Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"One more night, Hawke," insisted the sandy-haired elf. 

Hawke pulled the brown leather mask from her face. "Not indentured. My year is up," she responded. Even in the dimly lit office, her eyes gleamed like violets after a summer rain. Every bit of exposed skin shone slick with sweat from another climb through the chokingly humid and toxic passages from Darktown with undeclared imports in a cumbersome satchel. Only yesterday did Athenril insist this would be the last one. 

"You know the Coterie is muscling us out of our routes. I'll pay you twenty silver from what I make on this next run if you're so hard up for it," Athenril replied, closing a ledger and crossing her slender arms with impatience. What the elf said was true, but if Hawke wanted to get ahead instead of simple survival in Kirkwall, she’d let Athenril decide how much that delivery was worth... in a sovereign or two. 

"Sister, say your farewells and let's go," Carver muttered, his black hair fluffing forward as he removed his own mask. He possessed no more words for the elven smuggler directly, and that was for the best. Although Athenril bribed the city guard to overlook the Hawkes on an outbound skiff from the Gallows a year ago, it was not for charity. It was debt.

Carver and his sister repaid that debt several times. It was done within the first few months of running cargo, yet their contract for a year remained. Carver struggled daily to not bring up the grievance, for he didn’t fear the elf, but his sister cautioned him. However raw the deal, it held terms agreed upon, and Athenril had more than just herself to pay the family a bloody intrusion should their deal be broken. 

Hawke ignored him for a moment. "If you need it done right, a safe delivery would be worth more than that."

Hawke hadn't possessed the nerve for squeezing extra coin before. Athenril huffed and stood straight, prickly as the fountain of hair that sprouted from her messy bun. "Overcharging already, Hawke? I have enough of your people who'll do it for free." 

'More refugees,' she knew, remembering that terrible journey trapped in the hold of a ship with neither food nor fresh water, tossed incessantly by the churning sea. The thirst was worst of all, and the Gallows on which they landed was barely better. Thousands more of her countrymen attempted a similar journey. Some sank, some were sold to slave traders from the north, and others were turned away at ports along the coast when cities wished no more doglords. The latter would've been the Hawkes' fate had they stayed in the Gallows, and perhaps they’d be in Amaranthine or Highever now, starting over amid the mass displacement. Alas, Hawke chose the smuggler's bargain for her mother's sake, and at Carver’s urging.  

Rumors said the Blight was over now, and into Kirkwall came curious tales about the disgraced Teyrn of Gwaren and the Grey Wardens who turned from traitors to garlanded heroes. They even spoke of a lost son of Maric and a temple of Sacred Ashes. Other rumors denied a Blight at all, blaming it all on crown politics. In the end, the darkspawn were gone as they ever would be, but not before razing entire holdings, advancing league after league with neither demands nor parley, driving many Fereldans to flee north, east, and west for safe havens. Even Denerim sustained catastrophic losses, it was said. 

Hawke lost her nerve to push further, not wishing to end with hostility. "Perhaps I'll see you around, but I do believe our business is done," she said, not extending the courtesy of a handshake, for that would be overstepping. 

"Go on then," Athenril said coolly, watching the Fereldans leave.

~

A cool mountain breeze soothed their faces upon exiting the smuggler's office onto the sunset-bathed streets of Hightown, a welcome change from the cramped tunnels beneath. The evening drew to a close now, yet the Red Lantern District bustled with workers from the brothel, foul-mouthed sailors, dwarves from the Merchant's Guild, and finely-dressed nobles. Above it all, bells rung low, signalling the end of the evening Chant. If Carver was lucky, he could pass for a mercenary or a Rose client, and his sister - perhaps a noble's servant. If they were marked as refugees, however, they would surely come to trouble with guards since the templars forbade all but wealthy Fereldans from entering Kirkwall. It seemed like that should've been the Viscount's decision, but Hawke held little imagination for politics or rule. 

"I can't believe you'd want to work for her again, now that we're free," Carver said, interrupting his sister's train of thought. 

"Want has nothing to do with it," she corrected. She wasn't mocking him. She hoped he wouldn't take it that way, but Carver was nothing if not proud and brutally honest to a fault. He'd been born that way, and it was why she insisted on doing the speaking whenever they reported to Athenril, lest Carver paint a target on his or their entire family's backs. "I kept the option open for coin and coin only... but Athenril will never pay more than a scraping for what she can take,” she exhaled. 

"I know," he huffed. "I just wish our whole lives didn't depend on people like that. It'd kill Mother if we ended up in the Gallows."

"Speaking of that..." Hawke whispered, spotting an imposing man in glimmering armor carrying a winged silver helm, and another beside him rounding a corner. Theirs were hard faces with chilling eyes - both templars who must've attended the evening Chant. 

"This way," Carver whispered, turning down the wide stairwell, taking care not to move suspiciously fast.

~{Lowtown}~

That encompassed life in Kirkwall for the past year - serving a smuggler and vanishing at the shadow of any templar. She was doubly unwelcome, for in addition being an undocumented refugee, she was also a mage living outside the Circle. She'd lived on the margins of society or outside it altogether her entire life, until the Blight thrust her family here. Never grass underfoot, nor wild fruit to pluck when hunger burned... just a bleak stone maze of slums. She needed one break, one lucky chance, something to get the family out. Carver was eager, but he agreed on little else. Almost everything had to be a fight with him until all too recently.

"I don't know about you, but I might fancy a drink to celebrate," Carver muttered as more of an invitation than statement as they entered the pit of Lowtown, arriving from the docks without pursuit. Some of the poorest slept in the covered passages here, among them women with small children, parentless urchins, people who couldn't work, and some refugees who took their chances here instead of Darktown. 

"What do we have to celebrate?" she asked, uninspired by their dismal surroundings.

"Never having to work for free again," he explained, willfully ignoring those he passed. "From this night on, nobody cuts deals for us."

She cracked a rare smile. She played the miserly one as usual, and Carver would go out anyway if they returned immediately to their uncle's hovel as planned, but his grin seemed contagious tonight, at least enough to persuade. “Alright,” she consented. 

Only one real tavern remained open for business in this part of Kirkwall, marked by a horrendous effigy of a man strung up by his ankles. Iron lanterns illuminated bare walls and damp wooden planks while customers and denizens huddled around oddly-stained tables. The place stunk of vomit, ale, and vaguely of urine, which would’ve nauseated Hawke if she hadn't grown to tolerate worse smells below the streets. 

Carver didn't appear too out of place from the roguish men in his cheap armour. He’d grown strong enough for real plate now, but had no hope of affording it, and such armour wasn't practical for the quiet, discreet work of smuggling. The good thing about smuggling was that, if done correctly, it rarely called for a real fight. Or at least his sister would call that a good thing, and there had been a few fights, for which Carver obliged. He vastly preferred that to sneaking around, except when his sister forced men to sleep or run in fear from their own hallucinations. That made him laugh, and it made her laugh as well, once or twice.

"Two ales to start, Corff," Carver said, sliding one bit for each to the barkeep, receiving two wooden mugs of foamy swill in return. He wouldn’t allow his sister to buy him ale if he could help it. He considered that upstaging. 

"To... what?" his sister asked, grasping a damp mug. She wasn't used to this.

"To... something new.... something better. To us?" he rambled, humouring her. "Just drink," he insisted. Acquiescing, she swallowed the swill.

Hawke paused, grimacing at the foul flavor and aroma. Carver was much more familiar with ale and it no longer bothered him. She watched him finish his mug like a seasoned lush, until finally, he belched. 'Revolting,' she thought, placing a hand under her warm throat. It felt humid in here, much like Darktown, and the characters not much better. She pulled off her hood for air, causing her hair to tumble as her own sweat broke out. 

The mercenaries seated nearby at a table grew loud and raucous, grabbing at the barmaid when she came to refill their mugs. That made Hawke nervous, though Norah neither squealed nor told them to stop. She only shoved their hands away as if shooing flies.

"Another," Carver demanded from the barkeep, sliding another bit across the counter. 

"And two slices of bread," Hawke added. That was Mother's request. Most refugees were too poor to afford bread or decent flour, so they ate loaves full of sawdust. For this, she dug out her own small pouch of coins.

Corff nodded as he filled another mug beneath the keg, then headed for the kitchen behind the bar. Carver started on his second mug while Hawke hadn't finished her first.

When Corff returned, she slid him his coppers and quickly placed the slices on a handkerchief, tying it into a makeshift bag. She broke off the smallest piece and chewed - the only food that passed her lips in many hours. Even the single bite made her stomach wake to how empty it was, so she started on her mug again, holding it carefully with both hands. It tasted awful, but the hunger was worse. She wiped her lips on her sleeve when finished.

"We shouldn't stay too long," she eventually said. "I want to scout early for coin tomorrow."  

"Why wait? I have a golden opportunity for you in a room upstairs, right now," a lout at the next table slurred.  

The man evidently stopped bothering the barmaid long enough to notice the next thing with breasts. She tried to ignore him, but glanced sideways to briefly see his face. He was about her age, but blonde and in dire need of a scrubbing. 'He's just drunk', she thought, not wishing to respond if it would antagonise.

"Go to the Rose if you want a whore," Carver said coldly. It surprised her, for she hadn't expected him to say anything. Carver didn't turn around, but remained keenly aware of the hefty blade on his back. Was he really going to start a fight here? The guards would take a while to arrive, but this man's overtures weren't worth spilling blood. 

"Easy... We're just looking for a bit of fun," one of the cooler heads at the table prevailed. 

"How about another game of Wicked Grace, Lucky? Double or nothing," another interjected. Hawke turned her head again. It was a beardless dwarf with gold earrings. She remembered seeing him around occasionally, though they never spoke. If he was Coterie or Carta, he seemed too fancy for a simple foot soldier. 

"You're on, dwarf," Lucky accepted the challenge.

'Perhaps he's cleaned this ironically-named mercenary out a few silver?' Hawke thought, amusing herself as the tension eased. Shuffling cards and drunken banter from the table accompanied the low sound of Carver finishing his mug. She endeavoured to relax a bit and started slowly on her second, for which Carver again paid. 

"Are you new here?" Norah asked in a thick Marcher accent when she returned to the bar. 

"To this establishment? Yes," Hawke answered quickly.

Norah giggled, and Hawke became acutely aware of just how much bare skin the barmaid showed. "I knew it! You're too sweet for this lot."

Carver scoffed. 'Sweet? You think she's sweet?!' he cringed, unable to agree.

Hawke broke off another piece of breadcrust, so small that surely Mother wouldn't notice. It had an odd texture, quite unlike the robust brown breads of Fereldan peasantry, but her stomach was no longer picky. A moment later, Carver was asking for yet another drink. "How many are you having? I... we should probably go home soon," Hawke suggested.

"That’ll never be home," Carver corrected.  

She sighed tiredly. "I know. I barely know what to call it."

He finished the last mug with a thud. "Alright. I'll take you back to our blighted uncle's. Mother will be missing you," he concluded with more than a hint of sarcasm, checking to make sure his coin was still at his waist. 

Hawke promptly collected the little bag and pulled up her hood again. As she made her way to the door with Carver behind her, that same shifty dwarf made eye contact again. At his side hung some sort of exotic weapon, but Hawke couldn’t make it out. Who did he work for, and why was he watching her so closely? She couldn’t appear intimidated. That was weakness. 

Wisps of cloud glided over the mountain, but failed to veil the moon that reflected in pale washes of light off the slums carved out of rock. "Why did you stick up for me?" she finally asked Carver as they entered a corridor into the maze. 

"What?" he asked. His face squished itself up as if she said something incomprehensible. 

"Back there," she clarified. He was stubborn and feeling the effects of that ale now, but surely he knew what she meant. Was he embarrassed? Was he at risk of being overshadowed?

He shook his head, which nearly made him stumble. That ale was on an empty stomach, after all. "Oh, shut it, Mari," he said, calling her by her nickname. He never called her Hawke.

"I just didn't expect that from you," she finished the subject innocently, feeling a little wobbly herself. 

That annoyed him, and yet, he was happy with it. Carver loved to play the hardened soldier, but nothing moved him quite like defending his blasted witch of a sister. If anyone was going to insult her and get away with it, it was him, but she knew not to press him more, lest he truly start to argue. 

Carver twisted the key in the lock on the heavy hovel door, but it wouldn't budge. The thing seemed barred from the other side when he pushed it. 

"Mother? We're back!" he shouted, knocking with loud clumsy thuds. He hoped she hadn't drifted off into a slumber as he attempted to speak through the wood. 

After a few moments, the door finally opened. "Maker's breath! I expected you both hours ago. Where did you take him?" Leandra asked her daughter with more than a hint of accusation.

Mari didn't know precisely how to answer, slowed by that ale. It wasn't the first time they returned late. Smugglers' business often called for it. 

"We were at the tavern," Carver answered, closing and locking the door behind them. 

"Spending what coin we have on ale, I suppose?" Leandra guessed, smelling it on them both. She adjusted her shawl. "I don't suppose you remembered to get us some food while you were out."

Mari indeed remembered. She handed it over, hoping Mother would be pleased.

"It's all crushed," Leandra said critically, examining it. "And it's starting to mould."

Maker, was it? Mari had scarcely seen any bread in Kirkwall. It was easy to forget what it was supposed to look like. "I'm sorry, Mother. That's all they had," she said, apologising profusely. Perhaps if she bought some in Hightown, if they hadn't run into those blasted templars... 

Leandra's shoulders slumped a little more before heading silently to the room she shared with her remaining daughter. Saying nothing was often worse, for it let Mari’s guilt run wild. They were poorer now than they’d ever been in Lothering, and what could a poor refugee afford? 

Carver's eyes found his sister's. He thought of nothing to say in her defence this time, though there was a vague understanding. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared, but now...

"See you in the morning," he said low, hoping she would keep her chin up.

"Yes, good night," she answered. He turned his gaze away and walked into the other room he shared with their uncle. 

Alone, Hawke checked the desk for any letters. There were none from Athenril, nor old acquaintances who managed to make contact from across the sea, but there was one envelope addressed to her which bore no return address. She sliced it open with a small knife from her belt. 

"Messere Hawke, 

You know of the Merchants' Guild, yes? What you will not have heard of is an expedition in the works - one that could use your special talents, and one that would pay generously. Speak to the head of House Tethras if this opportunity interests you."

Chapter Text

Pulling on her brown leather boots, Carver could see his sister was readying to leave the hovel again. By instinct, he stood up to join her for wherever she was going, even if he complained.

"I don't need you this time," Mari said, softening her edge. "I'm going to Darktown."

"Darktown? Not alone you are," he countered. 

"I want to see that Grey Warden mage. I think it's time I got to know someone else like me," she explained, brushing a loose strand of dark hair behind her ear. Four years had passed since Father died and one year since Bethany. Mari had nobody to discuss magic with, to relate to with it, and no mentor. Even if she and Carver were arguing less, he couldn't understand the burden of being a mage. Even Mother never did. 

"That Grey Warden nearly got us killed by templars on the first night," Carver argued. At least their mother wasn't in the room to hear that. 

"He didn't know it was a trap, and we made it back, didn't we?" she huffed. "Look, I know there are other apostates in this city, but the ones we've seen are bloody Coterie or worse. They don't try to help people. Anders is the first half decent one I've met since... since Bethany. So stay here or go out. I'm going to Darktown."

Carver was already repulsed by her plan. "That man is not like Bethany, or Father. When he killed those templars... I've never seen magic like that." 

"You hardly know a thing about magic… and I feel that I don’t either. This is my chance to learn from someone who's been trained in the Circle, maybe longer than Father was. I wish Father taught me more before he died, but..." she became sad at the memory. 

Ugh. Mages . "Mari, if you must see this Warden, then I’m going with you. Maker forbid, if something happened to you and I wasn’t there, I'd probably have to go down and kill everyone," he uttered, strangely protective in a way. 

She sighed exasperatedly. "Carver..."

"I'll hang back when you meet him, so long as his eyes don't start glowing," Carver insisted. 

"Fine," she accepted with a slight nod. "Just don't start a fight if you don't have to."

"When have I ever done that?"

~{Darktown}~

Anders claimed an enclosed sanctuary for himself in the bowels of the old mining tunnels and made it into a hospice. The place wasn't pretty, and the constant whiff of mortal waste seemed inescapable, but Anders preferred it infinitely to a Circle cell. A dozen simple cots built from stumps, scrap metal, and burlap served as beds for those in need, which had included a teenaged boy and a few mine workers when Mari and Varric first found the place. To know that a mage went out of his way to help strangers was rather something she wished she could do, but she remembered: Being a known apostate meant Anders was hunted.

She knocked on the door next to the lit lantern. "Who's there?" Anders asked from within. 

"It's... Hawke ," she answered meekly.

He opened the door guardedly, not expecting to see the refugee back after what happened in Hightown. "Are the maps not to your liking? That was all I had to offer," he assumed.

"No, they're perfect," Hawke smiled in an effort to put him at ease. "I just wanted to talk to you. Is this a bad time?"

He opened the door the rest of the way. She entered, but the surly brother waited a few yards away. Anders left the door ajar in case the brother changed his mind.

"Oh, your patients are gone," Mari noticed, for the beds stood empty. Perhaps that was a good sign rather than foreboding. 

"It's been quiet recently," he answered, still unsure why she was here. 

"How have you been since...?" she broached the subject of the night in Hightown. 

'Brilliant. No, super ,' Anders thought sarcastically, but didn’t opt to mock her. "I miss my friend. That was the last thing I expected to happen," he answered. Tranquil had a gentler meaning for Mari until that night, and though Karl himself pleaded for Anders to end his life, that didn’t make the deed easier for Anders. 

~

"So... how did you end up here of all places? Aren't your people heroes in Ferelden now?" Mari asked, trying to urge the Warden out of his shell as she sat at his falling-apart table.

"If by 'my people', you mean the Wardens who actually fought the Archdemon, then sure," he almost scoffed. "I wasn't around long enough to enjoy the parties."

"Well, Lirene made it seem as if you single-handedly defeated a horde," Mari recalled. The merchant sung his praises so highly, hailing him as a deliverer of babies and healer of the injured without thought of charging the silverless poor. Mari quite expected to meet a white-bearded wizard as their Warden instead of a young man only a few years older than she.

That made him snicker. "Sorry to disappoint."

"I'm not disappointed," she smiled.

“What about you? Driven from your home by the darkspawn?” he asked the fellow apostate, who seemed too amiable to be a born-and-bred city native. 

She nodded. “It was after the disaster at Ostagar. We lost my sister in our escape.”

“ I’m sorry. Which village were you from?” Anders asked. Perhaps they hailed from the same, but it had been more than a decade since Anders last spoke the name of his childhood home. 

“Lothering,” she answered, recalling its single lofty windmill and a cluster of houses and barns on the side of the Imperial Highway. “We didn’t live in the village itself, but past enough hills and woods to stay hidden.”

“That must’ve helped you evade the templars’ notice. Did the rest of your family know about your magic? All of them?” he asked, rather incredulously.

“Yes, of course. My father and little sister were also mages,” she explained, as if that was the most normal thing in their household. 

“ Maker ,” he exclaimed and paused from the revelation. “You’re lucky, you know that? I don’t mean with… losing your sister,” he corrected his rashly spoken words. “I mean… you could’ve been carted off to the Circle like I was when your magic surfaced. My family didn’t even try to hide me. I was twelve years old when the templars came.”

“I’m so sorry. I know I was fortunate. My father was in the Circle himself, a long time ago, when he met my mother,” Mari explained. 

“Ran away and had you, I suppose? That is the dream,” Anders smiled, for he once entertained fanciful notions of a similar life on his own terms. If he could occasionally shoot lightning at fools, all the better. 

Becoming more comfortable with each other’s company, Mari’s curiosity bordered on prying. “If you don’t mind my asking, what was it like growing up in that tower on Lake Calenhad?”

“I got used to having no privacy. Templars watched us all day. Most of us became so pale from never seeing the sun except when we were allowed a weekly exercise in open air. I didn’t step foot on grass or look up at a tree until my first escape. I got really good at it,” he almost jested, making light of such dismal teenage years. 

“What sort of magic is taught there?” she enquired. 

“The usual,” he spoke, meaning fundamentals. Realising she might not understand, Anders elaborated. “Apprentices were restricted to the most basic spells and training. That didn’t stop a few wiley ones from learning more on their own from books, and that tower has a lot of books. It’s only after the Harrowing that someone is declared a full mage. Then you’re allowed to study more advanced magic and become an enchanter. Enchanters can teach apprentices, but not every mage becomes an enchanter. I didn’t,” he explained. 

“Did all the mages wear clothes like yours?” she asked, hoping not to seem rude about what he wore: a turquoise coat stitched with gold thread, topped with a capelet of feathers.  

"No,” he answered, recalling the heavy, swishy fabric he was forced to don for years. “They wear robes. This is more the style mages wear in Tevinter, though not as ornate," he answered, looking down at his coat. "These are samir feathers," he explained, pointing to them. "Mages made use of their benefits long before the Chantry existed."

"The gold matches your... hair," she said awkwardly. She meant to say eyes, but stopped herself. 

Carver had been waiting outside practising his sword form. He abandoned his defensive stance as he overheard, lowering his blade as he looked back. Was she flirting? 

The Grey Warden blushed. "Yes, us Anders are famous for our blonde hair..." 

"Oh, I didn't realise!" she exclaimed. 

"My name isn't really Anders," he admitted. 

"Oh? What is it?" she asked inquisitively. 

