble. They went down together, knocked off their feet. The pain was all encompassing then, a wash of fire boiling her alive, and everything else was gone. As though the world split open and swallowed her whole. Churning her to dust between the stones, leaving nothingness and pain.
Images swam before her, vague and shapeless. What was it they always said about your life flashing before your eyes before you die . She never expected it to be so blurry and jumbled. She never expected it at all really, I never meant to die.
She could hear, faintly, somewhere outside of the pit she was falling into so so slowly a curse in Tevene, a Fenris curse. It was somewhere far, far, away from where she was all alone in the dark with her life swimming around her.
"Promise me you won't die? I can't bear the thought of living without you." the words rang in her head over and over.
He had been right there at her side. Now it was like there were miles and maybe a wall made of cotton between his voice and her ears. She had fallen so far swallowed by the earth, by the sea, by flames. It felt eerily familiar, like the elvhen magic of keeper Marethari, like slipping into the fade to dream dreams that were real.
She could almost taste his lips on her own. But it felt like so long ago. Hungry and desperate, and afraid and determined. She wanted that mouth. She wanted those eyes forever and ever. I love him. She realised, but she had never said it. Damn why did I never say it.
Ah, I'd promised hadn't I.
“Don't die.” he said. Don’t die. Like the words would make it impossible.
Fenris, I won't die!
Fenris.
She felt the pressure of fingers wrapped around her own and she opened her eyes to the dimly lit room. Fear knotting her stomach like a tightly coiled spring.
Her father's hand, rough and calloused held hers. A thin and frail thing where it once was strong and steady.
"Protect them." his voice a hush, a command. Love and desperation colouring his features with grief.
You can still protect them, she wanted to say. We just have to fight this out.
"Of course father, I promise. What else would I do?" She said it with a smile. Half hearted but genuine. He looked so relieved, his smile stretching across his pained features. Amber brown eyes crinkling at the corners as they always did. Her eye’s.
Her mother sat on the other side of the small cott, the candles on the bedside table burning brightly in the dark of the room. His other hand was in hers. Mother, a wreck, with her bloodshot eyes swollen from tears and haggard purple bags beneath them.
She felt a smile form on her lips more genuine than the first. It was so good to see her Mother; her hair just starting to go grey, her blue eyes cast down at the hand in her husband's. The pair of them sat together by father's bedside in the house all the way in Lothering where Father lay dying.
Hawke reached out to grasp her mothers other hand—
"Do you want to live?" Hawke’s father’s eyes were on her, the light of the hearth turning them to gold.
"What?"
There was laughter somewhere.
Everything should hurt shouldn't it? Right? Where's Fenris?
Their faces swam.
I was dying?
Bethany with her mother's heart shaped face laughing as they ran through a farmer's field, stolen apples tucked down the front of their dresses.
Hawke followed behind her on the long road home. Watching the sway of her sisters dirt and dust stained robes after weeks spent in these dark tunnels. Her sister stumbled. Falling to a knee.
“I’m not feeling very well.”
“Bethany?”
She rushed to her sisters side, going to one knee to catch Bethany's shoulders. Veins of black leached across her once warm golden skin. All the colour was leached from her lips and cheeks leaving her sorel and grey.
No.
“Sister? It’s the blight isn’t it?”
It couldn’t be like the battle ostagar, like lothering, it couldn't be like carver, like Avelines Wesley. It couldn’t. It couldn’t. She couldn't, she can’t, not Bethany. Not her too.
“Bethany.”
“I can feel it. I’m going to end up like Wesley aren't I?”
No.
“I don't want to die alone.” and “Thank you sister.” bethany said with one quirk of a smile.
She felt her knife slipping between her sisters ribs to find her heart even before she had thought to draw the blade. Here Varric call her sister Sunshine.
Sunshine dying in the dark.
No! No no no no.
She wanted ferelden fields and gardens of wildflowers and squash vines. Not this. She rose to her feet and looked to the figure next to her. Mother, smiling at Her Father in the families little kitchen above the bookshop in denerim. The babies sat at the counter, so alike in in their looks, so much like mother.
Her Mother. Strong and regal, as beautiful in roughspun farm dresses as she was in silk.
Her Mother laughed about courting again. As they leaned against the writing desk in the family wing, her nails tapping and a bright smile on her face.
“I see the way your Fenris looks at you. What are your plans there dear?” her words sweet a prying all at once.
A vice wrapped around her heart.
Fenris?
Mother.
She could hear her in the other room, weeping on dirty floorboards in Gamlen's hovel, while she and Bethany counted coin and traded tales trying to forget the hell they lived through, trying to live on.
Carver. Sweet insufferable Carver, blue eyes and a pain in the ass, laughing as they played at swords the non-mage children of Malcolm Hawke.
You were supposed to protect him.
Carver charging in to kill the ogre the corpses of darkspawn at their feet and mothers scream. her daggers dripped black blood onto the blighted earth. Carver looked up from where he was crumpled his eyes boring into hers, accusing.
"Do you wish I'd lived?" his voice was small and far away. So unlike him. So sad. Like he was little again and Hawke was his big sister who picked him up when he scraped his knees.
"Of course."
"Do you wish you could have been different?" Carver's voice in the mouth of a little boy. A boy she still recognised as Carver, knees scraped up, eyes puffy. While Mother fussed at the kitchen counter.
"Yes. I could have done so much better." If I'd trained harder before Ostagar. If I had charged the ogre, danced out of its way, been better than I was. I fucked up everything.
Well, everything but one thing or two. It that was enough to keep the rest at bay. I had them, I did that right, the family I earned.
"You would change things If you went back?"
"Maker yes."
Carver laughed, the sound echoed all around. Their mother stepped between them with a swath of bandage in her hands, tutting.
“You to need to be more careful.”
“It was an accident Mother.” Hawke supplied.
“There are no such thing as accidents, only mistakes.”
Our mistakes make us who we are. She looked around for the source of the voice in the little house. Bethany sat in a chair by the little table. Mother was bandaging Carvers knee. She heard the door swing on its rusty hinges.
"Are you ready to go Little Hawk?"
She looked up and there was Father, towering in the doorway, pack in hand. Amber eyes and beard surrounding a bright smile. A fire crackled in the Hearth, Bethany hummed as she read from her spellbook, Mother tutted at Carvers carelessness.
She was home. She was safe. She could stay here, but father alway knew best. If they were going to go somewhere, they had to go and wherever they went that would be home too so long as they were together.
"Yes. Yes I’m ready." The room sparked red before it twisted with green. Laughter peeled off the walls. Her Father's face cracked. Bethany screamed as her body was smashed against the ground like a ragdoll. No gentle goodbyes or bloodied dagger.
The world swam. Images. Faces. Darkness. Laughter, sweet as it was cloying. Everything tilted jarringly. Hawke lost her footing on the floorboards, the ground opening up like a vast maw full of red teeth. Blood, she thought. Like blood. A wound in the ground, the ground that was no longer there.
She was falling—
Falling.
The ground was cold. She didn’t feel the landing but she braced herself for pain she knew would come. She had fallen from trees and horses and buildings before, she knew even if nothing was broken she would find herself awfully-awfully bruised. At least winded. She held her eyes tight shut and just breathed soft and slow.
Hawke felt the stones dirty and rough beneath her hands, cold against her back, where they could have been warmed from the sun, so there was no sun here at least, wherever she was.
And where am I?
Everything smelled like smoke and filth, sewer and salt and city. The smells of Lowtown. Her growing awareness brought her attention to the dampness of her pant leg, soaked in some gutter puddle. I hope it’s just a puddle. Blindly she ran a hand down her abdomen with the panicked expectation of wetness, but found leather and mail and cloth. She opened her eyes for the first time in what felt like an eternity. She blinked rapidly at the harsh light.
The sky was smokey and dull, sunlight drifting through the smog and clouds above. She was lain in shadow, an alleyway on some off beaten lowtown road, she knew it vaguely.
When she looked down there was no wound. A wound? She fumbled at the clean cut edges of the hole cut through fabric leather and mail. One on the many straps cut nearly in two. It would need fixed but there was no blood, no wound.