"Maybe one day, I'll tell you," he answered, terribly coy. 

Carver felt like throwing up. She never flirted with anyone, at least not in front of him. He couldn't rationalise why, but it bothered him. Carver swung hard to get the annoyance out.

The comely smile on Anders's face vanished as quickly as it arrived, causing Mari’s to vanish as well. She could only assume it was melancholy for his friend. "I'm sorry. I don't want to give you the wrong idea," he finally said. 

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"In Kirkwall? Too many things," he replied sadly.

~

A short while later, Mari walked out of the clinic, surprised to see her brother still waiting. "I thought you’d left." 

" 'The gold matches your hair', " he quoted mockingly.

"Shut up!" she snapped, brushing past him in a fury. "I was having a conversation!"

"He was going to show you his magic staff next," Carver continued at her heels, leaning toward her ear.

"Only you would think of such filth!" 

"I just thought my sister could aim a little higher than a man in the sewers," he said coolly.

"What's it to you who I aim for… if that’s what I was doing?" she asked, turning back at him with blazing eyes. "Maker, just leave me alone!" she exclaimed, storming down the corridor toward a lift to Lowtown.

Carver stood there stunned. "... I just think you might deserve better," he whispered, far too low for anyone to hear.

Chapter Text

~{The Wounded Coast}~

"We'll never make it to the mountains tonight if we stop now," Mari protested as she kicked dirt beneath green palms swaying in the afternoon breeze. The sea was bluer than in Gwaren, turquoise and treacherous with skeletons of shipwrecks lodged against eruptions of black rock further out, spoiling a deceptively alluring coastline. Still, a mysterious pull on her heart beckoned her toward Sundermount, a promise half-remembered from the worst night of her life, to come to the uncertain and deliver the dark amulet to where the Witch needed it to go.  

"How long's it been since we've seen a beach? Lake Calenhad?" Carver asked, smiling, dropping his sheathed sword on the sand and unbuckling the straps of his secondhand mail. He stripped it off until he was only in his smallclothes, revealing the sculpted lines of his chest, arms, and legs. Embarrassed, Mari averted her eyes and shook her head disapprovingly as he ran into the surf.

'Fool,' she thought, with a blush creeping across her nose and cheeks. Perhaps it was only the heat of the sun. 

Carver was quite a ways out before he realised he could no longer touch the sand with his feet. Mari's curiosity got the better of her, too, for she was soon removing her own boots to walk in the surf.   

The sea was lukewarm, unlike the glacial rivers and lakes of her homeland. She held one side of her dress in her hand to prevent it becoming wet, but the slow waves lapped at her ankles, tickling them.

Carver swam further out into deeper water. "Come on, sister!" he called to her, mid-backstroke. 

"There are sharks!" she called back, dismayed. 'And bandits, and grey giants, and pirates who'd happily skewer us if they find us here,' she thought. 

Carver dove beneath the surface and opened his eyes. Sunlight penetrated the water like glass, illuminating forests of reefs below, among which swam schools of fish in jewelled shades of blue, red, and yellow... and far more.   

Fearing, Mari called to him across the waves, but he couldn't hear. She threw off her hat, tore off her cloak and dress, and glided in past her waist to rescue her stupid brother.

When he finally came up for air again, Mari was almost as far out as he, exerted from paddling hard against the waves. While relieved he wasn't drowning, she wasn't exactly pleased. 

Carver wiped the water from his eyes. "Closer! You've got to see this!" 

"It's not safe," she argued, swimming toward him, with her long hair flowing behind her like seaweed. 

"We're on a sand bar. It's the safest place in the water," he told her, closing the distance between them in a few strokes. "I'm going down again." 

"Wait!" she exclaimed. 

'Is she afraid? Andraste's tits, she is !' Carver thought, the both of them bobbing up and down with each wave. He found amusement in the look on her face and nearly laughed until a twinge of guilt bade him to calm her. "There's nothing to be scared of," he assured. 

"Are you sure?" she asked, looking around for shadows of sharks or their fins.

"Yes. Now come on," he said, grasping one of her hands beneath the water where she treaded. "Take a breath."

Underneath was a realm bluer than summer skies. The sand gave way to a reef which hid the masts and planks of long-sunken ships. Streams of dazzling fish darted around the coral as Carver swam by, sometimes too close for comfort. Below was akin to a forest floor with plants in colours beyond counting, all pulsating with life. She would never live it down if Carver knew she was so frightened at first, so she followed him until she needed to come up for breath again. 

She dove with him a few more times until the fear subsided. On the final dive, Mari twirled gracefully in circles, seemingly lost in her own weightlessness in this world below the surface. They paddled up to the rippling realm above together, almost dancing in the ascent.

"See?" he smiled at her, pushing back his hair that fell into his eyes. 

Before she could answer, a white flash cracked across the clouds. "Storm," Mari said, looking up at it. "We have to get to cover."

The sky faded to grey by the time they touched the beach, and their belongings began to be pelted with rain. Carver needed to get his sword and armour out of it as soon as possible, so they dashed to the edge of the beach where brush was thick. 

~

Out of sight from the caravan path on the cliff above, they sheltered under an overhang of rock and twisting trees, searching first for snakes or spiders that might do harm. Carver reclined half-naked on the rough sandy floor, staring up at shadows and occupying himself with silent thought. Mari dressed herself again, though it would take some time before anything was less than damp. She felt her skin pucker from the cold fabric while goosebumps cropped up all over her arms. Almost sensing her discomfort, Carver turned to see.

A few lightning flashes glittered against her face and neck. Her hair was still tangled and wet, and it would take longer than anything to dry. Still, she was not hard to look upon, even disheveled as the storm raged a few yards away. He shot Mari a quick half-smile, soothed by the sight. She didn’t seem to return it and only laid coldly on her side, hugging herself for warmth as the sound of rain beating down shook the sand and rock.

The storm began to die around nightfall. Mostly dressed now, Carver held a battered steel ring as he sat up, twiddling it between his fingers. 

"What's that?" Mari asked curiously in a whisper.  

"I got it in the army,” he answered. 

"Father would've been so proud to see it," she asserted with a contented smile. 

"And that pathetic failure at Ostagar, I'm sure," he shot back, embittered. 

'Do you think that was your fault?' she asked silently. She studied him for a few moments, observing that his jaw and expression had tensed. "Aveline told me that was the Teyrn's folly. No one else."

"Maybe," he brooded. "I just know that I fought harder than I'd ever fought before, as hard as I could... and it wasn't enough. The King's army and the Grey Wardens couldn't stop them... The Teyrn and his battle tactics couldn't stop them... I couldn't stop them, and because of that, we lost our home, Bethany... and Mother, the way she used to be. Everything we had before." 

That just about broke her. She sat up as well and insisted, "Nobody blames you."

"Not even you?" he asked half-heartedly. 

"No," she answered honestly, shaking her head and sad that he had to ask. 'Blast. You're so stubborn,' she thought. 

He reluctantly acknowledged the sentiment. The mercy of it was warm and made his heart flutter oddly. 

"Mari... do you really like that mage in Darktown?" he asked out of the blue. 

That made her pause. "He's interesting," she answered honestly. 

'So, you're interested in him!' Carver concluded, rolling his eyes. She didn't have boyfriends, girlfriends, or a reputation for either, but as soon as she met a man who obviously caught her eye, Carver could barely tolerate it. It had to be the man’s magical power that soured his opinion of Anders, or that he nearly got them killed by templars. Nothing else made sense.   

How far he was willing to go to avoid ever becoming Anders's brother-in-law, he didn't know. Perhaps this was just a fleeting infatuation of Mari’s, a crush, but the thought of her with that Warden scarecrow was bothering Carver more and more. "It’s too stuffy in here. I need air," he blurted, dropping the subject, and leaving Mari puzzled. 

He walked on sand still wet from rain and breathed in the calming night breeze, blowing cool and soothing against his skin. Lightning cracked far out in the distance amidst an amethyst sky above a flurry of white-capped waves. Lothering was out there somewhere across the sea, along with his dead father and sister. Home. And yet, a piece of home was in the tiny cave just behind him. That's all he had now besides memory.  

~

Mari's dreams that night were sinless memories of childhood, though as a mage, she could see them incredibly clear and consciously; Mother scolding her and Carver for not getting along, Father taking each aside with fairness and love, and dear Bethany standing as the amiable bridge between them. Alas, childhood was long over now, and the Blight had taken the rest. When Mari opened foggy eyes, the sky outside was only beginning to shift to a lighter shade of violet. A weight laid over her side where she reclined on the hard sandy ground, and she looked down to find an arm draped over her. It was warm and comforting, and for a moment she imagined it was someone as handsome as Anders, but it was a bit too familiar to pass as a stranger's. She pushed it off and her brother began to stir.

"Carver," she whispered, jostling his shoulder gently. "Wake up." For a moment, he thought he was still in Ferelden. 

~{Sundermount}~

The humans' arrival was clearly expected by the elves, despite the lack of warning. The camp guards didn't immediately nock their arrows and a delicate truce was made when Mari declared her true purpose. Their Keeper had dreamed of her in astonishing detail, they said, foretelling that a woman would come with a defender at her side, though the elves assumed these visitors would be Dalish. Mountain winds blew the red and yellow sails of their wooden landships and many vivid green eyes gazed upon the Hawkes as they entered, uncertain and untrusting of such outsiders.

Mari and Carver were escorted to a great aravel near the middle of the camp which creaked with age and bore a weathered mural of elves, halla, and a wolf far off to one side. One of the warriors knocked on the door thrice and climbed halfway up the steps to open it, speaking an odd tongue to someone within. A look of disagreement washed over his gaunt tattooed face, yet he beckoned the Hawkes closer with a gesture. One guard attempted to take Carver's sword from the strap across his chest, but he refused, causing tensions to quickly rise when a voice like emerald silk came from within, inviting the humans in.

“They knew we were coming. They know why we’re here,” Mari assured Carver with a whisper before they entered. 

Mari noted the moss sprinkled on the creaking wooden floor and colourful ties of herbs that hung from the low ceiling - too low for many humans to stand up straight. The scent of earth and pine was oddly calming, and an old elf sat along a bench at the end, her wrinkled green eyes taking in the sight of her long-awaited guests. 

"Sit with us. There are traditions we must follow when those such as you first come to our clan," the elf said, though she seemed to be the only other person Mari could see within. All along the wooden walls were a maze of carved images of incomprehensible beings, only discernible by eyes or the eyeslits of helms.

"Andaran atish'an. I am Marethari, Keeper of this clan Sabrae," the Keeper spoke, waiting for names and titles in turn. Her branchlike tattoos gleamed gold against her almost-iridescent skin. 

"I'm Hawke. This is my brother, Carver," Mari said to keep things diplomatic, but Carver remained surly and quiet, rather used to his sister handling delicate negotiations. 

The Keeper thought the two somewhat reminiscent of the essence of Sylaise and June, whether married or siblings depending on the hahren telling it. She lit a ball of herbs in a bowl carved from white antler with her finger and thumb, evidencing her magical talents. The smoke was sweet instead of suffocating and began to fill the aravel. From a slender veridium jug at her side, she poured steeped water into one wooden cup, raised it up with both braceleted hands, and drank a third before passing it to Mari. The water smelled of plants she couldn't quite place, but the amulet urged her on to drink even as Carver was less certain. When passed to him, he looked to his sister for a sign, for reassurance that this wasn't insane, and found only a blank stare before he swallowed.

"What brought you to this mountain, child?" Marethari finally asked after the silence.

"This," Mari answered truly, retrieving the dark amulet wrapped inside a cotton square. She loathed to touch it. 

The old elf squinted to see, yet she knew what it was. "I'm afraid that needs to be carried yet further."

"How far, exactly?" Mari asked, hiding the displeasure in her voice. 

"To an altar of one of our gods."

"You have no altars in your camp?" Mari asked again. 

"None that would serve. The closest waits within the ruins open to the sky," the Keeper explained. "What you carry requires an elvhen rite, one sung when this world was still young. If you make the climb with me, I will do this for you," she said, picking up a staff of silvery wood with a dragon arched in a half-circle on top. It was Mari who looked to Carver for reassurance this time. 

~

At a stone shrine near the summit of the mountain overlooking the landships and Dalish far below, Mari unwrapped the amulet from within her satchel. The image of a leafless tree and ripples within the metal were its only adornments, and it remained eerily warm as if it bore a living heart. The Keeper spoke to her of Mythal and asked for the goddess's blessing before instructing Hawke to place it at the feet of a statue of a masked entity with webbed wings. 

"Merrill, your voice is better than mine," the Keeper spoke.

Her First, a particularly small elf with short black hair and a face etched with intricate black tattoos had timidly trailed behind them since the camp, but came forward now. The elf's posture straightened and she allowed her hand to make graceful motions as she incanted with care. She closed her eyes to concentrate, her words elven and strange to the humans, but even when she trembled at certain words, there emanated a melancholy even the humans could comprehend. "In Uthenera, na revas," Merrill concluded.

The amulet shattered violently as if struck by an invisible hammer and a figure from a fever dream unfurled, clad in white as sheer and shifting as smoke. Carver struggled to place her as the old woman rose, but Mari remembered her only as Flemeth; The one who flew down from the sky and set the darkspawn ablaze the night Bethany died, and the one who spirited her family to Gwaren. Mother didn't remember. Carver hadn't remembered how they arrived in Gwaren either. It seemed the Witch's spell worked less on Mari, for she recalled flying through the night sky on a scaled mount, only it was no horse, but a great winged beast.

Flemeth took in her surroundings - the altar beneath her, the mountain, and the cloudy sky above. "And here we are," she exhaled and smiled as if she possessed many memories of this place, breathing through dark lips.

Both the Keeper and the First bowed in reverence to the witch with white hair, calling her by an elven name. "Andaran atish'an, Asha'bellanar," the elves addressed in unison. 

"Marethari. My deliverer has found you after all. Stand. You and I are quite even," Flemeth spoke to the Keeper, but Merrill remained gracefully bowed. "Another of the People, so curious and bright. Do you know who I am, beyond the title you called me?"

"I know only a little," Merrill answered meekly. 

"Then that must suffice for now, dear girl. Stand. The People bend their knee too quickly," Flemeth concluded, turning her eerie gaze on the humans before her. "It seems I chose the right smuggler, and one who keeps their end of the bargain, no less."

"Smuggled? Then... you didn't want anyone else to know you've come here," Mari deduced. This was strange magic. Unheard of, but so was the part where she could take the form of a dragon. 

"A bit of security in case of a family spat. Inevitable with mine," Flemeth explained as much as she was willing. 

The Chasind tales told of many daughters, but Mari didn't dare ask about such family. "So, are we even now?" she finally broached.

"You've done what I needed. Yes, child, our business is done," Flemeth phrased, sounding an awful lot like Mari the day she left Athenril. Such was allowed to Flemeth, to perceive a great deal. "Before I leave, a word of advice for you and the brother who follows…"

Mari could feel Carver chafe at that. "Why? Why would we ever need your advice?" Carver suddenly spoke up stubbornly. 

Mari smirked cautiously and Flemeth's head rolled back in a hag's cackle before speaking again. "I am a very old woman. It may be that wisdom comes with age, and youth is wasted on ignorant children."

"Carver," Mari appealed, imploring him to be quiet, which he grudgingly did. She waited patiently and silently for Flemeth to continue. 

"The father and sister are gone, shadows in your past, but new blossoms spring under your feet. Little revolutions are nothing compared to the shattering ahead. Watch for that moment, and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap."

'Sure, directly into the fire,' Mari doubted. 

"It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly," Flemeth prattled cryptically. 

"I'll get to work on my wings, then. Perhaps a broomstick," Mari answered dryly. Merrill's eyes went wide, disbelieving such mockery. Flemeth cackled wildly again.

"Are we going to regret this?" Carver asked Mari, full of uncertainty. This creature was beyond any mage he'd ever seen. 

Before Mari could answer, Flemeth did. "Regret is a poison I know well. Take care not to cling to it, to covet it so closely that it blackens your soul. Remember that, dear boy. As for you, child," Flemeth turned to Merrill. "Step carefully, for no path is darker than when your eyes are closed."

"Ma serannas, Asha'bellanar," Merrill thanked her. 

"Now the time has come for me to leave. You have my thanks... and my sympathy," Flemeth tilted her head and those uncanny yellow eyes to Mari. 

Sympathy? For what? For the dead sister she was too late to save, or something yet to come? Mari felt one last impulse to ask, but the time was over. Flemeth's naked back now turned to the four and stepped down from the altar, walking fearlessly to the edge of the cliff, and in a flash of light, taking the shape of a high dragon. The wind of her wings blew strong as a tempest, but Mari never took her eyes off the beast. She rose to the skies and vanished over peaks for a destination yet unknown, and it was only then that the elves pointed out a reward left upon the altar - eight gold sovereigns. 

~

Flemeth's parting words to Mari sent a chill down her spine. Revolutions? Shattering? Why was this world in love with war and death? What’s more, had Flemeth been awake, watching, listening, and waiting all that time inside the amulet? A part of Mari regretted not casting it into the sea to trap Flemeth on the sea floor for eternity... and another wondered if she would ever see the shapeshifter again, and on what terms? Flemeth seemed more a force of nature than human. Perhaps she truly was a dragon. 

From what the Hawkes were told by the Keeper, it wasn't customary for visitors to escort clan members elsewhere, but this was an exceptional circumstance. There was some internal issue neither Marethari nor her First would elaborate on, and Mari thought it rude to pry deeper. As long as the deed promised no trouble, she would indeed escort the First to Kirkwall's alienage where an apartment had already been arranged. The Dalish girl seemed biddable enough, though shy and awkward. Merrill's magic was different as well - not elemental nor entropic, but of the earth. She carried a staff of unadorned mossy wood unlike the Keeper's silvery dragon staff. In what precious little Mari knew of the Dalish, she never thought they had anything to do with dragons or shape-changing witches. That was never mentioned in what Malcolm told of them.

"I've only met one other human before," Merrill said on the voyage down, reminiscing of a Grey Warden who once passed through their camp.

"Kirkwall is packed full of humans - enough to crowd this mountain. Are you certain you wish to go there?" Mari asked.

"Yes. I’m certain," Merrill insisted, her verdant glance darting girlishly to the Keeper. 

"Kirkwall isn't friendly to mages. You'll have to keep it hidden. It isn't always kind to elves either," Mari also advised. 

"I know," Merrill answered acceptingly. Pol had told her terrible stories of how the humans treated him in the Denerim, but Merrill would be brave. She had to be. 

"It will be some time before your other things are sent by caravan, Da'len," the Keeper told Merrill, sorrow painting her voice, yet she remained stoic. From the expressions some of the other Dalish gave in the camp, Mari felt fortunate that Marethari was in charge. "Ma serannas, to both of you," Marethari told the humans before turning her gaze again to Merrill. "It isn't too late to have a change of heart, da'len."

Merrill shook her head sadly, but determined. "Dareth shiral," she answered, making a last soft gesture with her wrist. 

Beside the outermost landship waited a few slingpacks and a trunk much too large for Merrill to carry. "Let's see how heavy this is," Carver said, picking it up with slight strain. 

"Elgar'nan!" Merrill exclaimed. "He could be a halla!" she said in a lilting voice. Carver seemed pleased with the odd praise.

'Show-off,' Mari thought, smirking.  

Carver made use of the woven straps on the trunk, carrying it on his back. Down the trail, he barely broke a sweat from the weight, though Merrill seemed to have packed everything but an aravel inside. "So, Merrill... You've never been to Kirkwall?" he asked as they descended toward the caravan path.

"No. The ship left us west of here," she answered in her lilting voice. 

"Hmm. Maybe I can show you around sometime," he suggested, sheepishly looking at the ground.

Mari stopped in her tracks behind them, realising what was going on.

"Today?" Merrill asked. 

"Sure, when we get there. Whenever is good, really," he answered. 

He walked slightly closer to Merrill, but perhaps the elf failed to notice. 'Her?' Mari thought, cruelly judging the Dalish's shoeless feet. Her body was as spindly as a reed, and her face tattooed with ink. Mari might not have been prettier at all, but why did that matter? 

She was so used to him walking close to her, talking to her, paying attention to her. The misplaced annoyance of it almost caused Mari to set a bush aflame. She stood there for a torturous while before Carver realised she was falling behind.

"Mari?" his deep voice called back to her. 

Then, she finally figured it out.

Chapter Text

"Let us in!" Mari slammed her open palm against the thick wooden gates of South Reach. She wasn't the only one. Dozens of other families fled here for shelter from the darkspawn that flooded north from the Wilds, herding a crowd of sitting ducks at the entrance to the village.

One of the Arl's men stepped hesitantly onto the ramparts above, a stripling barely filling out his armour. "I'm sorry. M'lord has commanded the gates remain shut until his soldiers return," he announced meekly. 

"We have nowhere to go. Our homes are burning!" an old man shouted up at him.

"Our children are dying!" a woman screamed. 

Between the cacophony of demanding pleas for aid and shelter, Bethany held onto Leandra tighter, too afraid to let go.

"You're not going to die, Bethany," Mari insisted when she returned to the wagon, unsure of what to do next. Father never prepared her for an event such as this. They counted on the gates of South Reach to be open, but she now wished they chose to ride for Crestwood.

"You bloody bastard! You think the darkspawn will wait?!" Carver yelled up at the younger lad, adding a middle finger when finished. 

"Perhaps we should make for Dragon's Peak or Denerim," Mari suggested desperately, hoping for anywhere with sturdy walls. "We can't wait here any longer."