No wound? Hawkes thoughts marched through a fog, slow and sluggish. She blinked hoping to jog her memory. Looking up the high rising walls above. Was she up there before she fell? Why?
A few people bumbled past the opening of the alleyway talking loudly— morning drunk. They looked at her with queer expressions and one stifled laughter into her sleeve. Hawke didn't dine to return their looks.
Yes, your champion is taking a nap in the dirt and mud, maker I hope it's dirt and mud.
She pushed herself up on her elbows sliding her back up the wall of building till she was sitting. She ran a hand through her muddy hair. One of her daggers was gripped rigidly in her other hand, the twin dropped by her side. Hawke felt along her hip till she met her enchanted bag, finding it undisturbed, she sighed with relief.
Passed out in a gutter in low town that was surprising. Passed out in low town you were just as likely to be gutted as you were to be robbed blind. And I managed neither. Hawke only found herself with a muddy leg and a hole through every layer of her armour.
Who would cut a hole my armour?
It felt like somebody had rattled rattled her skull around for a good few hours. Or she had been really, really, drunk and was now mildly, just mildly mind, hungover. Racking her brain she tried to recall what lead to this moment. Marian Hawke, the champion of Kirkwall passed out in a gutter in lowtown. She stared vacantly at the wall opposite, the cracking mortar over the stone.
Oh, yes. Orsinos letter.
She grabbed the small leather-bound notebook from the front of her bag, “ nothing worse than an absent mind.” Her father used to say as he wrote his endless lists in a book just like this one. She had had it since she was sixteen, kept the habit since she was sixteen. She flipped through the worn pages with their dog-eared corners, noting that the small fountain pen she kept slotted over the cover was missing. Her deeds, successes and failures reduced to bullet point lines on old parchment. She stopped on the most recent page flecked with blotchy ink and russet stains.
“Letter from Orsino. Visit gallows,” was crossed out as if already done. And under that just one word: Chantry— So rough it was obviously an afterthought, a quick addendum in a moment of calm. We—
We were headed to stop a confrontation between Meredith and Orsino at the chantry. That was it. I am this cities babysitter, champion, after all. Hawke, at least, remembered that.
All right stupor sulking done. Get up. Up. Out of this filthy alley.
She slung her daggers back in there sheaths and stood up, her legs surprisingly steady beneath her and set out.
Hightown wass the best option; To the chantry. She could figure it out from there. Pick up the little bread crumbs she left herself. I was Varric, Fenris, and Aveline that were with her. Fuzzy memories, voices I can't process, infuriating. If the Chantry was a bust she could find one of them at least, she hoped she could. Unless something had happened to them too. They’re alright, she told herself. They have to be.
Hawke picked up her pace and wove through the streets to the dusty market on the way to the huge staircase up to Hightown. She took two steps at a time. People Gawked. She recognised a few of them, just faces in a crowd she was used to seeing. I know this armour isn't the most suited to stealth, really, but I've been wearing the whole set for at least two weeks now. Most people had to be used to seeing her rushing about in glaring red and black by now.
She pulled up the hood anyway, strangely out of place with the attention.
The high town market was as busy as usual. A rush of voices, scents, and faces milling from stall to stall. Canvas awnings of every colour lined the square, patorons milling about in silk and samite. She danced past them all, ready to bolt up the stairs and run for the chantry.
Something about all of this felt pressing. Important. She couldn't place where the urge came from. Her feet pounded on the stone as she quickend her pace. Running.
In a way, it felt like an ending. Like fleeing Lothering with nothing but the shirts on their backs. The world reached its boiling point and I wake up passed out in an alley with no explanations instead of—
"Who brought the old woman!"
She skidded to a halt at the voice— multiple voices. They were unnervingly recognisable and came out from the dwarven sector as she rushed past. Bartrand? And— A woman's pleading with two deeper baritones', both recognisable, one more so than the other. Her breath caught. No. That's impossible. Both are impossible. Her poster stiffened, frozen in place as she listened. Her heart speeding.
Shaking she stepped back. her feet carrying her into the entrance of the square.
This isn't possible.
Bartrand and the rest of his expedition crew stood talking in undertones, moving supplies onto wagons. Apart from them Hawkes companions, and not so far away from the rest, three people caught in deep discussion.
Two that she would recognise anywhere. Mother, Carver… It had been so long since she'd seen their faces, heard them speak outside of dreams. The pair were arguing with a taller, if less muscular, man. He was bearded and in faintly familiar robes.
I can't bring myself to move. It was as though the picture would shatter is she so much as took another breath. Their voices carried across the square. Alive and breathing and arguing like mad.
Carver died in Ferelden. Mother was murdered. This. What's going on?
This is the Deep Roads expedition. I remember this. All the pieces were there. Even the bits of conversation she heard from where she stood. Mother insisting Bethany had to stay, but it was Carver.
Don't, don't, bring Carver. The Deep Roads are not safe for little Hawkes.
Was this the fade? It. It didn't feel like the fade. She starred up. Kirkwall sky. No murk or twinge or taint to indicate and offness. The only thing off was the when, the where, the who. Who was that standing where I had over six years ago?
It was over before I even started to process. The Wagons rolling out, creaking and groaning under the weight of supplies. The discussions at an end.
They walked passed her. Her Mother with Carver in toe looking sullen. She couldn't move, just watched as they walked by and away down the steps into the market. Without so much as a glance her way.
Tears pricked at the back of her eyes tasting iron in the back of her mouth in the effort to not let them fall. She wanted to run after them, She wanted to know what was going on here, but was rooted in place.
He gut twinged painfully, and her hand fell to the hole in the raiment, and poked at her stomach beneath. She was only met with a flat wall of muscle pushing back.
The rest of the scene played out, just as she remembered it. Fenris, Merrill, Varric and that man with the beard walking past Hawke. Setting out for the Deep Roads. A month and two weeks in hell. Where they found the idol, where Varric's brother betrayed them all. Where Bethany...
She lurched out, no grace, no stealth, and grabbed the bearded man's arm.
"A moment Serah?" the words flooded out.
Then she saw his face and her breath caught, her eyes went wide. This man. He-
From the shape of his eyes, his jaw line, to the shape and texture of his black beard. The bright blue eyes and golden complexion were wrong, but otherwise he was the spitting image of Malcolm Hawke.
This man has my father's face. They could be brothers, twins.
Who are you? She couldn’t say, None of this is real. Not yet. Not for me. I went to the deep roads over six years ago. My sister died there. Carver was already dead. Mother was murdered. Father died years before we ran from Ferelden. I'm going to stop the first enchanter and the night commander from starting another war in this city.
He didn't move. Didn't even flinch. Just stopped short a congenial smile on his lips, he waited.
Hawke couldn't look at anyone else save a glance at Fenris. Fenris who looked at me like he was preparing to jump in and gore her on his blade while likewise staring daggers at this man's back.
The smile on his bearded face wavered, briefly, before returning. Though slightly less exuberant and more polite, but no less real. Hawkes hand was a vice on his arm, white knuckled.
I-
I am armoured and armed to the teeth. I am the perceived threat here.
A glance at her— his, she realised, stalled companions really drove it in. All of them with varying degrees of either curiosity, worry, or impatience but all had hands not far from weapons.
He looks so much like Father. Her father was, darker skinned, brown where this man was gold, his hair had been grey where this mans was black, his face aged when she last saw him where this man was young. He's like a younger paler reflection.
"Hawke you need a hand there? We don't have time for staring contests with strangers." Varric's smooth voice, her name, directed at this stranger with her Father’s face.
She filled her lungs, violently, had I stopped breathing? Her hand dropped from his arm.
"Sorry," her voice was hoarse and quiet and barely audible even to herself.
Concern pressed the man's features and he rubbed at his wrist.
"Are you alright?" he placed a gentle hand on her shoulder and looked over at the dwarf. As if to say without words that he would only be a moment.
His voice was her Father's, Nearly, just younger with different inflections. She was sure If they spoke in the same room and you didn't know them well you could not have discerned the speaker.
"Be quick Hawke. Don't want to keep the darkspawn waiting."
There was my name again.