"I'm not sure how long the horse will last," Carver warned, stroking the spotted mare's neck as she chewed nervously at the bit.

"What should we do, Mother?" Mari asked, looking up at Leandra who endeavoured not to lose her composure. Andraste , how could the King's army have been beaten so badly? How could the Grey Wardens lose? Where was the Maker in all this? Where was a saviour like Garahel? Garahel. That made her think of Kirkwall. The Amells had risen from obscurity during the time of the elf Warden four centuries before.

"I have a wealthy brother in Kirkwall. He'll take care of us," Leandra decided, though it had been many years since his last letter.

~{Present day}~

Nothing turned out the way Leandra expected. Kirkwall was once a shining jewel of the Free Marches as a noble lady, but on her return, the guards wouldn't even let her inside. She expected to find a Lord Amell - the wealthy brother to rescue her and her children from the devastation, only to realise the bitter reality of Gamlen's poverty. The estate was gone as well, having fallen into the shady hands of strangers her brother refused to name. Even a year later, Leandra couldn’t let it go.

A week passed since Mari and Carver obtained Lord Aristide's last will and testament from the Amell estate cellars, only after Leandra suggested they look into the place with one very old key. The estate and revenues rightfully belonged to herself and her heirs, written in her father’s own aristocratic penmanship - the very children Leandra informed her parents of whenever she gave birth, but was never given a response. Why didn’t her father tell her sooner? Her young family might’ve come to Kirkwall years ago, enjoying all the advantages of nobility… except the templars here knew Malcolm, and there was only so much his friend Ser Maurevar could do. 'It wouldn't have worked,' Leandra convinced herself. The revelation of forgiveness would have to be enough. She had to forgive Aristide and Bethann, too. 

Despite his habitual squandering and other faults, Leandra understood Gamlen didn't carry the full blame for bankrupting the family fortune. Their uncle Fausten played a part before his death, though it was in desperation to save their cousin Damion from prison. That was after Revka’s child was taken away to the Circle, causing a scandal among the upper echelon, and embarrassing the Amells who remained. It certainly didn’t help matters when Leandra eloped, leaving behind her parents and a jilted betrothed. 

She believed the Amell name might still be salvaged, however. There was more history to it than the misfortunes of the last quarter-century. Though the Seneschal hadn't yet replied to Leandra's petition, she’d already begun to prepare Mari for the occasion of meeting with the Viscount. Mari would be the most presentable, and Carver, if he could muster politeness. If Leandra brought two unkempt, ill-mannered refugees to a noble audience, they might as well return south, and though that might please Carver as he remained obtusely determined to not make Kirkwall a home, Leandra wanted this to be. Hightown was her home once. Could it not also be Mari's?

~

Despite how vapid it felt, and how different from a commoner's upbringing it was, Mari was growing accustomed to the curtsy and offering one of her hands. She could only compare it to tales that idealised nobility, or Satinalia in South Reach when the Hawkes attended the autumn festival. A minstrel band played jaunts into the night so raucous they could wake the dead. Mari felt too shy to partake in dancing then, but did so when Bethany insisted, and so they danced in painted masks until their feet begged to stop. However sweet the memory, Mari guessed whatever Leandra meant to teach her this evening was nothing like a peasant's jig.

"Gamlen, would you lead for Mari?" Leandra asked once she swept the floor. 

He sat at the table picking his teeth. "No!" he answered grumpily, leaning back in his rickety chair. 

"Gamlen!" Leandra sighed. "Be a gentleman for your niece." 

"I let her live in my house! That's more than enough! Now leave me out of whatever ridiculousness you have planned," he huffed, crossing his arms.

Mari thought him homelier than usual when he sat like that. How could he and Leandra possibly be related? Leandra's face remained clear and beautiful, if wisened by a few crow’s feet. Gamlen appeared sixty years old or more, rather than ten years younger.

With Gamlen firmly not an option, Leandra recalled that she hadn't yet seen her son leave the hovel. Walking over to the room he shared with Gamlen, she pushed open the heavy door without knocking. Upon the top bunk on a scratchy mallet, Carver reclined in the dark. 

"Carver dear... Come and help us," she requested.

"With what?" he asked. 

"Just come out. It won't take long," she insisted gently.

He knew better than to protest, exhaling and swinging down from the bunk. Perhaps there was something none of them could reach, something too heavy to lift, or... 

No, it was just his older sister standing there in a flowing dress of dull pink, baring the soft skin of her shoulders. Half of her long hair was tied back with a scrap of white fabric, and the rest fell tousled over her bared skin. He gasped quietly and felt a strange sensation grip his throat and chest. It wasn't what she usually wore, or how she normally looked.

'Him?' Mari thought nervously. She tried to stay away from him during the last while, sneaking out to make coin with Varric and sometimes Anders or Fenris for the expedition. She even called on Merrill in the alienage just to see if Carver would show. He never did, and yet he usually managed to say something stupid whenever Merrill was around. This... whatever confused emotion Mari felt around him, was unbecoming, but she couldn't help it. It bubbled up like a kettle about to explode. 'Refuse, brother!' she shouted in her mind, but he only approached with his blue gaze oddly fixated. 

"This hand goes on the lead's shoulder, and this one down here," Leandra instructed, arranging Mari's left hand upon Carver's well-muscled shoulder, making her inhale for breath, and his beneath her arm, resting in the middle of her back. He never touched her there before.

"Are you teaching her to dance?" Carver asked in confusion, though it was apparent enough. Was his touch too light or not enough? 

"I suppose it's both of you now. These go together," Leandra said, pressing their free hands into each other. His palms were quite callused. 

She felt a rush of heat - especially to her face which flushed as pink as the dress. She begged Andraste to hide it. Carver flushed as well. The feel of his hand on the small of her back and their increasingly clammy hands together made his heart flutter wildly. Mari tried everything to make him seem ugly, but that was a hard task. Carver's strongly sculpted jaw was level with her eyes now. 'Anders doesn't have that,' she thought, loathing herself for it. 

After Leandra taught them the basic steps, it was time to spin, and then, lift. Carver hoisted Mari up with both hands, as if she were no heavier than a garland of flowers. A smile crossed his mouth, hinting that he felt this wasn’t half so dreadful anymore. Though Carver's hands dug into Mari’s ribs with intense pressure, and she swore his thumb pressed into the bottom of her breast, his strength excited her, as it had in the cellars of the Amell estate when she watched him cut down a Tevinter slaver with a single blow. 

As they rotated in unison about the room, Leandra counted and cringed at the missteps, but her children didn't seem to notice. "Alright. I think that's enough, loves," Leandra finally concluded the lesson, clasping her hands together as Mari twirled into Carver's arm with the grace of a vagrant in his cups. "Neither of you are naturals, but with hard work, you may eventually pass as dancers. Bow, Carver. Mari, curtsy."

He bowed with as much gentlemaness as he could manage, breaking composure with a smirk while his sister took her skirt in both hands and returned the gesture without bending, but she refused to look at him now. She seemed so distant since recovering the will. He knew it wouldn’t help them. He only did it to kill slavers, yet Mari seemed more inclined to agree with Mother. She wrung her hands as if concealing a secret. 

~

The will wasn’t the only thing brought back from the cellars. After returning the borrowed dress, Mari donned a burgundy embroidered vestment worn by a mage of decades long past, evidenced from the enchanted lining on the inside. Silverite clasps emblazoned with the Amell crest indicated it was once worn by an Amell mage, or one who worked for them. Perhaps it hailed from a time before the Circle became so strict. Sense told her to sell it, but she found herself wishing to keep this one thing for herself.

She decided to sit alone on the dusty stoop outside, pondering quietly as she waited for Varric to arrive as they arranged earlier. Clouds of chokedamp from the foundries drifted overhead, hiding the heavens as pigeons cooed from their roosts along uppermost windows, which were quickly drowned out by the sounds of neighbours quarreling. 

"I notice you don't even invite me along anymore," spoke an accusing voice.

She glanced to see Carver looming indignantly in the lamplight. "You and I don't always play nice."  

"I don't have blood magic to read your mind, but I don't think that's all of it," he said, approaching where she sat. 

He wouldn't get the truth so easily. "It's this Viscount business," she admitted, only half a lie. "I can't be a noble," she doubted. Amell blood or not, Mari was born and raised a Fereldan commoner. 

"I warned you, didn't I?" he said, seating himself on the same stair. He’d changed into a light chainmail scavenged from the estate as well. It made him look like a real soldier again. His black hair was ruffled, and it worked for him. 

"I know. Are you about to gloat?" she asked.

"If you want," he answered, biting his lip in a coy smile. This wasn’t one of his foul moods, and that made it harder to fight with him. It was harder to be simply near him now that her emotions were so mixed up.

Mari's eyebrows rose nervously at the sight and she stood up to leave, but he caught her hand. 'Don't. Don't make me explain,' she thought frantically, but she liked the feel of his hand. Was it only her? Sometimes, Carver seemed more interested in her attentions than Anders did, but they were their closest surviving kin - that was the only explanation. It had to be. Oh, Andraste ... if he did return whatever warped affection she held, what would happen? It would surely be worse than eloping with an apostate like their mother did. 

"Mari," he said, trying to keep her ear. "Are you doing this for Mother or for yourself?" he asked softly. "Do you truly want that life? We were never nobility. Dead Amells mean nothing to me."

'I don't know for sure,' she thought. "It has benefits being a peasant doesn't," Mari explained. Food. Coin. A semblance of protection from the templars if they remained careful. "It would be nice not to struggle every day, but..." she trailed off, shoulders slumping. 

"Well, if you do get that mansion, you should know I won't be living in it," he replied disappointedly.

Panic gripped her heart. 'Why?' she wondered. Too proud to follow or remain with her? Would he be overshadowed?

"I never asked you to stay," she snapped, jerking her hand away from his and flexing it, as if to reclaim it as her own. "Perhaps you can take Merrill with you," she suggested out of spite. 

"Why Merrill?" he laughed, not indulging her combative words.

She rolled her eyes at the night sky, annoyed. "Because you're stupid over her. An odd pursuit, even for you."

"You really don't like Merrill..." he observed. "Why? I thought you had things in common."

He was exasperating, forcing her to elaborate when she wasn’t in the best state of mind to think clearly. "I just... don't think... she'd be a good match... for you." It was like pulling teeth. 

"Well, don't worry. I don’t intend to marry her," he replied, brushing off the notion. 

'Indeed, there's no need to wed the ones you bed,' she bitterly thought, crossing her arms and gazing out over the empty street. Her long hair swayed around her elbows, half of it still bound at the back of her head.

She was lovelier like this - a concoction of unexplained hostility and misery, but Carver decided she wasn’t giving any straight answers. She had to lie a lot as a smuggler to hide her hand, but not from him. What was wrong, besides this noble business? Was it the moon? Carver once learned from a book that his sisters were affected by the moon, but he knew better than to ask about that. He only wished there was something he could do. 

"Look, sister... I don't know what's going on with you, but if you want me to go, I'll go. Just let me get my things," he said, standing up. He quickly towered over her.

"That's the bloody trouble. I don't want you to go," she blurted loudly, unthinking. Footsteps crept somewhere on the dark street, but she failed to notice, choked by her rashly-chosen words that revealed far more than she should’ve.

'Maker, he knows. He knows! Why'd I say something so stupid?!' she screamed inside. 

Carver said nothing. He looked a bit surprised, but remained silent. Perhaps he only assumed she feared losing him like they lost Bethany and their father.

"Hawke!" a friendly voice called out. It was Varric, rounding the corner, approaching the stoop with his heavy crossbow slung across his back. "Junior," he added. That was the nickname Varric chose for Carver, which didn't bother him half as much as Little Hawke . 

The vivacious corseted Rivaini walked beside him - the shipwrecked raider they aided in a sabotaged duel, possibly saving her life. "Evening, Varric. Isabela," Mari greeted them, grateful for their timing. 

"So, this is where you live. Not bad," Isabela observed, though hardly anyone else would agree. 

“Isabela’s got something for us. Should be decent coin,” Varric said.

"An old raiding friend of mine showed up in the tavern tonight. He needs some cargo returned, and says he’ll pay. Interested?" she asked, thumbing her daggers at her hips. 

"Of course," Mari responded, descending the stoop. 

His sister's dramatic display caught him off-guard, but it gave Carver a small satisfaction to feel wanted anywhere. Between Leandra's nagging and Gamlen's berating, Mari was the only tolerable thing about this place. No, more than that. She was his closest friend in Kirkwall. That sounded pathetic, but it was his honest truth. 

"The dress suits you, Hawke. You might even look better without it," Isabela flirted, drinking her with her eyes from stem to stern. 

Mari blushed amusedly at the compliment. " Without it? Wouldn't that give the Kirkwallers something to think about!"

Varric smirked. "Keep it on. All you need is a handsome man to take you out on the town," he added teasingly. That annoyed Carver.

"Is that you?" Mari playfully snared her arm around Varric's as they walked away. Isabela took his other arm, strutting.

"She already has one," Carver caught himself whispering to no one. 'She has me,' he thought, paralyzed.

Chapter Text

When Carver dreamed, he often dreamed of his past. 

He saw the maimed faces and disfigured bodies of his comrades at Ostagar and heard their bloodcurdling screams and rattles of death. Some cried out for the Maker, Andraste, and King Cailan. Others shouted that the King was dead, the Wardens had fallen, and the battle lost, but Carver wouldn't listen.

Under a downpour of freezing rain, the darkspawn overwhelmed the soldiers rank by rank as massive bonfires burned to light the broken fortress. Through blinding smoke and steam from his own breaths, he swung his sword, clashing against blighted flesh and steel, but he couldn't seem to hit hard enough nor fast enough. When he paused to take in his surroundings, he saw less of his company and more of the spawn. Then, he was yelling at the top of his lungs and being dragged backward from where the formation line had been by a fellow man-at-arms whose helmed face remained impossible to recognize. He had to stop them. He had to fight. 

While following broken surviving companies north for a day and swearing at himself in a losing rage, Carver heard the order to regroup in Redcliffe, but he knew, deep down, that Lothering would perish before that. His stomach sank, for the village boasted no defences, and not even a wall around it. He would face whatever punishments awaited him later, but he had to make sure his family was safe. If his first crime was abetting a few apostates, his second was apparent desertion.

On feet that couldn't seem to run fast enough, he raced north through the frozen forest, following the same heavenly white stars that Father used to show him at night. His boots pierced the thin ice covering a bog, forcing him to wade through long after his feet went numb. The chill white air carried howls of wolves and darkspawn both, making the hairs stand and freeze all over his body. When his feet found solid ground again, inhuman laughter frightened sleeping ravens from their roosts as they took to the sky in panicked black flocks. Everything was wet and turning to ice. Everything hurt. It hurt to even breathe. Cold and torment made time a blur, and Carver scarcely knew if he ran one day or three. 

When dawn came after the last night, he found the cottage gleaming in the morning frost on fields of swaying green and gold - the one place he remembered as home. It was serene as if from a past world, and it wouldn’t survive for long in the one that was coming.

He staggered wearily, trying to shout, but could only whisper. 'Father?! I'm here!' He pushed on the door, but it was barred. No sound or answer came from within. Was he too late? Were they all gone… or dead?

Sunlight emerged from behind wispy clouds, illuminating the world in pale golds and blues. All remained eerily silent, except wind through the grass. His eyes searched the field for any sign, and glimpsed beneath the towering green oak a dark figure. It was Father. Carver would know the man anywhere. 

As Carver ran to him, the wind blew the man's hood off, revealing black hair speckled with grey and a beard that matched. He looked so much like he did toward the end. The end? For a moment, Carver hoped that the Blight and losing his father was simply an unending nightmare from which he was now waking. When he noticed the skinny teenage boy partly hidden behind the oak, black-haired and angry, Carver understood this was indeed a dream.

The year was 9:27 during the spring thaw. He began to remember it vividly. He’d returned from South Reach with feed and hay for the animals as Father asked, but while gawking at the guardsmen near the Arl's keep, one of them asked how well he could handle a blade. Carver answered confidently, and the guard mocked the boy’s eagerness before challenging him to a practice duel. Carver remembered how he quickly took out his iron sword, to which the guard unsheathed his nobly-issued steel in return. Carver struck eagerly, but was pushed back easily by the guard's shield, almosting landing him in the mud. Almost. "Better than expected, but not good enough," the guard had told him chidingly. "Why don't you join the army first, boy? They'll put some meat on your bones."

Never good enough. That grated on him. Even at home with two mages for sister, he felt the least special. Father was always with them, always praising them and leaving nothing for Carver. Would Father think so highly of them, especially Mari when Carver returned as a war hero? A knight? He had to make it real. Father would see. 

"I don't want to be a nobody anymore. I have nothing here," the boy raged. His pitch-black hair was long enough to brush his shoulders. 

"You're not a nobody. You're a Hawke," the old man reassured him. 

"Do you think I'll be killed, Father? Is that it? You don't think I can take care of myself?" the boy asked.

"I know you could... but I want to take care of you for a bit longer," Malcolm answered with warmth in his voice. "It was only a moment ago when I carried you from West Hill to Crestwood on my shoulders. The army will still be there in a few years, son."

"It won't," the boy snapped, feeling glory slip through his fingers. 

"Carver, you may yet change your mind. I'm only doing this because I love you," Malcolm explained. 

"It'd be better if you believed in me," the boy spat. He stormed off in a blaze with both hands in tense fists as Malcolm looked on.

Carver now fought back stubborn tears. He always had Father's love, but he threw it in his face. With a trembling hand, he approached and reached out for Malcolm, but his fingers glided through skin like fog. Malcolm seemed to meet his gaze for that moment, smiling knowingly at his son, now older and stronger and indeed a trained soldier, but the dream went horribly black.

Carver awoke to the annoyance of scratchy bedding beneath him, unveiling the truth that he was back in Kirkwall sharing a room with Gamlen who snored from the bunk below. How his mind raged with loathing at this place, wishing the dream hadn’t ended, wishing he could stay in Ferelden with Father in better times, before the family lost him.

He recalled how suddenly Father died. It was not long after. There was no warning and no way anyone could’ve prepared for it. It wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Malcolm held the family together, and when he left, it started a chain reaction of each of them scattering to the winds, willingly or not. Leandra changed as if in her world it never stopped raining, and all her joy went with her husband into the ground. They buried him near that old oak, not because it was beautiful, but because bringing him to the Chantry was too risky, lest they discover the family secret. Carver dug the grave himself, coldly refusing Mari's help with a barbed tongue that shocked her. He regretted that now. He regretted so much.

On his sixteenth birthday, Carver left for Denerim to join the army proper. Leandra managed to give him a solemn hug that day, but she had no tears left. He remembered messing Bethany's thick hair as she hugged him around his waist, for he was already tall, but Mari wasn’t present to see him off. He was glad for that. And yet, he hoped spitefully she would miss him somehow, or be sorry that he left. Maker, how he'd been such a fool. 

Chapter Text

"Carver, come get some breakfast or your uncle will leave you none!" Leandra spoke through the cracked door.

He’d been awake for some time doing pullups on the edge of the bunk like he was told not to, lest the whole thing crash down. He kept revisiting the dream in his mind, astounded by how much his world changed in the last four years. Father, gone. Bethany, gone. Lothering, gone. Mother, forever changed. All that remained was Mari. 

How bitter resentment had filled an ocean between them for years. It couldn’t have been easy for Bethany, being the bridge between two drastically different siblings. Dynamics had shifted since arriving in Kirkwall - working together, protecting each other. It became so intense at times that Carver couldn’t tolerate men looking at his sister a certain way. None of them deserved her, not a single one. Was that wrong of Carver to think?

Were they simply too close now? Nobody else could understand what they lost. They both found solace in the other, and perhaps even something more than that. It was too strange for Carver to fully consider now.  

She didn’t want him to go. He didn’t want to leave her, either, but he never told her that. It wasn't truly her he wanted to get away from - it was having no say in his own life. If it were just the two of them, away from Kirkwall after the expedition, it might make both of them happy. 

'Stop it, you idiot,' he thought. 'She's your sister.' That's all she ever could be. Anything more was insanity. He forced himself to accept this and found his own strength weaken when his thoughts drifted back to fleeting moments shared with her, tempting him with something he wanted, but would never admit.

The household no longer enjoyed the luxury of a morning meal to begin each day. Or rather, Mari and Carver didn't if the pantry was low, and it was always low. Leandra evidently made a sale in the market with one of her hand-sewn garments, earning respite from near-constant hunger. 

He sat near Gamlen at the table, arranging his own wooden bowl and scooping out a soggy spoonful of mush. Steam from the cheapest tea in Kirkwall rose up from cast-iron mugs, filling the hovel with earthy aroma. He was still chewing his first bite when Leandra went to the other room and opened the door. Carver glimpsed curiously over his shoulder, perhaps unwisely, only to witness his sister hastily pulling a ragged towel over her body. The tattered fabric was long enough to cover her lower regions, but he briefly saw enough of her up top to feel something . 

"Sorry, love. I thought you were finished with your bath," Leandra said cheerfully, entering before closing the door behind her, paying no heed to her invasion of privacy. 

Abrasively, Carver shot up from the chair, enough to make Gamlen cease eating for a moment. He had to get out. He had to get her out of his mind. A fight or a tumble would set him straight. In a hasty minute, he was armed, armoured, and out of the hovel. 

~

'When was the last time I visited the Rose?' Carver wondered to himself, passing the colourful stalls of food vendors, bauble hawkers, and weapon traders in the bazaar. It’d been months. He held off because he wanted to save coin for the expedition, but now, would he be lying if he said the brothel held entirely the same allure? What in blazes was wrong?

Up the mountain, he could see the statues of the Chantry gleaming gold in the sun as a clamour of rooks took wing from a high tower. Bells rung over the city without pause as if summoning the Divine in Orlais. He knew he was in Hightown when cleanly-swept streets and fenced greenery overtook the bare rock from below. Here, city guards were stationed on every corner during the day; Even if they didn't ward off crime, they would at least appear like they did. A grand procession of adolescents in white revealed that this was the first of Bloomingtide. Summerday. Carver had forgotten. 

"And so is the Golden City blackened. With each step you take in my Hall, marvel at perfection, for it is fleeting," an accompanying Chanter sung in a monotonous cadence. "You have brought sin to heaven, and doom upon all the world..."

"Maker watch over you," a robed Chantry brother said to him as he cut behind them.

The lofty old estate to Carver’s left had once been the home of Leandra and Gamlen. The Amell crest hung faded and dirty over the front door - surely a sign of the estate’s disrepair. The slavers hadn’t even bothered to remove it. Overgrown ivies covered most of the exterior building, climbing higher than nearby fenced trees. Faded drapes concealed every room with a window, and the building boasted several towers for vanity's sake, but Carver remained unimpressed as ever.

~{The Viscount's Keep}~

He strode further up toward the Viscount's Way and through the Keep’s massive portcullis,  rooks rattling and cawing down at him in condemning cacophony as if judging him guilty. The Keep itself stood at the second-highest point in the city, and from past visits to Aveline, Carver knew that guardsmen often trained during daylight hours.

The city’s seat of power was an ancient palace dating back to Emerius and magister rule, and this remained evident in size and grandeur. It held not only the Viscount and Seneschal’s offices, but a two-storied vestibule, waiting lounge, throne room, private living quarters, archives, libraries, gardens, courtrooms, dungeons, and with more than enough space for a battalion of guards on another wing.

The guards maintained their own training yard and archery range within the keep's grounds. It was open to the sky, rather like a garden of stone and steel. Carver had seen it when he first tried to get hired. He submitted his application last month, and with Aveline now transitioning into Guard-Captain, he felt sure she’d see to it soon. It seemed to Carver that Fereldans should be more inclined to help other Fereldans, and besides, Aveline was no stranger. She was a sort of distant family after she escaped the Blight alongside his own. 

As he entered the yard, several young recruits were already training, each armed with a practice sword and shield, swinging gingerly at one other. If just one could offer a fair fight, Carver might be satisfied. 

"Oi! Only blunted weapons in the yard, recruit!" an older guardsman shouted in a heavy Marcher accent. Carver said nothing, letting the man assume what he was. He removed the sheathed blade off his back, set it aside, and picked a blunted longsword from a rack nearby. 

A cocksure invitation to one of the armoured recruits led to a sparring match with Carver. The recruit advanced, but failed to guard his legs, and the shield was of no use. 'Dead,' Carver thought. A girl came next, more cautiously, but she wasn't prepared for the force of a hit, even against her shield. 'Dead.' A young man moved to swing at Carver while his back was still turned, but Carver blocked it anyway and pushed him into the sand. This was more like it, but not enough. "Next!" Carver called out with bravado.

"Carver!" a stern voice boomed as if to reprimand him. He turned to see a familiar figure standing six feet tall with a freckled face and hair of bright orange. 

"Aveline," Carver greeted her, invigorated. 

"Is this how you spend your days now? Pummeling my recruits?" she asked, quite unhappy to see him. Her heavy armour clinked as she approached.

"I was only looking for a little practice. Seems there's not much here," he answered, unthreatened and swaggering. 

'Not much?!' Aveline thought offendedly. She looked down with embarrassment - whether for him or herself, it mattered not. She chose a blunted mace from the rack, her serious expression nearly causing Carver to laugh with mischief. A grin crossed his lips when she raised her shield in an overly defensive position. It was something she undoubtedly learned from her chevalier father. 

"Stiffen up," Aveline warned as she advanced with her dead husband's sunshield. 

"I am," Carver said, just as Aveline made a heavy strike with her mace. Steel smashed against steel, causing him to lose his balance slightly.

"Tell me, Carver, what scum criminals are you working for now?" Aveline asked, hazel eyes peeking over the sunshield. The other recruits stood at the side of the yard watching eagerly. 

"No one," Carver answered, enjoying the challenge. "Not until my application is seen to."

"You think I'd make you a guard?" she questioned, advancing again. 

"Why not? You'd be daft not to," he answered, parrying.

"So, your sister didn't tell you..." she said, lowering her bulwark.

"Tell me what?" he asked, a bit confused.

"I rejected your application. Threw it in the trash because you're not ready," she answered with an edge.  

That stung. "Ready for what?" 

"To put others before yourself," Aveline stated bluntly, striking at him again.

"What would you know?!" he snapped, blocking her. Anger flashed fierce in his eyes and his jaw clenched. 

'I failed my Wesley. I failed to protect him,' she thought. She raised the sunshield again. "If you fight like this in the Deep Roads, your sister will die. Stiffen up!" she commanded, catching his weapon between her mace and shield. Now, they were in a stalemate. 

He could've broken it. He could've done it... but he let her have the blasted thing with a rough shove. Enraged, he picked up his own sword and stormed out amid whispers from the recruits, and Aveline let him go. 

~{Hightown and The Blooming Rose}~

A cluster of blossoming trees of pink offered shade from the sun in the square, from which small blue-and-white songbirds chirped lively. Balcony doors were open on the second and third floors of manses, and Carver could smell the aroma of sugary breads and cured meats from the ground below. Servants scuttled about with armfuls of flowers for the day's parties, along with bright fabrics and baskets of bottled wine. It only taunted his own misery. 

'Not ready?' Carver thought as he approached the Red Lantern district, his ego thoroughly bruised from Aveline's words. 'Does anyone know how long I've been hearing that?' The vulgar sign of the brothel, or rather, a painted sign of genitalia disguised as a rose swung in the breeze in front of the establishment, creaking as many of the beds did at night. 

Once inside the dim and near-empty establishment, Carver purchased an ale which he slowly drank. Most daytime business on this side of Hightown was illegal, for Athenril's office hid within a stone's throw and Coterie controlled the Rose itself. The place hadn’t yet come alive, but served to entertain nobles and paying customers regardless. The few noble customers who sat day-drinking at the bar failed to notice Carver, but the Madam shot him a nasty glare as if he couldn’t afford even the cheapest service, so he shot one back. Seductive melodies of exotic strings played from an ornate dwarven mechanism near the stage, which kept the place from being unnaturally quiet.  

'Others before myself?' he thought again, annoyed and hurt. 'I've put others before myself. I was a soldier too. I went back for my family, not for me, or I would've stayed to fight.' He took another angry sip.

'I can handle the fucking Deep Roads. I can. The darkspawn aren't taking another sister from me,' he thought. His mind drifted to her again. Maker have mercy. 

Carver sulked for hours after his cup ran dry and didn’t ask for another. Elves entered and raised a net of flora amid vines and false peacocks on branches. Candles were extinguished and hue-shifting enchanted lanterns were brought out, bestowing the room glows of purple, green, gold, and blue. Both noble and shady customers started to stream in around that time, causing those at the bar to crowd elbow-to-elbow. Carver turned his head to notice a distinctive tanned lass when she sauntered in and tossed a sovereign to the Madam. 

"Welcome, Messere," the Madam greeted Isabela with a curtsy. 

"Oh Captain, my Captain!" a buxom worker with large breasts called to the Rivaini. 

"Would you like to join my crew?" Isabela playfully asked, twirling the worker's hair with a finger. The woman took the black tricorn from Isabela's head and placed it on her own approvingly. Hand in hand, Isabela led her to circle the far side of the room where she picked another she fancied - this time, a male elf practically in the buff, before the ménage à trois proceeded upstairs. Carver didn't bother to say hello. 

"Se'rah Carver! Where 'ave you been?" a flirtatious Orlesian voice asked at his side, jarring him. Was it Faith? He couldn't recall. These workers had so many names, all of them false. She had a brown mole on her cheek and elaborately curled hair topped with a fluffy ostrich feather. Perhaps the accent was false as well. "Why 'aven't I seen you?"

"I've been... around... outside Kirkwall, mostly," he lied, noticing her white stockings were held up by matching white garters. 

"Working 'ard, or 'ardly working?" she giggled. 

"Working hard," he answered, not much of a lie this time.  

"Then, I think it's time for play. What do you say?" she asked.

He hesitated for too long. Surely, she would know something was off. 'Go with her. Get it over with,' he urged himself. He nodded weakly.

Faith grabbed his hand and led him through the nearest dim hallway, past other workers who chatted, waited, or rested. "Don't I have to pay the Madam?" he asked, confused. 

"You can pay me," Faith answered. "You worry too much. You are too tense, Serah, but don't worry. Faith will 'elp you relax." 

She tried to kiss him when they reached her room. She only caught his chin, leaving a smudge of rouge before shoving him onto the bed and going for his belt. He didn't particularly like or want this woman, but did that ever matter? He felt rather repulsed now. None of it was right. 'Just do it, you idiot,' he urged himself. What kind of man would refuse?

He swallowed, but when she touched him, separated only by a thin piece of fabric, everything felt wrong. "I've changed my mind," Carver said awkwardly, shooting up from the mattress. He rushed to buckle himself again and roughly wiped the spot where she kissed.

Faith looked puzzled and offended where she knelt, muttering something in Orlesian as he left. Whatever it meant, it was surely no compliment. 

~{Lowtown}~

A few letters laid scattered on the floor of the hovel where they'd been shoved beneath the door by a courier. Some were addressed to his sister, though Carver thought it strange that she hadn't returned to open them yet.

"Has Mari come back?" Carver asked his mother who sat silently near the dying hearth.  

"She needn't bother," her hoarse response came.

"What happened?" he asked, voice filling with concern.  

Leandra sighed defeatedly where she sat. "So, you didn't remember either..."

"Remember what? I've been out all day. What is it now, Mother?" he asked impatiently.  

"Bethany!" she shouted. "Bethany would've been sixteen today!" she wept, clutching her shawl. The pain and absence of her youngest never went away. 

It took him a few moments to realise. Bethany was always given her special day at home, not the village. He’d simply forgotten. 

"Mother, did you fight with Mari?" he asked, trying to bring Leandra back to the present. "Why are you angry with her this time?"

"Why are you taking her side?" she accused. Her eyes were puffy and red. "I'm the one who lost a child."

The lashings of a heartbroken mother. "You're not the only one who lost Bethany," he uttered once and retreated.

They all did. Nothing he could say or do would restore Bethany to life, but he still had one sister on this side. Mother would cry herself to sleep and wake up hollow but breathing as she did nights before, but Mari... she took too much on her shoulders at times, even things that were not hers to carry... at least not alone. Without a further word, Carver locked the door and vanished into the slums once more.

'The dwarf. She might've gone to him,' he thought.

His instincts proved correct. Inside the tavern, a trio of bards played a swaying melody while a few customers danced, listened, or simply drank. The bar and tables teemed with partakers of ale, but Carver found Mari sitting in a far corner at a small table of her own, forlorn in a bustling den of iniquity. 

"Douce dame jolie, pour dieu ne pensés mie," the elven bard sang with tender intonations of longing. " Que nulle ait signorie, seur moy fors vous seulement."

"Found you," Carver said almost playfully when he reached her side.  

She seemed surprised at his arrival, but looked up at him with less than happiness. "Where were you today?" she asked, watching as he sat in a creaky chair directly across from her. "I needed you."

"I had some things I wanted to handle alone."

"Well, I hope it was important. Fenris doesn't watch over me half as well as you. The next time you disappear, let me know first," she said firmly.

"I'll try," he smiled, much relieved to see her. It made her smile too, but it died almost immediately.

"We have another problem," she began, placing her hands together on the table. "Bartrand is meeting with the Carta in two days. He's going to borrow coin from them, but Varric says that's a bad idea because the Carta will insist on more later. Varric said there's still time for us, but we have to submit our side of the funding before then."

"You've been saving like a skinflint. It can't be that much."

"Ten sovereigns... and that's if I don't buy any food," she answered on an empty stomach. She even sold the Amell robe she took from the estate, or rather, sold its enchanted lining as a dwarf merchant cut it out, ripping the pretty burgundy fabric to shreds. 

Ten sovereigns was more than it took to get their family into Kirkwall. Carver shifted uncomfortably, pondering for a solution. "I have some coin. Not that much, but if you need it..."

"That's sweet, but I'm not asking for your personal coin," she answered graciously, rejecting the offer. "We just need to take the best opportunities at this point. No favours. Perhaps blackmail... or murder," she said, with no hint that the last part was a jest. 

"Mari!" he exhaled, surprised at her resolve. This was the same person who avoided killing slavers or Coterie.

"Alright, not that... but close," she acquiesced, showing a humour that she kept hidden from strangers.

"Mais vo douce maistrie, maistrie mon cuer si durement," the bard sang tenderly again. "Qu'elle le contralie, et lie en amour tellement."

Both fell silent for a moment and fixed their eyes on one another, becoming contentedly lost before Carver finally remembered why he came here searching. 

"What happened with Mother?" he broached the subject.

"You spoke to her?" she responded, more of a statement than a question. She leaned her elbow on the table and touched her chin, readying herself to admit her side of the story if someone would listen, and it seemed that Carver would. "Mother was already upset when I came back. Once I figured out why, I offered to take her to the Chantry, but she didn't want to go," she explained as Carver listened intently. "She kept talking about Bethany and wanting to die too. She cried about how if we'd only protected her like we were supposed to, Bethany would still be with us and not..." she said, fighting to keep her voice steady but failing miserably. "Not..." she couldn't say it. Dead. 

Carver's boot brushed hers as he clutched one of her hands on the table. That failed to make it easier. Mari wasn’t half so accomplished at holding back sadness. She shook her head in disapproval and wished to hide. Perhaps it’d be better if she were dead as well. At least then, there’d be no more pain for lost family, failure, or scraping every day for survival.  

"I snapped at her. I said it wasn't my fault. It wasn't your fault either," she breathed. "It wasn't anyone's fault, just the darkspawn, but she wouldn't have it. I told her I would've died for Bethany, and she asked why I didn't, if that were true," she admitted with anguish. "I can't go back there."

"You don't have to," Carver concluded. 

"Where else shall I stay? In Varric's room?" she asked sarcastically, two tears trickling down her cheeks as the band kept playing. 

Both grinned hopelessly in shared camaraderie for a moment before an idea sparked in his mind. "These are yours," he said, taking her sealed envelopes from his waist before placing them on the table in front of her. "Wait for me," he added before heading toward the bar.

One envelope came from Marethari Talas, care of Arianni Tillahnnen in Kirkwall. Mari recently let Arianni's son escape to Sundermount, even if it was to his doom. Did Feynriel die on the way? Did he harm one of the clan, or the other way around? She couldn’t know without looking. She tore it open, finding no note except two sewn pieces of tough brown leather, between which hid a single gold sovereign. "Thank you. Ma see-ran-ass. However you say it, Keeper," she whispered, placing it in the purse at her waist.

Moments later, Carver returned with a single bowl of soup, a piece of bread, and a key.

"Haven't I been telling you to save your coin?" she asked rather annoyedly.

"This way," he insisted before heading upstairs to the rooms.

"What have you done?" she asked, following behind. 

"You'll see. It wasn't expensive," he reassured her.

The room was on the uppermost floor. 'Two cots,' Corff had told him. The price seemed reasonable, except when Carver unlocked the door, the place was not exactly as advertised.

"I... I can go back and ask for another," Carver muttered as he glimpsed the two-person bed rather than two separate cots. 

"No! A real mattress!" she exclaimed as if she had not seen one in years. 

"You're... sure?" he asked, scratching his neck awkwardly. 

"Yes. It's lovely," she said, catching his cheek with a playful touch of her fingertips - the gentlest blow to the head he ever sustained, yet it struck him senseless. 

Chapter Text

"Shall I light this for Bethany?" Mari asked when she found a small candle atop an iron tray on the nightstand.  

"I'm sure she'd like that," Carver answered, locking the door behind him. He wasn't certain about life after death, but if it comforted Mari, so be it. The room darkened until she made a focused spark of flame from her finger and lit the wick, setting the candle down in the centre of the nightstand reverently as if it were an altar, illuminating them in a subtle glow. 

She sat on the edge of the bed quietly, having not yet tasted the soup that waited in a wooden bowl. Entrapped in a moment of memories with Bethany, she remembered the girl as her faithful shadow since she could walk. It was Bethany who took after their father the most - not Mari - and not only with her beautiful brown eyes. Bethany had a beautiful heart as well, and lived by every one of Malcolm’s lessons without faltering. "My magic will serve that which is best in me, not that which is most base," Malcolm repeated during their forays into the forest. Bethany echoed his words with her gentle voice during lessons to help herself remember and understand. Mari endeavoured to live up to those lessons, but ethics, profit, and survival in Kirkwall didn’t always align. 

"We'll go back for her someday, perhaps sooner rather than later," Carver said to give her some comfort, breaking the silence.

"We will?" she turned to him curiously. 

"You wouldn't let me go alone, would you?" he asked, sitting at the foot of the bed. He began to remove his boots. 

'Let you?' she mocked him silently, a breath escaping from her lungs in sarcasm. “Not if I could help it now,” she smiled, more honest and lonesome for some semblance of home. "You know... the more I think about that estate, the less I want it," she admitted.

'So, I was right,' Carver thought, pleased. He threw his boots into a corner in a way Leandra would chastise him for. "We can get Mother a decent place when we have the coin to spare. It doesn't have to be her parents' mansion. Then, we can go wherever we like." 

There was that we again. 

"You think she’d agree to leave Kirkwall?" Mari asked. Leandra seemed quite determined to regain the life she left behind. For a while, Mari told herself rising to nobility was the best option to evade the templars, but now, it seemed one prison instead of another. Varric never had anything good to say about nobles, and every noble Mari met in Kirkwall seemed just as rotten as the Coterie. They were only better at hiding it. 

"If she wants to stay with Gamlen, let her," Carver answered rather harshly for the sombre mood.

Mari gave one breathless giggle, imagining Leandra cooped up with Gamlen into her twilight years. Yet, that ever-present guilt and responsibility clawed at her mind, reminding her to watch over her family in whatever way she could. If Mari was to finally leave the broken nest, she needed to make sure her mother would be alright. It's what Malcolm would've wanted.

~

After their shared meal, Carver took off his armour and arduously did press-ups against the floor until he perspired all over. Mari struggled not to notice, but an ache panged in her heart at the sight of his sharply defined arms and back, so she retreated to the window. Through rusted bars, it allowed brisk night air to drift inside, cooling her skin where she blushed. Smoke from the foundries was being blown away from the mountain instead of across it tonight, and for that, Mari was grateful. The towering branches of the alienage tree could be seen from her perch, as were the winding paths of streets and alleys that formed the maze of crowded slums. Indiscernible shouts of denizens rang out periodically, as did the awkward sounds of those becoming brazenly intimate somewhere below, but she pretended not to hear that.

Carver took a swig from a flask of water when he was satisfied. Someone would have to remind him to bathe tomorrow, for he smelled thickly of sweat. Still, when he carelessly wiped the perspiration off his chest and abdomen with his own tunic, Mari's mask began to slip. 

"You don't look like Gamlen. Not at all," she blurted, remembering that Varric teased him a few days ago, succeeding in getting the better of him. Carver was never adept at taking jokes and rather internalised them if they went on long enough.

She already touched his cheek tonight. The idea that she could be complimenting his body was too much. "Thank the Maker," he answered, keeping his cool.

She sat on the edge of the bed again, turning away as she untied a supportive garment beneath her clothes. Carver paused half-naked like a Tevinter statue when he saw what she was doing. Perhaps it was too improper for him to sleep so close to her after all, but part of him wanted to be even closer. When she removed her cloak, the silhouette of her back beneath thin white fabric was quite discernable with candlelight behind her.

Mari carefully combed tangles from her long hair with her fingers, turning sideways to glance at her watcher after he fell silent for a minute or two. 'Now what have I done?' Carver thought, mourning the sight... except now, he realised the outline of her from the side was perfectly visible. He could maintain a semblance of decency and tell her, or not.

"Marian?" he uttered her real name. He never did before. He swallowed and seemed somewhat short of breath.

"Carver…" she answered sweetly. Too sweetly. It made him ache, so he shut his eyes, as if that would help him talk sense. She’d be embarrassed over exposing herself this way, and he had no childish urge to humiliate her. Humiliation was the last thing on his mind now. Besides, it wasn’t really the first time he saw her naked, was it?

"I talked to Aveline today," he offered as the subject, the fiend. "Why didn't you tell me?"

She clasped her fingers together. "And crush you? I argued with her..." Mari explained. "She wouldn't budge. She told me in no uncertain terms she would not hire my blasted brother. She said the Guard has no place for someone like you." Her voice went stern to imitate Aveline's.

'No place anywhere anymore, except with you...' he considered sadly.

"Friends are cheap. Ungrateful hag," she complained. "We worked twelve miserable months for the bribe that also got her out of the Gallows. Pissing off the edge of that wretched little island, or deported! The least she could do is help a little. Plaster saint."

He smiled a bit.

"I wonder... if she didn't see you only as my brother, would she decide differently?" Mari thought aloud, not expecting an answer.