The rest of the expedition group carried on ahead. All but Fenris who lingered like a shadow in dark leather. Only the distinct red flare missing from the oh so familiar elf. He glared like he didn’t know her from a hole in the wall. Or a very annoying bug. Annoying bug definitely. Yes just joke about how much that hurts.
Hawke drew her attention back to the stranger. Her movements slow and disjointed, she was finding it hard to breathe. Her reaction time slowed, her tongue made of lead. The man stared on. Awkward on awkward.
"Sorry, you look like someone," her voice was clear this time, and she at least told the truth. He does look like someone. This all looks awfully familiar with a few details out of place. One being you. Mystery bearded man with my father's face.
The part of her brain usually screaming for me to think first was gone with the confusion.
"Who? I like to think I have a very distinct look." he said with disarming charm.
Hawke shook her head, "you look like my father. I'm sorry, you just look like him."
That seemed to disarm him. A small downturn of his lips.
This is maddening. All of this is maddening. She felt the strangest urge to run. To pinch herself, knowing this could only be a dream.
"Oh," his voice was a breath. He was puzzling over her, squinting a little bit as if to see her better.
She flipped her hand up to knock off her hood. Releasing her shoc of short dark hair.
Stare away, tall and beardy, stare away.
He worried his lip, let out a breath. Little mannerisms that felt familiar to her.
"If you don't mind me asking. What is your Father's name?"
"Malcolm," slipped out of her lips, automatic, spoken with ingrained pride.
She watched him, his blue eyes, those were her Mothers eyes. Bethany had her mother's looks and her eyes, Carver a little bit of both, but those same blue eyes. Marian Hawke wound up with some combination of features from grandparents she never knew, but she had her father's eyes: Amber brown, golden in the right light.
The Man had gone still. stopped breathing. It's the best thing to do right? Drive the nail home. Finish this blow. She had certainly had enough for today, I deserve to dish a few out.
"Malcolm Hawke." The name delivered like the stroke of a blade.
"Malcolm Hawke," the name seemed to force its way over his lips, tense, like she just accused him of killing kittens, "you're sure?"
"Yes."
She could almost ignore the pinch of guilt knotting her insides. The one telling her to say no. To undo the damage before it began. He looks like my father but he has my mother’s colouring and her eyes. Like he could be my brother.
He shook his head, mess of hair ruffling. Dark and fluffy. If she reached up and touched it, it would be the same texture as her own, she would bet her life on it.
"That's just— not possible," he took a step away, "who are you?"
What did I admit to here. I'm Marian Hawke and you are in the place I was six years ago. I don't know what's going on or who you are but I have a sinking suspicion that I don't like this at all.
I'm you.
No not that at all. That's not the conclusion you would jump too. Nor the one that you would want someone to jump to. Not that this conclusion is much better. No I just accused my father of having other children. Of fathering a bastard. Of breaking vows he made to my mother.
Or that he had had other children. Before her.
That made more sense. Her father had been older. He was an apostate, always on the run.
Was it any better if he abandoned a mother and his child. A child who knew him long enough to remember his face. Was that better or worse than marital indiscretion?
As her mind worked she noticed Anders and Isabela lingering, watching the exchange of unplesantries. They hadn't just up and ventured back to their own corners of the world just yet.
Isabella looked like she's just found the scandal of the year and Anders, Anders looked like Anders, overworked and mildly concerned. But Hawke could see the tension in their shoulders. As tense as the bearded man and Fenris lingering by his shoulder.
I've been standing here for a long time just staring and not saying anything.
I am outnumbered. If this comes to fight— It won't, I will be very cooperative.
"You first." As ever my mouth makes me a liar.
Moving on instinct she rose onto the balls of her feet with her hands at her sides ready to fly to her dagger, not the dagger, no , the smoke bombs at her belt at any moment.
She felt terribly hungover and lost beyond measure.
And if it came to a fight she would have been up against a possessed mage, A skilled rogue, a frighteningly powerful greatsword wielding elf, and tall-beardy-looks-like-my-father.
If he were me he\s be a rogue. That's the answer. He is me.
Like a single grain of clarity in a world made of darkness she was sure that he was her, however this backwards situation went, that was a truth. Even so the spear on his back really said otherwise. Maker damn it. There is no way she could incapacitate all of them and escape.