"Is that how you see me?" he asked, hoping too much for a certain answer.

It caught her off-guard. "No," she admitted. 

He did not wish to speak of Aveline anymore. "What do you see then?" he asked softly, almost dreamily. 

She stuttered, hesitating, feeling his warm gaze on her. "A lot of things. You are... very brave. Very strong. Stubborn, but determined when you set your mind on something. Come now, don't make me say the rest," she answered coyly. His ego didn't need another boost after that, for his heart now flew on a kite to which she held the strings. 

~

The candle burned out some time later, leaving both in darkness until their eyes adjusted. They spoke of fond memories, the different places across Ferelden they lived, and what they wanted to do after the expedition was done. "So, you wouldn't have a problem leaving the people you've met here?" Carver eventually asked, waiting for an answer about a certain blonde man more than the others. 

"I assume they've known many who've moved on. That's how it is with people. Why? Is there anyone you'd stay for?" she asked in return.

"Huh? No," he scoffed nervously, and silence reigned again. 

The heaviness of impending slumber approached, though Mari's mind still ran amok. She liked to hold something when she slept - usually a pillow, but Carver's body seemed far more inviting, and because of this, she endeavoured to stay on her side of the bed. 

How grateful she felt that he chose to be here with her, to rescue her from what would've been a horribly lonely night. She knew for certain he was no longer simply the brother who resented her, but a friend. They had a different bond now, not just by blood, and though her secret affections would go forever unreciprocated, this familial love was enough. Would there be other men in her life? Someone to hold, love, and protect her? If so, she hoped they would arrive soon. She felt too drawn to Carver and couldn't be with him, let alone tell him. It seemed tragic, and nobody except weepy minstrels and debauched poets loved tragic stories more than Mari.

As much as she wanted, Carver could never embrace or love her as more than she was - a sister, just the same as Bethany. That love was pure and untarnished and everlasting, but it lacked the intimacy she'd begun to desire. That the one person she wanted was the one she could not have made Mari feel hopeless and doomed, and so, so sick. She sniffled and swallowed. 

"Still awake, are you?" he whispered. 

There was no answer. 

He could discern that she was laying on her back with her hands clutching the covers. Slowly sitting up, he saw that she was peacefully asleep, adrift in dreams. 'Perhaps she's dreaming of Alindra and the river of tears or some such rubbish. She always wept for those tales,' he thought innocently. 

She was so... Perfect was the wrong word entirely. At the same time, he drew steel against his own thoughts and insisted that, yes, she was perfect... at least for him. 

He didn't wish to wake her. He knew he should never do it, but his instincts pulled him nearer. 'Not a real kiss... just a little one to last until my death...' he thought, leaning ever so much closer. 

Still the loveliest face in Kirkwall in the dark. She had pillowy lips, shaped for kissing. A pity she only used them for talking. Damn her. Damn him too. What happened next was his fault.

She felt a gentle touch on her mouth. It took her a moment to realise what it was. 'Maker, what? I...' It was soothing and sweet like nothing she ever had. Time ceased to exist. 

Sweet it was for him too, though stolen. He believed her to be asleep and dreaming, and perhaps they were both dreaming a bit, but when she touched a hand to his cheek by sheer instinct, she woke them both.

He opened his eyes and recoiled in panic. She came to as well, both of her hands curled over her lips as if shielding them from what just happened. How could he explain this away? 

He backed completely away to his side of the bed, fear in his eyes, but could say nothing.

Chapter Text

Scarcely any cast-aurum lanterns lit the darkened halls within the Dwarven Merchants’ Guild. Even in Kirkwall, many surface dwarves preferred the facade of being underground, especially their traditionalists. It was Mari's first time within the complex, as it was never open to the public and certainly not human refugees. Her hair was brushed and braided for the occasion, her face scrubbed, and she wore her best clothing that didn't appear destitute. She felt tall as a Qunari since she arrived, while every dwarf stood at least one whole foot shorter. The resident kalnas glared at the human unwelcomingly as she walked beside the younger Tethras, but Varric insisted he had enough dirt on everyone at the Guild to keep them in check.

In a hall he led her down, they passed artisanal pottery shielded behind glass displays and rows of painstakingly sculpted busts of dwarven figures, each staring blithely from pupiless orbs. Paragons , Varric called them. Some were bearded, and others not. One face held a sculpted dagger grotesquely in its mouth, which Mari stopped to examine in piqued curiosity. "Astyth the Grey," Varric said. "She cut out her own tongue." 

Mari recoiled, keenly aware of her own. As she was about to inquire further, they were interrupted. 

"Bartrand is waiting for you, Varric," a finely-garbed manservant announced from the end of the hall.  

"Right," Varric braced himself, straightening his leather coat. "I hope you're ready for him," he warned.

Despite Bartrand's affluent decor in his office, Mari wondered if this was only middling for a display of dwarven wealth. There were no windows here, but mounted war axes, etched stone panels, and a stuffed bronto's head decorated the walls while an onyx chandelier lit the room with glass candles from above. The head she found vulgar, so she tried not to gawk at its false eyes. The stone chairs and table were not crafted with humans in mind, so her legs felt somewhat crushed, but she dared not complain. 

Even at the Guild, Bartrand wore leather bracers to his knuckles as if expecting a fistfight. "You promised a share of the profits to a human duster?" he asked when Varric finished his pitch. 

"It gets the ball rolling, brother, and our window is closing fast. Pretty soon the darkspawn will all be gone below again," Varric spoke as if telling one of his stories. "We don't have profits to argue over at this point, and I've heard whispers of other families funding their own ventures. Even if the Carta fronts the rest, they won't have maps to where we want to go. Hawke does," he spoke persuasively.

Bartrand turned his shrewd gaze to her. "How would I know that information is any good?" he asked.

"They're Grey Warden maps," she answered to the point. 

"Can you verify that, Varric?" Bartrand asked.

"They're legit," Varric answered. "The Warden she got them from didn't part with them easily," he added, embellishing the tale. 

Bartrand thought for a moment. "Where are the entrances? If they're as far as Tevinter, they're useless."

'If I show him my maps and give my coin, it's too easy to steal from me...' Mari thought. "The closest is on the southern side of the mountains. The next is closer to Ostwick.” 

"Show them to me," Bartrand demanded.

"The maps are under lock and key for the moment," she answered, mindful of her tone. Bartrand cracked his knuckles in a fist as he mused. 

"Hawke wants what we want, brother, and she has what we need," Varric urged. 

Tense moments ticked by, but Bartrand seemed to capitulate. He was abrasive and brutal, unlike Varric - perfect for dealing with the Guild and Carta both. Undoubtedly, he would’ve done well in Orzammar if the Tethras clan hadn’t been exiled for the great dishonour of fixed Provings. Alas, losing his place underground instilled in him a hunger for wealth and prestige that rivalled even the shrewdest of Orzammar nobles.  

"Give your coin to Hugin and we'll sort the rest," Bartrand decided. "Handle any outstanding affairs while I finalise preparations, and bring those blasted maps before we leave," he ordered and stood up, not waiting to see his brother or their new expedition partner out.

Varric smiled across the stone table at Hawke, but she barely managed to return it. She had more coin in her possession than she’d ever seen, and she was about to give it away on a gamble. 'Am I mad?' she thought, and yet, she pushed so hard for this. A few dozen laws bent or broken, and it wasn’t half over. 

~

Outside, sunlight and bright blue sky stung her eyes when she exited the shadowy building onto the pale-tiled streets of Hightown. Varric shielded his own eyes as he explained what to expect next. "We'll be gone anywhere from three weeks to a month. Maybe more depending on what we find. Bartrand and I are handling basic supplies of food and shelter, but it wouldn't hurt to bring some of your own things. I hope you're not too squeamish about nug meat."

"I've heard good things," she answered, trying to stay optimistic about the food. "Any other advice?"

"How do you feel about fighting darkspawn again?" he asked with concern, looking up at her as they walked. He meant Bethany. Mari only mentioned her to him once. Varric seemed to remember everything, and it was rather unnerving. "You mentioned your sister didn't make it the last time," he added.

Mari didn’t expect to feel so confronted about the fact. Darkspawn were the reason Bethany was dead, yes, but Mari was not eager to face them again. She bore no petty notions of revenge, but the possibility of her dying down there began to sink in. What if she died the same way Bethany did or fell ill like Aveline's husband? "It will only make me more vigilant," Mari finally answered. He didn’t pry further. 

"Did you ask who you want to come along? Won't be easy to get volunteers on this one," Varric changed the subject.

"Anders has experience," she suggested. Varric shot her a sly look before she realised what he might be assuming. 'Not like that! Maker...' she thought, nearly blushing and rephrased herself more seriously. "He's still a Warden. He could be the most useful.” 

"Daisy's fought darkspawn before too," Varric suggested. "Might need to bring a ball of twine so she doesn't get lost, but..." 

Mari scoffed and rudely brushed off the notion of bringing the whimsical Dalish. "I would ask Aveline, but she has too much keeping her here... Guard-Captain and all," she said more sensibly. 

"The Broody Elf hits just as well. We could even use him as a lamp if the need arises," Varric added, making Mari smirk from the jest Fenris wouldn’t appreciate. "And what about Junior?" Varric finally asked, as if this had all been a dance around that question. 

Carver left her alone in the room that night after hastily dressing and nearly tripping on his way out. She hadn't seen him since, not even around Lowtown. It was best if they stayed away from each other for a while, after what happened. She felt unease, yet grateful that he wasn’t at her side to watch how low she stooped to secure the last of her precious coin. Blackmailing a grieving father... Cooperating with a crooked magistrate... This wasn’t the way Malcolm raised her to be. Varric might even change his mind about her if he found out.

"I'm not sure," she answered Varric, trying not to betray herself.

'He won't handle that well,' Varric thought. "Well, don't wait too long. There won't be enough time to drop in on everyone when I get word from Bartrand. Might be tomorrow morning or the next. In the meantime, I've gotta handle some things around the market. Wanna come along?"

"No. I have to head to Lowtown. I'll see you at the tavern later," she bid, walking gracefully toward the stone stairwell past vendors selling flowers and silks. One attempted to shove a bouquet of tea roses in her line of sight before he realised she wasn’t a noble. Not yet, anyway.

~{Lowtown}~

Mari passed an invitation to Anders through Lirene, dropping a few silvers into the merchant's donation box as a sign of goodwill. Mari would have no bitter feelings if he declined, whether due to his past or obligations here. In the last few weeks, Anders was generous enough to begin sharing what he knew of Creation magic. The school required considerable finesse and patience, and though Anders had never been an Enchanter, it was where his magical talents truly shone. He failed to speak more of what immense power overtook him against the templars in Hightown, but since it seemed no danger to Mari herself, she hoped he would eventually tell her when the time was right.

In the bustling bazaar, she bargained with a merchant for dried fruits and meats which would stay fresh on the journey. She carried enough spare silver to buy a water skin, much larger than a flask. Two weeks in the hold of the ship from Gwaren taught her a cruel lesson on thirst. From another stall, she picked a bar of tallow soap to avoid becoming too rank on the journey, provided she would bathe at all. 'Perhaps I'm not cut out for adventuring,' she worried. 

After gradually making her way east through the old slums, crossing hexes where children played barefoot, she climbed the stoop to Gamlen's hovel and began to feel awfully anxious between there and the door. "Mother? Uncle? It's me!" she spoke through the wood, knocking. Though their last conversation ended in disaster, Leandra had a way of acting as if a quarrel never happened, carrying on like a songbird after a storm. Mari could only hope this was the case now.

"Darling, look! The Seneschal wrote back!" Leandra announced as she welcomed her daughter back into the hovel. "We're going to meet with the Viscount," she said breathlessly, presenting a letter bearing an elegant Kirkwall seal in broken red wax. 

"That's wonderful news," Mari said calmly, not wishing to spoil the fact she didn't much care about the estate. The letter was penned in an ostentatiously scripted hand, but she discerned the appointment date. "It's not until Solace," she observed. 'Of course. The return of a destitute heiress is hardly pressing,' she thought cynically.

"A pity it's not sooner," Leandra added, taking the letter back, keenly aware of the rathole she lived in. Gamlen sat at his creaky table with a deck of cards practising what seemed to be Dead Man's Tricks.

"I'll be leaving Kirkwall for a few weeks, Mother," Mari told her as she headed for the room they shared until very recently. Leandra hadn't inquired about her absence yet. Perhaps she knew it was because of their fight, or perhaps she forgot, but it was for the best if neither dug it up.

"Oh? Where are you off to?" Leandra asked after her. 

"North on business with a member of the Merchants’ Guild. You've met Varric," Mari explained, rifling through a box of embroidering supplies for a needle and thread. 

Leandra looked over Mari's shoulder to see what she was doing. "Yes. A charming fellow, if I recall."

"He's been most helpful. I'm glad to have met him," Mari added diplomatically. "I should return within a month." 

Leandra became suspicious. "Is it only business with this dwarf, or something more?"

Mari flushed red, her thistle eyes wide, turning back from embroidering hoops and threads. "No! Nothing like that," she answered, scandalised. "I don't think of Varric that way at all."

Leandra's pale bluish-grey gaze saw her daughter's earnestness. Of course she hadn't thought of a friend that way. The girl never snuck out after midnight or brought a boy home in secret, or fell pregnant out of wedlock like Leandra herself once did. Mari was so like Bethany on occasion - obedient and proper, though that became harder to see once Malcolm and herself gave their eldest more and more responsibilities as she grew up. 

Mari had most of Malcolm's mannerisms and colouring too, but Leandra saw more of her own Amell features in her daughter's face. Perhaps that was the reason she expected the most from her. Mari's crowning glory - her silky dark hair - had grown long again from when she sold it on the day they first stepped into Lowtown. How Leandra lamented letting her daughter sell her hair to buy food, though there were few other options, as Gamlen could barely afford to feed himself. The wigmaker took Mari's locks for a pitiful twenty-five silvers, which had been pocket change to a young Lady Leandra, once upon a time.

"What in the Maker's name are you doing down there?" Leandra asked, wondering why Mari was disorganizing her fabrics.

"I need a carrying strap for this," Mari said, holding up the water skin. 

"Give it here. I'll make one for you. Go pack your things," Leandra instructed. She was in a generous mood. Seating herself on a stool, she expertly threaded a needle and began to stitch a folded strip of tougher fabric to the ends of the skin. "So, what about your brother?" she eventually asked.

A rush of panic overtook Mari. Why... or how would her mother know about that? Andraste’s ass , did Carver say something? Her heart just about gave out as she knelt over her rucksack. 

"He's not going with you, I trust," Leandra added, concentrating on stitching. 

Mari let out a silent sigh of relief. "No. I doubt it," she answered, trying to keep her voice steady as her pulse began to calm.

"He'll stay if you tell him. I don't like the idea of Carver leaving too," Leandra insisted. 

"Why keep your boy around, Leandra? Good riddance to both of them, I say," Gamlen chided from the table in the main room.

"Gamlen!" Leandra shot back as if they were still children in Hightown. 

"I'll miss you too, Uncle!" Mari added to playfully spite him, and the old goat grumbled something in return.

~

"Have you seen him today?" Mari asked over the cup of spindleweed tea her mother offered when she finished packing a rucksack. 

"Your brother? He gave me a few silver for food and left early this morning. He seems peculiar these days. I'll wager it's a girl," Leandra mused as Mari looked concerned. "But he hasn't mentioned anything to me," she added, taking a sip.  

'Nor should he,' Mari thought. 

"What's your concern for Carver? You hardly used to be close," Leandra asked. 

"We're not really close. We're just on speaking terms. We don't always hate each other, you know," Mari answered innocently. 

"Don't say hate, love. That's a horrid thing," Leandra scolded, shifting in her chair. "I remember the two of you arguing over what Bethany would be when I was pregnant with her. Carver wanted a little brother, but you insisted it would be a sister with magic, just like you. Well, you got your way, on both counts," Leandra reminisced, almost feeling the sensation of tiny feet kicking from within her again. Bethany was the last one that lived. The others were too painful to talk about. She only spoke of them to Malcolm, and Malcolm was gone as well.

"I don't remember that," Mari smiled, wary of Leandra mentioning Bethany, as it often brought a tide of deep melancholy. 

"It's not the same way between the two of you now. Have you finally made peace?" Leandra asked.

"We... understand each other better," Mari tried to explain without sharing too much. 

"You may know him better than I do now," Leandra went on. "Carver will need you when it comes time for you both to claim your rights as my father's heirs."

'But he doesn't want to be nobility, Mother. He doesn't want his future chosen for him. Neither do I,' Mari thought, but dared not protest out loud, lest she spoil the moment. Mari sipped slowly, choosing her next words carefully. "Have you considered what we might do if the Viscount doesn't honour your father's will? We won't always be in a hovel, you know. Carver and I will make sure you're looked after."

"Why wouldn't it be honoured?" Leandra asked sceptically as she took another sip. 

"I don't know. What if he wants a lot of coin for it?" Mari deflected, trying to seem harmless. She learned that laws were only as good as the people enforcing them in Kirkwall, but Leandra still didn’t understand. 

"I met Marlowe Dumar on several occasions when I was young. He was always courteous and kind to me. I can't imagine why he wouldn't..." Leandra pondered until interrupted.

"Because you're no Lady Amell anymore! That's why!" Gamlen groused, clearly not curbing his own tongue. 

"Father didn't stipulate that I needed to remain an Amell. He willed the estate to me and my children! Not you!" Leandra shot back.

'It was only a matter of time,' Mari thought, observing how this was devolving into a shouting match. Mari set her tea down and picked up her rucksack as her mother and uncle continued.

"Now look what you've done!" Leandra complained, gesturing to her daughter who was halfway out the front door. She hurried after her, leaving Gamlen at the table. He yelled something unkind, but neither cared to listen. 

"Darling..." Leandra soothed, catching her shoulder. "We only have to stay here a little bit longer. Before summer ends, things will be better. You'll see." 

"I know," Mari smiled, but couldn't help but doubt. "I must go now, Mother."

It felt strange for her eldest child who’d never been away for more than a few nights to now be departing for a month or more. Mari was the one constant since Leandra eloped with Malcolm, and remained the one constant since Malcolm died. Leandra was hardly proud of the manner in which she grieved; It was ugly, messy, and difficult to manage. Sometimes, she broke down and wailed into a pillow because of how terribly she missed her youngest, forever fifteen. Had Malcolm ever considered this could happen to them? Leandra never imagined their future to look like this. If the Blight never happened, perhaps the pain of widowhood would subside, but Bethany... There was no getting over that loss. There’d been devastated moments when Leandra lashed out at her living children for it, but the thought shamed her now. What if Mari never returned? What if she chose not to, because Leandra drove her away? 

"I know it seems I don't fret about you as much..." Leandra began.

"There's no need for long farewells, Mother. I'll return with enough coin to set us right," Mari interrupted. 'Or not at all.'

'You're so like your father,' she thought almost fearfully due to the bitter fate that befell him. Nobody could talk down to him. Malcolm was noble in all but birth; Far nobler than the haughty Amells or Reinhardts, and even Leandra could scarcely dissuade him from a chosen path once decided on it. "I don't care about the coin. I'll get that estate for us if it's the last thing I do. Just come back safely.” Would that she could cut herself into two to be with both of her living children.  

Mari felt a twinge on her heartstrings, but wouldn't make a scene. "Very well, Mother," she managed to say, giving Leandra a small hug. 

"Promise me: Carver won't go with you," Leandra muttered. 

"I promise," Mari answered easily.

"Take care, love," Leandra bade her once she let go, letting her daughter proceed away to the stoop. 

Mari stopped dead in her tracks when she recognized her brother coming up the steps - his eyes brilliant blue and a bruise forming on his cheek. He stopped once he saw her too, stunned with silence. 

"You're just in time! Your sister was waiting for you," Leandra politely spoke. He continued up until reaching Mari with a soft yet concerned look on his face. 

"No. No, I wasn't!" Mari denied, rushing past him in a panic, his eyes never leaving her. She was lovely even when she fled.

~{The Hanged Man}~

Mari spied Fenris leaning against a wall near the entrance of the tavern, quietly observing a game of diamondback, a game he grew to enjoy. Games and amusement were still new to him, but Mari believed Fenris to be an astute learner. A polyglot, he’d picked up the common tongue on his own since his flight from slavery on the northern island of Seheron, and he understood much of the Qunari language as well. He often spoke his native Tevene to himself, or in battle. A fearsome warrior with lyrium tattoos carved into his flesh by his former master, he was markedly different, even among other elves. He wore aloofness as a shield, and Mari bore no illusions that he would ever lower it for long. It was safest for himself if he didn’t.

He stood unmoving when she made her invitation known to him. Fenris had a sensibility most of her Kirkwall acquaintances lacked, with none of the polite social cues that put others at ease. He cared not for smalltalk or mincing words, so Mari rarely bothered him with niceties. Her straightforwardness with him was the only reason he continued to associate with her, for the abuses inflicted on him in Tevinter made him especially distrustful of mages. 

His snow-white hair shifted as he finally answered. "If you have no other warrior, I will go," Fenris said, surprising her. 

"Thank you, Fenris. I’ll let you know," she responded graciously, not wishing to tire him of her. 

"There's the only woman who loves coin as much as I do!" Isabela crooned from a back table after Mari left Fenris to his diamondback. The Rivaini loved to make a scene, or perhaps it was simply her way. An open bottle of coppery rum hinted that Isabela was, indeed, a little sauced. Emerald-eyed Merrill sat opposite Isabela in leaf-embroidered Dalish robes and partially-wrapped feet, and because of her presence, Mari chose to sit on the same bench as Isabela. 

"Varric already told us. I'll have to pass. I left Ferelden to get away from the darkspawn, you know? But if you ever have a sailing expedition, count me in," Isabela explained. 

"Understandable, Isabela," she took the declination politely. 

"I've been underground before, but it was a cave... a cave that led to ruins," Merrill chimed in with her lilting voice. 

"I think you would need real shoes in these ones," Mari suggested, regarding Merrill's visible toes. 

Leaning sideways to look, Isabela boisterously asked, "Is it an elven thing? What'll you do if you step on a nail, Kitten?" 

"Maybe limp a little?" Merrill speculated as Isabela sat back again. 

Chapter Text

Varric had just finished bullshitting another unlikely tale to a crowd of incredulous regulars when Carver strode through the tavern awning. Breathing in the rank smell of ale and tobacco, he spotted Mari near the back in cahoots with Isabela. His better nature told him to just leave her alone, but he wouldn't listen. 

As he approached, the Rivaini nodded to him, alerting Mari who was turned toward her. She looked back with wide eyes, unsure of who it would be. 

'Oh... he wants trouble,' Mari knew, seeing the indignant smoulder on her brother’s face, blemished by that one fresh bruise. He roughly dropped his rucksack to the floor and sat on the same bench as Merrill, though he barely even noticed the Dalish now.

"Stick in the mud," Isabela muttered behind her bottle, subtly rolling her eyes. 

"So, I heard I'm not to go. When can I expect my coin back?" he spoke accusingly across the table at Mari, who was aghast. She didn't answer. 

Varric approached, sensing the awkward family drama. He knew Carver would be less than pleased to be left behind. "If you need to talk in my suite, by all means," he offered. 

"No. It's nothing private," Carver answered bluntly. He looked only at Mari across from where he sat. He practically forgot he crossed a line with her only two nights ago. This wasn't about that. 

Feeling too much attention on her and her brother, Mari stood composed. "Come on," she appealed, persuading him. 

She was trying to be reasonable, but he wanted to embarrass her here, to get a small act of revenge. Maybe that was childish now, and she was already leaving the table. With a huff, he picked up his bag and muttered to Varric before following. "It's not fair, dwarf. You know this isn't."

"Maybe so, Little Hawke, but I can't take sides in this," Varric shrugged, feeling sympathy for the lad.

"Is something the matter?" Merrill asked to nobody in particular. "He seems a bit cranky."

"Don't worry about it, Daisy. He wouldn't be Carver otherwise," Varric assured her, turning his head to watch the siblings ascend. Come to think of it, Varric couldn't recall a time when he ever saw Carver happy.

Once Mari felt sure the banter of the tavern would drown out her voice to anyone else, she began to speak. "Perhaps some distance is what we need," she said, opening Varric's door. She made sure the room was empty before she said anything more. 

"Why?" Carver asked, closing it behind them. "Because of me?"

"Don't make me explain," she said, wringing her hands and avoiding his gaze. She didn't wish to mention that recent moment when he softly and foolishly touched his mouth to hers, nor her own befuddled emotions. 

"Maybe you should be the one left behind," he jabbed petulantly. She had such long eyelashes. Delicate mage-flower. "I'd have half a mind to, if it were my decision... and it should be, at least partly."

He wasn't exactly wrong. She’d feel cheated in his place. Defensively, she considered retorting by asking why Varric chose her over him to do business with, but she didn't wish to hurt Carver worse. This was serious, not like the harmless squabbles of childhood. The tone of his voice ran bitter and betrayed. "I know," she obliged, meeting him halfway. 

"Is this what Mother wants? Is this what she told you to do?" he asked.

"No! It's not her!" Mari blurted. 'Maker... It’d be easier to blame her,' she thought. Leaving Carver behind simply aligned with Mother's wishes. 

"What's changed then? Because I don't understand. Just the other night we were talking about how we would do this together."

"That's not all that happened!" Mari snapped. 

He froze. "What?"

She didn't want to lie to him, at least on this, and she grew tired of denying the truth. "You know what I mean."

Oh, that . "I... I don't..." he stammered, failing to form a coherent answer. 

"We can stop dancing around it, Carver. There's something more between us than just... blood." 

Now, he was the one who couldn't meet her gaze. His hands became awfully clammy. 'Between us?' Did that mean she felt it too? He might be remembering wrong, but it felt as if she kissed him back that night. If she did, how long had she felt that way? How long had he? It seemed terribly recent, but recollecting, he felt somewhat different about her since he ran bloodied and muddied from Ostagar and found her picking crystal grace on a frigid spring morning, softly melodizing with a clear and sorrowful voice. He thought she was an elf because she knelt hooded in a cloak, all colors of the night, but when she stood much too tall for a she-elf, a breeze blew off her hood and her twilight locks danced, adorned with little white wildflowers like stars.

"I don't know what it is," he admitted. He cared for her, yes. Even felt lust for her in these last few days.  

"Well, it’s the reason you can't come with me," she insisted, trying to make it stick. She knew this would hurt. She knew this was cheating him. "For what unsatisfyingly little it's worth, Carver, I truly am sorry ." 

"I don't want your blasted sorries," he retorted, shaking his head of thick black hair and clenching his jaw. He took a breath before swallowing the lump in his throat. It wasn't really about the coin. Fuck the coin. "You're still telling me to let you go into the Deep Roads by yourself. See it from my side, won't you? You're no soldier. Bethany was no soldier. You still need me," he argued.

She held her hands up to try to settle him. "Don't make this more painful than it already is. Fenris can..."

His own hands shot forward and shakingly cradled her chin and the back of her neck. "You need me," he insisted again, leaning over until his forehead touched hers and his eyes closed. Why did everything about her seem so right? Even her scent was uniquely comforting. 

Mari's own hands rested on the broad chest of his armour before she even realised. With her eyes closed, she felt drawn in. Nobody ever touched her like that. Never. 'Maker, if I really leave him, will he get over this? Will I?' she wondered. She then broke away, wiping the tears that stained her cheeks.

~

Some time later, Varric opened the door to find Hawke curiously examining his bookshelf filled with finished and unfinished writings and Carver carelessly slouched back in a chair. Evidently, they found the platter of cheese, breads, and fruits that Varric ordered special from the bazaar. "Might I interrupt?" he asked as his apostate guest feebly tried to hide the gnawed cord of an apple behind her back. "Live a little, Serah. The banquet isn't all for me," he assured, raising a stout hand. 

When she tossed the cord into the fireplace, a lanky figure appeared in the doorway behind Varric. The fire caught the gold in his hair and eyes as he entered. 

"I'll go on your expedition, but I still think you're crazy," Anders declared before even greeting her. He often recalled his stint with the Wardens in Amaranthine and disapproved of her ambitious venture since he learned of it. That bothered Carver, almost as much as his sister's persistent friendliness toward this man. 

"Thank you, Anders. I wouldn't ask unless I knew you would be the best to help," she said happily. Carver snorted, but nobody seemed to notice.

"This is for you. Blasted thing. You should've had it weeks ago," Anders said, presenting her with a long, skinny object concealed by a wrapped sheet. He untied it, revealing weathered whitewood as she watched in surprise. 

It was a staff. A mage's staff. Not pretty to look at and not earth-shattering, but lightweight and practical for an apostate on the move. "Goodness, Anders. Thank you. This means so much to me," she said, holding it in front of her.

"I reckon you'll have plenty of chances to use it," Anders added with a modest smile. "Sorry I can't stay long. I have appointments to keep."

"Oh... alright. Thank you again," she replied, understanding.

"I'll let you know before we leave, but in the meantime, get packed up, Blondie," Varric said as he sat down at the table with a journal and pen. A new storyline for his serial struck him. 

~

Once Anders departed, Mari left her belongings in her room upstairs and joined Isabela again, seemingly intent on ignoring Carver as he sulked elsewhere. 

"I'm bored of this!" Isabela complained. "I want to sail the open sea, or swim in the surf, or... That's it! Come on!" she commanded. She pulled down the hem of her slashed dress as she stood and strutted out, making sure her daggers were still at her waist. 

"Where are we going?" Mari asked, a bit hesitant. 

"I don't know! We'll know when we find it," Isabela teased. 

Mari paused and grabbed the rum before she followed, unsure whether to leave it. 

"That means you too, Kitten!" Isabela yelled back at Merrill who was still seated on the bench. Isabela had taken a special liking to Merrill, but not for carnal reasons. The Dalish seemed like a younger sister, and Naishe never knew what it was like to have one. Blood-family meant nothing to her since the woman who birthed her sold her to a rich Antivan, but that was an old wound.

It was evening now and the sky painted itself in shades of amber and ruby red. The air blew warmly but stunk of the foundries, which was inescapable in Lowtown. The trio travelled down toward the harbour where they walked until planks ended and a caravan path toward the Vimmarks began. Isabela gazed longingly at a sailboat anchored nearby and pondered how lovely it’d be to have a vessel even of that size, to go wherever the winds spirited her. Instead, she was trapped in Kirkwall like a rat, doing a pisspoor job at finding the lost prize that went down with the Siren's Call. She couldn't think of her mates, especially Casavir, now food for sharks and crabs at the bottom of the sea. Anything but that. 

Spontaneity didn’t come so easily to Mari. Even not knowing where they were going bothered her. Isabela didn't seem to mind and even seemed to enjoy not knowing. Was that so horrible? ‘Perhaps she’s on to something,’ Mari thought. She took a few sips from the bottle to loosen up, each sip tasting like the inside of a rotten barrel. At least ale from the Hanged Man was watered down, but this wasn’t. 

"Waste not, want not, Hawke?" Isabela giggled when she noticed the rum in hand. 

~

The caravan path which they followed rose higher above the sea, leaving a steep drop on one side. Hardy coastal trees grew up the slope of the other, wild parrots squawking where they perched. 

"This looks like a good spot," Isabela said, stopping to look down.

"Here?" Mari asked. The shadowy water seemed calmer than the open sea, but the drop from above was awfully high.

Isabela kicked off her tall leather boots. "Not high enough?" she asked. 

Mari felt queasy. The ground shifted beneath her feet, or perhaps that was the rum. She didn't want to seem scared in front of Isabela, who removed her daggers and shimmied her dress off, revealing a frayed brassiere and black underwear. Isabela pulled off her blue bandana as well, letting her curly hair fluff freely. "It's high enough," Mari exhaled, her palms already wet with sweat. Merrill meekly untied her green robes as well, revealing a plain brown shift that reached her knobby knees. Mari retained her own clothes and hoped Merrill didn’t feel pressured to participate. "You don't have to jump if you don't want to," she said. 

"Oh no, I do!" Merrill exclaimed as her pointed ears perked up. 

Mari sighed and took another hesitant glance over the edge, a sheer drop off. At least they wouldn't land on another ledge should they dare to jump, but that didn't account for the depth of the water, nor any rocks hidden beneath it. 

Without another word, Isabela fearlessly made a strong running jump and squealed zestfully in her descent, plunging into the water with a loud white splash. Mari gasped and put a hand over her mouth, afraid that Isabela knocked herself unconscious, but the Rivaini resurfaced and wiped her eyes before kicking into a backstroke with her chest pointed at the sky. 

"Have you ever done this before?" Mari asked Merrill who was already smiling and clapping for Isabela.

"No, but it looks lively!" Merrill practically sang. 

"Well... good luck," Mari wished her. The Dalish walked backward elegantly before prancing forward like a spring fawn. She raised her arms and let out a screech halfway down, gliding into the water with less of a splash than Isabela. When she surfaced unharmed, Mari smiled amusedly. "Fuck it," she whispered, hastily putting the rum down and removing her own boots, tunic, and breeches.

"Yes, Hawke! Take it off!" Isabela beckoned from below. 

Mari walked several steps back from the edge in naught but undergarments. Everywhere perspired with sweat and she felt tremors in every limb. 'Let go! Let go!' she thought, trying to rid herself of these persistent nerves. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, and when she opened them again, she forced herself forward like an unbroken horse. The soles of her feet dug into the ground and she leapt hard before touching the cliff edge, careful not to aim for her companions below. The fear fell away and the sea came up to meet her, erupting in a fountain of white mist. 

She exhaled noisy bubbles, kicked up to the surface, and tasted seawater on her lips when she breathed again, surfacing closer to Merrill than Isabela. 

"You fell marvellously! Was it nice, Hawke? I thought it was nice," Merrill rambled as she bobbed in the soft waves. 

Hawke laughed, exhilarated. "It's not like swimming in a creek, that's for sure," she answered. She coughed a few times when she inadvertently inhaled some water through her nose, burning it. 

"Hawke, look!" Merrill exclaimed as she treaded water with one hand and created a thin sheet of ice with the other. It crackled pale as she froze it. Mari smiled again. 

"Let me try," Mari giddily insisted as she spun in the opposite direction. She exhaled forcefully and pushed her naked arms ahead as she froze a ten-foot swath of water ahead into shiny, clear ice. The warm waves cracked the outer sheath within a few moments, pushing it closer to the cliff. 

Merrill looked no older than Bethany frolicking in the waves. Her mousy grin shone sweet and genuine. Whether it was the rum or the jump, Mari felt little reason to be cold to her anymore. The elf showed her nothing but kindness, and Merrill was still acclimating to the human world. There was courage in that, especially when Mari acted so aloof, and Kirkwall remained quite hostile to elves whether they came from an alienage, a forest, or Tevinter. 

They began to swim out to Isabela together when Merrill's voice asked, "Hawke? Did you invite your brother?"

"What? No!" she scoffed. 

"Well, he's about to plummet from higher than we were," Merrill said of the cranky sworder.

Mari shot back around to see. Maker, it was him, foolishly standing higher on the cliff in nothing but his smallclothes. Worse, the sunset made it harder to see rocks against the black cliff and murky water below. Before Mari could shout at him, he leapt. A gasp choked her as she treaded water, not knowing what to do. He looked graceful, yet so small against the mountain. Regardless, his bravery would not save him from a smashed skull. 

He did a full flip before crashing into the waves, making a white geyser with his splash. Merrill clapped her hands for him, and he surely did this to show off, but Mari was far less amused. She swam toward him as quickly as her body allowed.

Carver bobbed to the surface wincing and a stream of blood poured from his nose. He didn't notice until he wiped his eyes and face, seeing streaks of red over his fingers. He looked guilty rather than elated when Mari arrived.

"Is it broken? What were you thinking?!" she asked, clearly annoyed.

"I don't know," he answered solemnly to both questions.

She swam close to him as he treaded there, sulking. "Hold still," she commanded, hovering one hand over his bleeding nose. He did so, until her hand began to glow.

"What are you doing? Stop!" he shouted, grabbing her hand. 

"I'm trying to help you," she argued. 

"Someone could see. We're out in the open," his voice sunk lower.

She sighed exasperatedly, rolling her eyes. The grip on her hand revealed he still held it below the surface. Her gaze trailed up what she could see of his body, mainly the hard lines of his chest and neck. He had soft lips for a man, high cheekbones, and that signature stubborn chin. A few pieces of soaked black hair framed his cobalt eyes. 'He looks better wet,' she thought guiltily. 

Were they having another moment? He seemed insistent on moving closer. He looked up and down her face, and her body below the surface, and those marvellous eyes again as he inched nearer. 'Maker's breath! Not here, not now!' she thought and splashed him with her other hand. He let go and exhaled tiredly. At least his nose had stopped bleeding. 

"Mari, I just... I feel so much, and I feel like you don't see me, no matter what I do."

Had he gone mad? At least she had the rum to blame.

Chapter Text

Nightfall left the heavens darkening violet and cliffs blacker still as the Hawkes swam to shore and climbed the caravan path to retrieve their belongings. Isabela and Merrill followed shortly after, dripping of seawater and hair messily tangled. Mari unbraided her own so it could begin the lengthy process of drying and purposely hung it over her chest, as the fabric of her camisole had gone sheer from submersion. She could do nothing for the bottom half, though Carver now had the decency not to look. She broke that truce once, seeing his soaked breeches and the rippling muscles of his abdomen. 'Maker's breath,' she thought, shamefully knowing she never should've looked. 

"At least you didn't jump in with your armour on," Mari said once they reached the top and she began to dress. 

"You don't think I'm that stupid, do you?" he asked petulantly. 

"Let's not open that door. Neither of us are thinking clearly," she sighed, pulling on her trousers, not wishing to fight with him. 

Carver proceeded quietly up to the point on the cliff where he removed his armour earlier, while Merrill and Isabela regrouped with Hawke. "Had any luck cheering him up? He seems sad... and very cross tonight," Merrill's voice trilled.  

"Oh, Kitten," Isabela cooed, squeezing into her white dress again. "What that boy needs is a good tumble. I heard he was at the Rose the other night."

‘At the Rose?’ Mari pondered in shock. She nearly tipped over as she stepped into her boots. Had Carver gone there the night he kissed her? Had she tasted someone else on his lips when they shared a bed? Mari felt strangely betrayed. 

"Rose? What rose?" Merrill interrupted curiously, fastening the ties of her robe at one side.

"Oh, it's just a place in Hightown where all sorts of people come... and go," Isabela said nonchalantly before erupting into a fit of wild giggles. 

"Isabela!" Mari chided, blushing and stifling her own guilty laughter. She still wasn't entirely sure what the double meaning of that word meant, only that it involved sex. She certainly never learned anything about the vulgar side of it from her parents.

Merrill looked back and forth at them, brows furrowed high, feeling even more puzzled now. She wondered if she’d ever be closer to understanding shemlen and their odd jokes. So much of what they said seemed to go right over her head, and not simply because of her stature.

~

By the western end of the docks, a seaworthy tune of violin and pipes beckoned cheerfully from a small ship. The moon wasn't out yet, but Mari expected it to rise above the crest of the harbour soon, transforming the water into a foggy, shimmering mirror. Kirkwall's harbour could be beautiful at night, but twice as dangerous. When the stars weren't obscured by clouds or foundry smoke and one ignored the looming eyesore of the Gallows, it was rather relaxing.

"Well, I'll be. Dairsmuid sails," Isabela spoke longingly, gazing at the ruddy schooner nearby. 

"Where’s that?" Merrill asked.

"Near where I'm from, Kitten, in the north," Isabela mused, remembering the sweet scent of coconuts, curry, and tobacco in the markets of Llomerryn. Approaching the schooner, she could smell the same tobacco and an alluring, peppery aroma of yerba. Smirking mischievously, she strutted down the dock, both daggers at her waist, and boarded through the boat's dropped ramp. She spoke something in a strange tongue, to which the sailors responded when Merrill started to follow. 

"Merrill, are you sure you want to stay? We can help you get back to the alienage," Mari offered. Carver shot a surprised look to her, keenly recalling her dislike of the Dalish girl. 

Merrill's green eyes widened, looking sheepishly toward the schooner and back at the Hawkes before shrugging. "I suppose I wouldn't understand a word they're saying, and I might not find my house until dawn if I don't have help," she acquiesced. 

"It would be a lot longer if you smoked what they're smoking," Carver explained. 

"Smoking?" Merrill asked surprised, assuming the scent was an overcooked shemlen dish. Some of her clan smoked herbal remedies, but this was usually done by elders, especially Hahren Paivel. 

"Yeah. That one makes you dizzy and numb, or you think everything is a dream. Sometimes it makes you hungry, or so I've heard," he added, noticing that Mari was taking note of his insight . 

"Oh... well, maybe another time. I really do have to be getting back to my house," Merrill decided.

~

Mari and Carver made for a lesser known passage to Lowtown, one both remembered from their nights smuggling. It was a narrowly cut shaft between buildings that led to the foundry district, well-concealed from guards. As they snuck between cargo warehouses to the passage, a suspicious group of humans and an elf blocked the way. "This is Redwater territory," the elf asserted, turning to them threateningly.

The Redwater Teeth? A newer set, loosely affiliated with Coterie, and one of the many gangs Athenril had to deal with or evade. Yet, Mari didn't recognize this elf, nor did she know his rank, but he was surely strong enough to lead the humans around him. From behind himself, he drew a bulky wooden staff with jagged steel blades attached. 

"A mage," Carver huffed, unsheathing his sword. 

"You want these ones dead or alive, Leech?" one raider slurred in a heavy Marcher accent. 

"Dead, you idiot," the elf responded as if it were obvious. He made no demands for extortion, but Mari couldn't have paid it anyway. 

She hoped Merrill would watch where she casted, but didn't wish to warn the Redwaters that she and Merrill had special weapons at their disposal, so she remained quiet. That would be an advantage. 

She had six on the ground, locked in a temporary slumber once they came running. The mage resisted and slammed his staff into the ground, and Mari felt it like a hard punch to her chest. She cursed him to be slow, to have no reliable aim, and it seemed to work to a lesser degree. 

Merrill frantically yelled something, but nobody could understand with the elven words mixed in. Mari did grasp one thing amidst it: "Blood magic!"

Carver heard the words too, scything at the Redwater leader, who it hurt to even approach. Carver winced and felt as if his insides were boiling under his skin. He groaned as he pushed through the pain, still finding it agonising to move, but he had to. One good hit was enough to wound Leech and send him tumbling against a wall with his insides on his outsides. Carver quickly cleaved his exposed throat, no match for the heavy blade.

One last raider from the shadows charged out at the mages, fully realising what they were. He carried only a longsword, and Merrill's Dalish magic turned the very ground against him when he drew closer, but it was not enough. How Merrill wished she brought her staff tonight. 