What is this? What blighted hole have I fallen into?
He's boring holes into me. Here she was interrupting the beginning of his exciting adventure. Then going on to disparage their fathers name. Ah ha ha Marian. What will you think of next.
"Garrett Hawke, or Hawke." He shrugged, "Most people just call me Hawke."
She nodded slowly chewing over the words.
He’s Hawke. So who am I? How did I get here?
Pain jutted through her from her abdomen. Her hand fell there, to that clean cut through all her layers.
"Marian," Marian Hawke, Champion of Kirkwall, but just Hawke will do. Her lips were warm and slick. Blood? She dabbed at her lip with her fingers, coming away red. Oh.
No one had moved. No one stabbed me, but she had been stabbed. Clearly.
Red life flooding over her fingers from the slit in her armour. She fell forward, her knees gone out from underneath her.
"Anders!" His arms were solid under her own, holding her up, her face pressed into his shoulder. He even smells like father, came to her manically. His hands are warm. Magic warm. They smoothed down her back and pressed to the wound that went right through her just under the last rib. "Anders you're better at this! Please."
"I can't help her here. Come on, the clinics closer." No don't use magic out in the open Anders. "We need to get her to the clinic."
Hawke was lifted off her feet like a doll, limp and useless; tucked against Garrett Hawke's chest.
"Right," she could feel the word in his chest as he spoke.
"Careful with her. We don't know how bad this is."
Don't pass out. Magic was stitching through her. A feeling as familiar as her father's smile, her mother's arms around her. From skinned knees to the time when she broke her arm jumping from the oak behind their house outside Redcliff. It feels like father. It felt like coming home.
"It’s pretty bad. I don't think I could make it much worse if I tried."
"Hawke," gravely, enrapturing, Fenris. There you are, Fenris.
"You can go on ahead. Tell Varric to wait. That I got caught up. An emergency, something."
Fenris nodded, she only saw it in her perifferal, her eyes nearly closed. His mop of white hair moving up and down. Don't go Fenris . But he was already going. He was already gone. Everything was blurry. Her eyes watered, but the sting of tears was nothing compared to the sharp searing hell of her open insides.
Garrett's steps were quick and careful but she could feel every single one. Don't pass out . She closed her eyes.
"Awfully interesting story she has."
"Isabella, not the time."
"What do you think Anders? Hawke's got a long lost sister? Come to die in his arms?"
Yes Anders what do you think?
"I-" Anders began.
"Isabella! She's not dyeing." Other Hawkes voice was a loud thrum against her ear, she felt like she could trust that. Trust him. I'm not going to die. I promised I wouldn’t die.
"I'm just saying— "
Hawke coughed violently killing whatever Isabela had meant to say.
She could still feel the light sway of magic moving through her. Gentle and soothing. He's a mage, like father was a mage.
"-er a mage?" she managed, pressed into his shoulder.
"You haven't passed out yet. That's-" Strange? Unfortunate? Inconvenient? "good."
"Mm."
"Yeah. I'm a mage." He was quiet. Nearly more felt than heard.
"Like Father?"
"Like Father. Not as good yet though." He sighed, "You probably shouldn't try to talk."
Her breathing was ragged, laboured.
"Righ-" she broke off into coughing. Liquid in her lungs.
"We're almost there okay. You'll be fine."
"There's the lift. Once we're on I can take over."
Thanks Anders .
"Thanks Anders," it was half a whisper.
There was a brief and very rushed exchange between Isabella and one of the lift operators. Marian could feel the shift and slight sway as they stepped onto the wooden platform.
"We should try to get her to drink an elfroot potion. It will speed things up," Anders said, very clinical. Healer through and through.
"Right." He was slowly lowered Hawke to the floor. Propped up against his legs. Gentle as he could. Her world reduced to the colours playing on the back of her eyelids and pain.
The chains screamed, loud and sudden, as the lift started to move. It was no gentle decent, it never was. She focused on the song that was the machinations of the crank and gears sending them down into the undercity.
The gears slipped, a stomach flopping drop, before they caught again sending a shuddering jolt through the platform. It was enough to slam Marian Hawke into unconsciousness.