He swung at Mari. In a flash of panic, she sent forth an explosive burst of flame that seared his mask, chest, and hands. She backed away as he fell, his longsword crashing against the ground while he panicked and rolled in a hopeless attempt to extinguish himself. Carver sprinted over, noting the terrified expression on his sister's face. The raider tore off his mask screaming, but his chest and hands were still aflame. Merrill was shocked as well and moved to a safer distance, wondering if she should try to partially freeze the man. Carver intended to pull Mari away from the scene, but before he could, she etched a glowing glyph around the raider with an elegant dance of both hands. This seemed to neutralise the fire and left him a smoking mess, letting his panicked shrieks fade to low moans. 

"Let's just get out of here," she whispered to Carver, shaken up, and took care not to step on the raiders locked in their temporary sleep. 

Past her brother, Mari knelt near the elf after discerning his death from the gaping wound in his neck. Blood pooled around his body and his staff had fallen from his grasp. Beyond that, he didn't look unusual. She expected a blood mage to look twisted and evil, but not him. Then, she spotted what she was searching for - his coin purse, which she swiftly cut from his hips before fleeing in earnest. Merrill wanted to say something - anything - but they needed to move lest any incoming guards discover them, so she followed the Hawkes into the dark passage, the glyph vanishing behind rushed footsteps.

~{Lowtown}~

When the steam and heat from the foundries became strong, Mari knew they neared the slums again. "Do you know where we are, Merrill?" she asked when they climbed a set of stairs into the lower market, trying to keep the calm in her voice.  

Merrill gazed around. So many times since arriving in Kirkwall, the streets and buildings seemed to blend together. Without distinct landmarks such as special trees, waterfalls, and rivers, Kirkwall proved much easier to become lost in. Nearby, she spotted a large painted mural on the wall of a city symbol, and to their right, an effigy of a human hanging from its ankles. "Near the Hanged Man," Merrill answered. 

"Right. We're just behind it. So that means the alienage is...?" Mari asked, letting Merrill figure out the rest. 

The Dalish kept observing her surroundings, even looking back the way they came until she spied the hint of a vhenadahl over Hawke's shoulder. "That way?" she pointed. "I see the big tree. I still don't know what it's for, but the other elves seem to like it," she rambled, leading the way. 

More than a single guardsman patrolled the streets after dark in Lowtown now - Aveline's reforms, no doubt, even if it drained her coffers quicker. The city's alienage sat as a designated group of dilapidated buildings on the easternmost end of the slums, next to an open water reservoir. A huge wooden gate stood at its entrance and there was no other obvious exit. The sight of it made Mari wary, wondering if the gates were ever barred on the elves inside. 

"There it is. I can see my house," Merrill said at the stairway down. The Tree of the People towered at the alienage’s centre, its branches ardently reaching to the heavens from the poverty surrounding it.

"I should be getting back to my place," Mari told Merrill, omitting that she now stayed at the tavern. "There's been far too much excitement for one evening, and I don't think the elves appreciate strange humans in their neighbourhood at night."

"Probably because most humans out at night are dangerous," Merrill said, wringing her fingers, knowing she also meant Hawke. "I can manage from here. If I don't see you before you leave, good luck... and if you happen to find any strange mirrors in the Deep Roads, don't touch them," she rambled. 

"That's oddly specific," Mari noted. 

"Just don't touch them, alright?" Merrill insisted, recalling her clanmate, Tamlen - how fiery he was, even for a hunter. 'Ir abelas, Lethallin,' she thought for the thousandth time. "Oh, forget I said anything. Good night," she bade and left, knowing the shemlen wouldn’t understand.

On their return through the slums, Mari looked once to Carver, who had been watching her intently - not out of affection, but concern. When they both rushed to break the silence, Mari won. 

"Isabela mentioned you were at the Rose the other night," she said, initiating the conversation. 

Blasted Rivaini. "Did she now?" he asked, but it wasn’t a real question as he flexed his hands defensively. Mari crossed her arms and nodded, coolly waiting for some explanation. Did she truly want to discuss this here? Now, of all times? Perhaps he should be honest. What did he have to hide? "Yes. I was there, but nothing happened," he admitted earnestly.

" Really ..." Mari narrowed her eyes in scrutiny.

"Nothing happened. The only thing I bought was ale," he insisted.

"And do you often go to a brothel for ale?" she asked.

"No," he scoffed. Mari still seemed unconvinced, so he decided to indulge her with the whole truth. "One of the workers propositioned me, but I didn't sleep with her. I didn't want to. I didn't want to with any of them," he admitted. Fading to a heartbroken whisper, he muttered, "Why does it matter anyway? Are you jealous ?" he cruelly teased. "It's not as if I cheated on you. I'm nothing to you, except your brother. Nothing can ever change that."

Mari's cheeks flushed red, feeling as if she had a rug pulled from beneath her feet. This was reality, and she agreed with this sentiment only hours before, but in this moment, she hated it. Her emotions for Carver stirred unrelenting as she stormed away. 'Nothing,' she thought, over and over. It became stronger - so strong that she could die from the loneliness it left.

She stopped beside a nook, hugging herself until Carver was at her side once more, though she wholeheartedly felt she was suffering alone. Why wouldn’t she let him remedy this? Only one thing would make it better. She looked utterly hopeless. He reached out, twirling a few fingers around a damp lock of hair hanging over her closest arm, playing with it, but not mockingly. As mercurial as Carver's nature was, he had a way of attempting to lighten the mood when one of his sisters was sad. It had always been Bethany back in Ferelden. He held only indifference to any of Mari's troubles before... back when he was fool enough to believe her the favourite.

Alas, she was too despondent to smile. She wouldn't even force one. Half of her wanted to be somewhere static and safe where nobody could harm her and she couldn't harm anyone, and the other wanted to kiss Carver. Right here. Right now. Where anyone looking out a window in their wall might see. From the longing intent in his eyes, she could tell he wouldn't object. 'Nothing can ever change that,' she thought, tasting the spite. She'd show him then, but what if kissing Carver was one more vile deed she committed in these last few days? What if it was the worst?

"Can you just take me back to the room at the tavern?" she asked, hugging her elbows, not trusting herself to do anything else.

"Yeah," he nodded, his brows going soft. "Yeah, I will."

~{The Hanged Man}~

"Did you tell Mother where I'm going?" Mari finally asked as she unlocked the room door with a heavy key, grateful to be inside again.

"Into the realm of creatures that killed our sister? Not likely," he scoffed, leaning back against the wall. "She might do something to stop you if she knew." 

"You really think so?" she asked, doubting that.

"Or I would." He glanced down at her sideways with a look that almost made her melt. "Are you afraid?" he asked, sobering the moment.

"Yes," she answered.

He shook his head, picturing her lost in the dark, needing his help. Dead in the belly of the earth. Mother sobbing in the hovel, too long after Mari should've returned and Carver drowning his sorrows for the second sister lost. Her magic was strong, but she wasn't ferocious with it, even with things that meant to kill her. He had to be by her side in this. He couldn't live with it another way. What if this was the last time he ever saw her? What if she snuck away with Varric, Bartrand, and that blasted Warden during the night and left him behind forever? 'You need me. You need me,' he heard himself thinking again.

Carver exhaled. "There's a fucking lot of things I want to say, but you won't hear them," he said, frustrated with his voice faltering. "Find me before you go. Please. I'll never ask anything of you ever again," he begged, letting her go into the room alone. He would steal nothing from her tonight.

"I do hear you, Carver," she said, trying to comfort him without giving in. The half-closed door hid her body, but her eyes shone in the lantern light. "I just need to be alone now. I can't even trust myself." 

Was she beating herself up over the raider, their shared feelings, or both? Carver wanted to say something to reassure her, but she was closing the door on him now. 

The lock turned with a metallic click. Carver's hand softly reached for the door, but slid down defeatedly. He felt like collapsing on his knees, but forced himself to stay up and return downstairs to rent a cot in a boarding room with several other occupants. He wished to be close to Mari, just to make sure she was alive, to hear her breathe, to feel her presence, but the same building would have to suffice. 

~{Early in the morning}~

A dream claimed Carver that night, and he was barefoot on the Wounded Coast with Mari again, far away from Kirkwall and everyone in it. A pleasant but less familiar sensation caressed his heart in the dream. He felt... happy. 

"Carver," a whisper woke him, causing him a sudden inhale. "Carver," she spoke again. His black lashes moved, unveiling irises of deep blue. His sister knelt at his side, already fully dressed. "Get your things," she told him, knowing he’d understand what it meant. Her tone rang utterly sombre, for he had finally won out, and she knew Mother would hate her for it. "You're coming with me."

Chapter Text

~{The Hovel}~

"Have you seen my son about?" Leandra asked Gamlen over their usual morning tea. Carver hadn't spent last night in his bunk, nor the night before, nor did he reveal any plans that would keep him occupied for so long. 

Though she was thinking of Carver as a little boy less and less, he was still her only son and carried many of her hopes for a better future. Life for apostates was ever so much more complicated, more than she ever expected when she first fell in love with Malcolm. There was always a chance her children would inherit magic from her Amell side alone, but Carver had beaten the odds even with a mage father. In the coming years, if he would only choose a normal bride and a career of relative safety, he might spare the next generation of their family the same perils as the last. Too much magic ran in his blood already.

"Not since he stormed after your blighted daughter," Gamlen answered without concern.

"That was days ago, and Mari is away. Are you sure he hasn't come back? Perhaps you should ask around," she suggested.

"Bah. It's past time he left your skirts," Gamlen brushed off the notion.

"Does it not occur in the slightest that your nephew could be hurt, in the dungeons, or Maker forbid..." she flared, considering the worst possible calamity. Her blood ran utterly cold. 

"Leandra, get a hold of yourself," Gamlen insisted, for her skin blanched. 

She sighed, heartsick, and declined herself one last sip of tea before departing. She would have to search for Carver on her own.

Outside in the barren courtyard, the sun's rays failed to warm her skin while she kindly questioned several children who played a chasing game, and then a line of washerwomen who dunked and dragged clothing over washboards. None had an answer she wanted when she described the tall young man with black hair. Her son turned twenty years old this year. Twenty . Leandra could scarcely comprehend. It seemed only three or four winters passed since he was ten. 

"Are you Mistress Hawke?" an elven courier asked. Gamlen's hovel received more mail than usual in the last few months, so the couriers became more familiar with their faces. 

"I am," Leandra answered politely.

"Letter for you," the courier said, handing her an envelope before returning to his duties. Leandra tore it open urgently. 

Mother,
I am gone with my sister. I would not let her leave without me, so if you must blame someone, let it be me.
Carver

Gamlen, who was heading off to try his luck at wallop, stopped to see what Leandra held in her hands.

"She promised me. She promised me he wouldn't go! Do promises mean nothing anymore?" Leandra steamed, roughly folding the letter in half. 

"Did they leave any silver in there?" Gamlen asked, his interest matching his timing. 

~{Somewhere in the mountains}~

Warm summer rain pelted the expedition until they climbed the narrow arid pass that connected the coastal regions to the breadbasket of the northern Marches. Ancient towers that were no more than broken pillars bespeckled the mountainsides - perhaps the legacies of human tribes, the elves, or both as greenery fought a losing battle to the rock above. 

"Why in blazes are we this far into the mountains? You said there was an entrance on the southern side!" Bartrand hollered from the wagon ahead, pulled by a bronto. 

"I was cautious. It's further in," Mari answered from the wagon behind him. 

"You knew about this, Varric?" Bartrand shot back. 

Varric gave a sly glance to his brother, but kept his lips subtly pursed. Varric hadn't known, yet understood Mari’s reluctance to lay all her cards in front of Bartrand. Varric grew up having to keep up his guard around his brother as well, for being brothers didn't always mean trust. A little double dealing was standard. 

"I may need some help navigating," Mari spoke to Varric, opening her weathered maps again, moving to sit between him and Anders. An entrance to the Deep Roads was marked, but no exact path to reach it, and the Vimmarks spanned a treacherously remote range. The nearest settlement on the other side lay Wildervale, and further beyond it, the great Minanter River and Starkhaven. Drawings depicted little beyond the borders of the kingdom of Nevarra to the west and magocratic Tevinter many leagues to the north, but Mari glimpsed a hint of Ferelden's coastlands to the south across the narrowest span of Waking Sea. She felt betrayed that it didn't seem so distant on the map; It had been their voyage from desolate Gwaren that made Ferelden seem further than infinity.

Varric retrieved a measuring tool from his supplies and flattened the weathered paper against his journal. After taking an estimate, he pointed a gloved finger to it. "Less than ten leagues, but it'll be a blighter to reach. Lucky for us, we have just the blighters for it." 

He stood and hopped off the wagon, sprinting to catch up to the one ahead. There, Varric sat and discussed the situation with the expedition's scouts - two hardy dusters called Blaz and Chloris on loan from an ascendant deshyr within the Guild. A pair of tethered dracolisks followed behind their wagon - a stockier variety than suitable for long-legged riders.

Carver exhaled deeply to awaken himself as he sat across from Mari, who wondered if his jaded expression meant he regretted winning their last conflict. "Wishing you stayed in Kirkwall now?" she asked coyly.

"Not a chance," his blue eyes brightened up. 

"I'll be wishing that... the second I last see the sky," Anders stated, ignoring Carver and breathing in crisp mountain air with an immense appreciation. A year spent in a tower cell would do that to anyone, and all he did was dare a few escape attempts. What freedom the Grey Wardens offered was pitiful when they spent all that liberty trudging through haunted marshes, disgusting broodmother pits, and abandoned dwarven tunnels. The irony of his current path wasn't lost on him. 

~

A misty waterfall that fed the southbound river roared and sprayed white near the steepest part of the caravan path, forcing everyone to walk on foot to the top. A crimson evening fell upon the mountain, hotter without the shade of trees. At its summit, Bartrand commanded the company to cross the water where it flowed shallow and wide, forcing the brontos despite their own mewling protests. The cool water soothed Mari's face and skin after such an arid ascent, but there was little time to rest. 

Several rocky rises gave way to a barren plateau where bald-headed vultures picked at shrivelled carrion before taking flight. As the sun set on the western ridge, the wind picked up speed, blowing dust and sand. A gruesome shriek crackled somewhere in the distance, after which a massive violet shadow in the shape of a bat soared down from cover of clouds. 

"Dragon," escaped Mari's lips. 

"You'll all have to handle it if it flies too close," Bartrand stated unsympathetically. 

“Fight a dragon?” she whispered in awe of the beast, recalling the Witch of the Wilds as she thundered down, breaking massive trees in half at her impact and igniting a swath of darkspawn into charred meat somewhere in the Brecilian Passage. Mari could still feel the heat of the shapeshifter's fire, and its blinding glow on a moonless night, too late to save Bethany.

"Please tell me he's kidding," Anders uttered. The dragon flew eastbound over the peak, growling like distant thunder, but didn't deign to turn her attention to the banquet-sized company. 

Carver stiffened and checked their flank as he learned in the army, but nothing stood behind - only a rising silver crescent to return his gaze.

~

The heat of day brought a night deluge akin to one of the seas. Shelters went up, but the rain poured down in large, fat drops. Despite this, Bartrand ordered his scouts to take their mounts and venture ahead to the furthest peaks, not wasting a single night. He took a shelter to himself as usual and slept on a cot a few steps away from the other tents, but the others stayed many to a tent, sleeping on pallets if not the ground itself.

Each night since leaving Kirkwall, Mari took a spot next to Carver, both for the familiarity and security of him being near. Anders stayed nearby as well, whom Mari noticed would cycle between rigidity and thrashing in his sleep, slurring odd sentences barely audible between the brontos bleating and the dwarves' snoring blare. "Karl." "Help me." "Commander?" Anders whimpered, making her wonder about him.  

"Do you think they'll find the right place out in the dark?" Mari asked Varric as they settled in.

"Entrances have markers nearby. Statues and such. Hard to miss," he explained, taking out his journal and pen while the lanterns were still lit. "I don't envy them. They came from Orzammar about ten years ago. Some never really get used to the sky."

'And still he sent them,' she thought, kneeling on her pallet. Inadvertently, she laid her hand on Carver's, pulling her palm back immediately at its touch. He felt it too, but didn't look at her as he sat with his other arm slung over his knee. He couldn't have Varric sniffing out his secrets and, Maker forbid, making fodder out of him. 

Wind blew against the sides of the tent rapidly, bulging the woven fabric inward. Air breezed through the bottom, though it was barely cold. Mari stretched her legs as she laid back, accidentally shoving her foot into someone nearby.

"Hawke, that's my leg," Anders asserted, fighting a smile even in the dim lantern light. 

"Sorry," she whispered, blushing.

~

At the hour of dawn, Mari roused to the scraping of whetstone against steel. Her arm beneath her felt prickly and numb, so she pushed off of it and sat up. Carver laid on his back beside her, still sleeping without a snore and one hand under his head. She could stare at him a long while, listing things she might secretly fancy, but she couldn't risk anyone catching her like that.

Walls of fabric glowed amber around them, and she rose silently, parting the tent flaps with both hands. Varric sat on a stool outside, fletching another bolt for Bianca while Bartrand stood beside a wagon, sheathing a newly sharpened dagger on his waist before he turned and stomped his boot on what was likely a crawling scorpion. The thump woke Carver and Anders both. 

Within that hour, both scouts returned with news of visible ruins on the furthermost peak to the north-west. By midday, the air sweltered like an oven, causing the company to sweat as much as they drank while the brontos slowed to near-collapse. Every inch of their bodies grew wet as skin turned unflattering shades of pink and red as many tried to hide under cloaks and spare clothing. Even Carver panted from the heat, Mari leaned against her whitewood staff for stability when her legs grew weak, and Varric fanned his face with his journal.

The scouts hadn’t been mistaken about the ruins, for indeed a broken statue of a dwarven warrior stood on the slope of the furthest peak, missing half of its head and one arm. A trail of unlit steel lanterns led down a rocky path, and lush green forest could be glimpsed far away and below.

Dwarven runes were etched into the rock, outlining where the doors lay. Varric mentioned some doors to the roads were eventually destroyed by darkspawn or natural disasters, but this pair were still neatly shut - their stone uncracked and unblemished as if never disturbed. It took six people to crank the lever, and with a growl fit for a mountain, the doors opened, and Mari took one last look at the sunny surface above before entering the fathoms below.

Chapter Text

~{The Deep Roads}~

Time flows strangely for humans where there’s no sun. Had one day passed since it shone, or two since descending into the dark embrace of the mountain? The promised entrance held little more than a dusty hall, but eventually brought them to an underground highway which hadn't hosted its own people in ages. 

The first creatures encountered were scurrying nugs, and as highway gave way to cavernous ceilings, the crawlers. That's what the dwarves called them: Hissing spiders as large as mabari, but the juveniles fled from torches as if there was nothing so unbearable as light. In easier times, Malcolm warned his children of the many-legged creatures dwelling in caves and forgotten glens of Ferelden, spinning traps for the unwary traveller and disobedient little Hawkes. Carver brushed a glove softly near the back of his sister's neck to tease her now, which she answered with a swift slap on his shoulder. 

"Why can't they have Deep Roads kittens?" Anders asked, earning an identical cringe from the brother and sister. 

"Don't speak that into the world, Blondie," Varric told him. 

Etched into a plaque caked with dust in the ancient dwarven tongue, Varric and Bartrand made a passing sense of what it meant. Chiselled in the reign of King Endrin Stonehammer, it told of the distance to the nearest Imperial outpost: Emerius. Kirkwall. 

After dozens of twists and turns, Mari lost all sense of the direction of home. That night, or what she felt was night, they made camp in a resting stop with a stone firepit. Clever shafts were already cut into the ceiling for fumes to escape, but the air felt heavy in human lungs. There, they would taste the charred meat of fresh nug and force themselves to swallow, unaccustomed to its taste reminiscent of pork and hare. Around the camp perimeter, scouts wound twine with small bells for warning in case of an ambush. 

'Not a single star,' the fanciful Hawke mused as she looked up from her spot on the ground. She’d long since grown used to the trappings of a hovel, but travelling on evenings had treated her to the sea of sky and the constellations Malcolm used to show her. The Maiden danced brightly overhead every night since, and that was indeed sweeter than a rocky dome. Beneath it, she began to feel rather queasy at the sheer amount of rock above. 

"It won't fall. Dwarfier dwarves than anyone here shaped this place," Varric tried to reassure her. 

Indignantly, Carver seemed to read his sister's thoughts. 'She wishes she could see the bloody stars, I know it. No stargazing will be the least of her worries if the spawn find us.'

~

Or rather, when they found the spawn. It happened the next day along a great crevasse, descending further and westward according to the Warden maps. Anders sensed the presence first - an uncanny chill in his blood and that unmistakable stench of taint. "They're here. They're close."

They came from below, climbing straight up the jagged rock. Mari's pulse raced during the skirmish to mount a defence, but when the first hurlock came into view, she thought she was in the Brecilian Passage again in the dead of night where she last felt her sister alive. Carver stepped forward raising his blade to charge the enemy, just like Ostagar, but Mari reached out, grasping her brother's wrist. Anders conjured a vicious explosion that scattered the hurlocks from a distance, flinging one right off the edge in a piercing squeal while the scouts loosed a volley of arrows. Flames flashed bright orange, blinding Varric's eyes for a few moments, but Mari couldn’t move to flinch. Her sister was there, a shadow falling behind her, and they were supposed to run... but it was all wrong. These were the Deep Roads, not the forest, not dragonfire. This was what she signed on for, and what she was now failing to handle. 'No, but if they cut my brother...' she dreaded. 

'Be strong, my love,' Aveline's husband wept as he begged his soldier wife for an end, rather than succumb to the poison in his blood. It wasn't quick for Wesley. He suffered more than Mari had ever seen a man suffer, until Aveline tearfully kissed him goodbye and gave a cruel mercy. Standing there now, Mari's hand would've squeezed Carver's wrist numb if not for the armour, and she only let go when she realised he was glaring at her, fires burning low. 

He resented her, of course, for not letting him stand between her and the darkspawn as he meant to. Perhaps worse, Bartrand noticed the incident.  

"Human dusters, both of them. We should've hired our own to do this sodding job," she overheard Bartrand tell Varric later.

"I'll talk with her," Varric told him. He would, but not to reprimand. He only later asked Hawke if she was alright.

~

That eve, beneath the glow of a blue lyrium spiral, Mari sat agitatedly with Anders, away from the others. Entering darkspawn territory turned out exactly as anticipated, short of dying, yet she froze when she should've fought, and Carver meant to charge into a blighted fray without a moment's hesitation.

Anders watched her intently now, for her silence all but screamed that she needed to speak. "I need to know how to protect someone... with magic," she finally admitted.

"Who?" Anders asked.

She shrugged with a great weight about her shoulders. "No one in particular. Anyone ," she answered coyly. "Not with destruction, but to stop a weapon or brute force from touching. I once saw a mage in the Coterie shield herself, but she couldn't move while casting it."

"There are different kinds. All valuable spells, but I can't say I know them all," Anders explained. 

Her worried eyes lit up a little. "Can you teach me? Please ..."

What she sought was barrier magic; Energy repelling harm. Anders could hardly resist showing what she asked with what he knew, even though he hadn't practised such spells since the tower in Ferelden. Anders never cared to mentor anyone after his own Harrowing, but found himself pleased that his first apprentice of sorts was Hawke. 

"You didn't sleep well," Anders guessed after seeing her pinch the skin between her eyes. "It must be this place as much as the darkspawn, and maybe the lyrium around us."

"I had a memory during the battle that seemed so real," she revealed, gripping her staff with both hands, leaning on it. "The darkspawn were there, and my sister, but it wasn't the way it really happened," she explained. 'I heard a voice, too,' she wanted to say, but he would definitely think her crazy then. "I couldn't move, and I... loathe myself for it now." 

'Your poor sister,' Anders sympathised. "You've been through a lot, Hawke. When people see horrible things, sometimes it stays with them, like it happened only yesterday.”

"I thought I'd handle it better." Mari paused to take a slow breath. "I don't have a fight in me... or I don't know how to harness it. Maybe I'm just too... afraid," she admitted, burdened with such doubt.  

Maker, she reminded him of himself when he was younger. "I never enjoyed the violence. I was afraid too. I'm still afraid sometimes, Hawke, as if the templars are finally closing in on me, but fighting is something I must do to survive now," he continued. "You will too, and you have. For now, you have your brother, and me ... and the dwarf for help." 

"I suppose I do," she agreed, forcing hope with a smile.

Justice stirred, pleased that Anders was indeed helping this mage who needed him. The real Anders stirred as well - that little boy who grew into a runaway apostate who never had a real friend in the world but Karl and Justice. Would Karl resent him for the fluttering emotions he buried for Hawke? Did that matter? Justice chafed at the memory of the flirtation. 'Be her ally against the templars, but stay the course to justice. It is of more importance than one person,' the spirit urged, but the man still felt quietly drawn to her, but now was not the time.

~

Walking toward an ancient lift that would lower an entourage into an unexplored grotto below, Carver muttered his demands to his sister, his sword thirsting for blood. "Whatever happens down there, I don't want you holding me back. Let me fight. Let me fight for you if you won't do it yourself," he whispered harshly. 

"I'll let you fall down the nearest shaft or blunder straight into a golem. Got it," she snarked.  

He stopped her. "Don't go grabbing my hand in front of everyone, either, unless you want them to suspect," he added. He might actually prefer that to being thought a coward.

"There's nothing to suspect," she deflected, continuing toward Varric, Anders, and the hardened expedition scouts who waited, but Carver knew it was another lie. 

Steel chains as thick as her waist suspended the platform hundreds of feet above the black abyss. With dwarven eyes, the others swore there were structures barely visible below - places that might hold treasure, but Hawke nor her human companions could discern anything from this distance in so little light. She grasped her wooden staff with both gloved hands in uncertainty, readying to channel every spell she knew. The chains clinked so heavily she could feel them in her bones, and she felt her stomach leave the moment the platform began to descend. 

Chapter Text

The vanguard of the expedition descended as small and insignificant as pebbles cast into the sea, hurdling toward an unseen rocky floor, unsteady. The thin wooden staff trembled in Mari's gloved grasp as the magic surged through with her barely willing it. There was no reason to hesitate now, no need to hold back, so she let it carry her as if swept along a rushing river's current. She felt her abilities stretch like an invisible muscle, a deepening breath within her lungs and the space around her... and she meant for all of it to protect her brother. 

"Keep that away from me!" he growled when she placed a barrier that shone like valour around him, first against the worm-headed deepstalkers, and later, the spawn. In a rage, he snarled, "I don't need your blasted spells!" 

He didn't want her help. He refused it now. How else could she protect him, without skill with a sword or bow? Cognac and crimson flames burned hotter and higher to keep the blighted enemies scrambling, and Carver heard the sweet song of battle again. How quickly he recalled its natural rhythm with each brutal swing. 

Mari had neither the space nor freedom to work such fulminant power in or beneath Kirkwall's winding streets, and even in faraway Lothering, the Chantry loomed forever too close. Malcolm never taught either of his daughters many spells of destruction. He never anticipated they would need it, safely tucked away from the rest of the world. Never to be taken away to any Circle, never to be hunted or murdered by templars, and he never imagined either would visit the realm below the earth, one of the forsaken places that haunted him for the rest of his life.

Mari reminisced fleetingly of her sister in gold-pastured days, and what Bethany wanted to be if she could be anything, or do anything in the whole world. 'Normal, sis. No more magic,' Bethany once whispered in her honeyed voice, choosing impossibility and the ordinary as she yanked weeds from the garden. 'And you, sis, what would you be?' 

'Queen of all Ferelden,' Mari once enunciated dreamily, still naive enough to think royalty happy. That had long been a peasant's fantasy; To be clad in the finest silks, sparkling with jewels, to live in a high castle, and to never go hungry. Most of all, she wanted a great love like her mother and father had, but that seemed even more unlikely. 'Or someone of note in the old tales. Who would want to be a mage?' she asked defeatedly.

Apostates were hags and villains who consorted with demons, boiled human flesh in cauldrons, and at best, led the heroes astray with wicked schemes. That's what the storybooks told. The girls' wishes had been but the innocent yearnings of children, but to hear both daughters wish away their magic wounded their listening father. Mari long suspected the guilt Malcolm felt, though he endeavoured to hide it from all save Leandra. Indeed, the odds would've been in the girls' favour if their mother never chose a mage. If only they were born more like Leandra or Carver, or if they were sired by Leandra's once-betrothed, the rich and noble Comte de Launcet...

No. To the Void with that. Regrets for her one strength had no place down here. It wasn't just that she had to reject, but good Andrastian hesitance. All that mattered was her and Carver, and the others, of course. Casting came ever easier, and wielding powerful elements began to exhilarate Mari while pitiful doubts began to fall away as if soot on a wing. 

'Is this what you meant, Witch of the Wilds? Am I flying?' Mari mused as a drop of sweat fell from her brow. 

The eye sockets of a dead hurlock glowed fiery orange below her, its face burnt down to charred tissue in a morbid skeletal grin, smiling up at its killers.

"Maybe I should become a Grey Warden," Carver huffed, pleased with his swordwork. 

" No ," Anders spoke up harshly. The younger man had no idea what he asked. Carver only glared, deepening his loathing for the Warden mage. 

"Wipe off your sword, serah. The blood corrodes steel," Blaz spoke.

"No one told me that at Ostagar," Carver said. 

"Not every surfacer knows," Chloris answered with a deathly drawl from beneath her ratty hood.

Mari's eyes seemed to gaze off into a black abyss, feeling so much magic. Magic everywhere. She willed no more of it, but she felt as if she couldn't stop drawing upon the Fade. It was all around, inside everything. 

"You alright, Hawke?" Varric asked.

She rested against her staff, trying not to draw attention. "Yes. Yes, I just need a moment," she said, breathing slowly and deeply to relax.

Anders sensed it all around her and radiating from within like a sweltering eclipse in the night. "I feel it too, Hawke. You're changing, growing..." he observed. 

"It's not happening to you?" she asked, fearing that whatever secret power Anders held was now happening to her. 

"No... but I've been there," Anders explained. "It doesn't help that the Veil grows thinner the deeper we go." 

Carver's expression went grave, staring only at Mari. 'She's not alright,' he knew, now fearing for her. What did this all mean? Maker, couldn’t she have done this back in Kirkwall, or while Father still lived? Why’d this have to happen in the realm of darkspawn, of all places? The Veil in Lothering was strong, or so Father used to say. It’s why he avoided uprooting the family again so long as the templars took no notice. Alas, there was little Carver could do now but watch and wait.

~

For five gruelling days, Bartrand hounded them to push further into the deep, past glittering crystal caves, crawler's nests the size of the Gallows, and hellish reservoirs of churning liquid fire. Varric began to feel an uneasy sense of blighters lurking beyond what his eyes could see, blades hidden in the dark, and noticed the hairs standing all over his body more and more, but Bartrand grew immune to his brother's caution. 

Bodahn's son - a savant with a gift for runecraft - wandered away one morning and got himself lost in what was once a lyrium mine. That was where Hawke, Varric, Carver and the scouts found him, surrounded by a dozen dead genlocks and an emissary frozen clear as glass. White vapour smoked from what remained of the emissary, astonishing Hawke, as the dwarf couldn’t be a mage. Yet Sandal simply smiled up at her without a scratch and approached her later bearing a purple-and-green gemstone with a symbol etched onto it. "Enchantment," the boy said, placing it into her incredulous hand.

Bone-weary and increasingly sick of nug, Mari dreamed ever clearer and more vivid in each huddled camp, deeply and more difficult to wake. This was the reason Carver kept an unbidden vigil nearby on this night. Anders sat down opposite him, attempting an explanation if it might ease his worry.  

"Your sister is in the Fade. The Fade is..." Anders said before the interruption.

"I know what it is!" Carver snapped, having never invited the Warden to sit or talk.

Anders hoped Carver would be kinder at least, especially with what his sister was going through. Perhaps he simply couldn’t understand the struggles of being a mage. "Even so, you're no use to her if you can't lift your sword on the morrow." Anders stood and returned to his own solitary bedroll. 

Carver brooded silently, simmering. Was that all he was good for - his sword? He had to keep his sister alive. Truthfully, he knew little of the Fade. His sister was there, but he couldn't follow. He could only watch as she slept, helpless. As Carver watched over her sleeping body, he tried to imagine how her mind wasn’t truly there, and that it was far off or on the other side of some invisible curtain. The theoretics made his head spin, causing him to sigh until the last of his breath left him. 

~

No blue skies or the song of birds lay so far below the earth; Not even a semblance of the foundry smoke over Lowtown as Mari recalled of her waking dreams in Kirkwall. The further the expedition travelled, a forgotten melody hummed as she slept, beyond ancient and as encompassing as time itself, tinged with the melancholy of eternity. Frozen lightning split out as a tempest in all directions, to each side and above amidst endless dark. Mari understood this was lyrium, perhaps glimpsing its spiritual aspect rather than physical. Whether it conducted the voice of the Maker or the Stone that dwarves loved so dearly, she knew not, but it wasn’t of the waking world.

She stepped forward barefoot without a staff, without armour, in this place that wasn’t home and observed its shifting change. A sensation of soft grass squished beneath her feet as she walked with what felt like barley kissing her fingertips. Hundreds of fireflies glowed brightly and faded in the dark, so like nights in the fields near Lothering. Safe and peaceful, so untouched by the outside world. Mari knew not to believe, but half of her wished it to be real rather than an illusion. Trick though it was, in this place, there was no Blight, no death, and no loss of home. She spread her arms and spun once innocently, reaching up softly for the delicate luminescent creatures, smaller than the littlest nail on a child's finger. Still reaching, she glimpsed a hand that wasn’t hers capturing a tiny glow of yellow. 

She stopped, watching the closed hand fall, which opened to release the glowing insect as it shone yellow across a kindly face. Between the Blight and misery in Kirkwall, Mari almost forgot what that face looked like.  

Overcome with the jubilance and elation of reuniting with someone long-missed and longed-for after years apart, she wished nothing more than to jump into his arms and exclaim like an innocent child, 'Father! Father, how I've missed you so. Why’d you leave me? Please, Maker, please be real. I'll never ask for anything again. Just stay.' Reluctantly, she knew this could only be false in a realm of enigmatic reflections. She could still see him, though dimly, tall and bearded with strong features that she now recognized in Carver. He was young and in his prime, just as he was when Mari was small, long before strands of grey clouded his thick black hair. 'What I wouldn't give to see you again, to spend one more day in the hills, one more night stargazing in the Hinterlands, one more lesson, one more riddle. There wasn't enough time. There was never going to be enough time,' she thought sadly, accepting her father as a distant memory. She slowly reached to graze his cheek, cherishing this for what it is, and nothing more.  

To her unwelcome surprise, his kindly gaze faded to bitter disappointment, more and more like his son's. His heavy palm rushed to push hers away, and his skin was neither warm nor cold, yet... human. "Have you forgotten me, Mari?" His voice came, as deep as thunder, but his lips didn't move. "Have you forgotten all that I taught you?"  

'He's not real. This is a reverie, a reflection, a mirror of my vices, things I brought with me,' she thought, keeping her composure. Those were lessons of his. 'It's not him. My father is dead. Malcolm Hawke died a long time ago.'

"Forever and only a moment are one and the same," his voice came again. "What are you doing, Mari? What have you done?"

Thoughts rose loud and erratic inside Mari's mind. Survival. Freedom. Hunger. Coin. Father wasn't there, not to provide, nor to protect or guide. He wasn't there to save his family from the Blight, to keep Bethany safe, to deal with Flemeth, or to get his living son and daughter out of servitude. They nearly starved in Lowtown, eating sawdust bread and half-spoiled produce. It all fell to Mari. Even before the Blight, it all fell to her. She could never leave as Carver once did. Mother needed her, and she still carried the burden of magic, forever on watch for those who might kill or lock her away. It’d all been so difficult... too difficult for one person to handle without buckling. One by one, each firefly disappeared into nothingness, taking with them uncanny glows of green and yellow, and Mari lost sight of Malcolm, or whatever it was in the dark. 

A flash of lightning shot overhead and shook the ground beneath her feet like the wrath of the Maker, and Mari was stumbling through the hold of a seafaring ship, thrown amid rolling waves of a ferocious storm. The old ship growled and the sea hissed as if it were, itself, some giant serpent. Had this been the desperate voyage over the Waking Sea or a twisted vision of it - sailing into a storm that promised to plunge them down for a feast to frenzied sharks or the jaws of a great sea dragon? Saltwater crashed onto the deck and rushed in from the grate overhead, pouring into the hold, flooding around her feet as another wave threw the ship on its side, toppling her over. 

Her hands reached out to catch herself, but all changed again. She knelt now in the reign of winter, when the snow falls deep enough to trap grown harts and winds force the tallest trees to break. Sinking, she pushed and pulled in vain with only howling white pines to bear witness. The more she tried to dig herself out, the harder the snow gripped her legs. 

She’d been four years old when the incident occurred, wandering away from her sleeping mother and infant brother, unlatching that old cabin door. A lifetime ago, she vaguely remembered it, needily seeking Father while he laboured outside to keep them warm and fed. That new baby took precedence in everything, and Mari craved at least one of her parents to herself again. How small her cry for help rose against the wind, no match for the cold breath of a cruel Avvar god of winter who bit her ears and encased every hair in pale white frost. If another snowfall came that eve, they wouldn't have found her until the spring thaw. 

But nobody would find her here in the inscrutable depths of a netherworld, and indeed, it was possible for a mage to never wake if kept in the Fade long enough. Unnaturally heavy snow blew unrelentingly over the hillside, and she fell further into the hole she made until only one hand remained above, reaching through the white as a grotesque winter bloom. Day unnaturally faded to night and the glittering constellation of Silence rose against a black curtain from the east, followed by the Watchful Eye as aurora danced in serpentine streams across the vault of heaven. 'No one will come. Only I can get myself out,' she knew bleakly, yet she remembered what she was. 

Blistering heat from her hands melted snow to water and she gradually fell through where water weakened the embankment until she reached the rocky ground below. Drenched, she summoned what discipline she could recall, parting the wall of snow with a controlled blaze like the passage into Kirkwall's black harbour. Melted snow sprayed wildly and kissed her skin with mist, and she proceeded through the division determined to find a way out, but halfway, some massive force grasped from the shadows.

Clawed fingers as thick as a man's arms. A grasp as hard as rock. Maker, the horns. Bethany. Mari felt as through her spine cracked, was cracking, or was already broken. 'This is how she died. Maker’s breath.' The ogre began to pull Mari toward its gaping grimace, its eyes pitch black and soulless, and her body nothing in its fist... but she couldn't run this time, and terror turned to a last resort of fury. Vengeful with a free hand, she whipped crimson fire into its eyes and the hollow cavity where its nose should've been. It dropped her to the ground roughly with a monstrous howl, but when she raised her head to look up again, it was no longer an ogre, but a withered creature engulfed in black with gnarled feet like the roots of a dead tree.

'If you ever need me to make the monsters go away, call out for me,' Malcolm said nearly twenty years before, and Mari remembered it as if she were still a child. Whatever she'd been taught and learned since her magical awakening would have to amount to something, and enough. She was unharrowed and untested, and this was a test all mages had to pass before their death, if the Circle had their way. Father had done it. Anders had done it. The creature before her did not speak, but screamed, and its chill bit like frostbite. 

~

'I wish I could understand, Mari. That's the price of being normal in our family, I suppose,' Carver mused, the weight of a day's exhaustion tugging at his eyelids and soreness claiming his limbs. Though Carver grew up with three mages under the same roof, he never considered any of them truly in danger from their magic until now. On the edge of his concern, he pondered the possibility of Mari having such power back in Ferelden. What could she have saved? Their home? Their sister? He felt guilty then, for if she could've prevented that cruel fate, she certainly would’ve. 

Carver glanced down at her and discerned Mari was still as a lake on a windless eve, just as their father in death, and terror gripped his heart. Her chest rose only to breathe slowly with unnaturally long pauses between, which made him worry further. "Weapons of steel I understand, but I don't know what to do with this," he whispered. He reached toward her forehead to brush the stray wisps from her face when she began to wince from some phantom pain, and Carver understood something was wrong. 

~

Cold and pain. A terrible sense of despair where hopes went to die. Mari could sense her own death imminent, as if the demon were syphoning the very life from her body. She heard the helpless weepings of other mortals on the demon's scream as well - things it fed on for ages, and it fed off of her as well, growing strong from her memories. 

Carver's way was of steel and physical strength, yet what soldier was ever so feared as a mage? Magic was her weapon - her best and only sword. It was a violent dance of magic, a duel to the death. The demon favoured cold, which ice could not harm. Yet fire did, and Mari tapped her full power into blasting it with a fiery blaze, yet it spun, rose, and struck from a great distance. A mage only has so much mana, even in the Fade, and she could only fight hard for so long before her resolve began to dwindle. 'Be brave. Be brave like Father would,' she tried telling herself, lest she fall. And Carver. Carver who loved fights, Carver who despised running from a chance to test his mettle. Did she possess the same? Was she not part of his blood, after all?

The creature defended itself with all its might, and Mari felt the cold cut into her bones, nearly blackening her fingers with frostbite. Ice crept up her arms and nearly claimed her face, and she swore she heard her own mother's wail - the one that escaped Leandra's lips when Bethany's life was stolen. Had it fed on that as well? Mari's own strength was weakening, expending mana faster than she could replenish. 

Would she flee? Yell for help? Try to wake somehow from this nightmare? Tragic and forlorn memories made the creature near unassailable, and Mari had many. 'I won't run,' she decided, determined, raining fire down on it through pain so great she thought her heart would give out, bringing an end to it before the demon collapsed into nothing, blowing away like so much smoke. Mari collapsed to her knees, panting over what just happened. It was done. 

Hands that were not her own appeared in the dim light that remained, gathering her own and lifting her to her feet, but she felt too weary to protest or guard herself again so suddenly. 

"You've won, Mari," her father's deep voice spoke from his lips. "I knew you would. Stay with me, won't you? We'll find Bethany and wait for your Mother. We'll be together again."

"What about Carver? I can't leave him," she spoke, too weak to think clearly.  

"The brother you hate? You never wished him born. You don't need him," he insisted.

Too late to fight or flee. She was already snared. "Get away," she commanded, trying to pull her hands from its clawed grasp. Dim brown eyes shifted to black slits, like some sort of wretched snake. She began to breathe rapidly and out of control, overheating from within. 

'Carver, please,' she swooned, resisting desperately. 'Father, Maker, hear me.'

Malcolm's voice roared once, not from the demon, but elsewhere unseen. A massive shockwave of blinding light unleashed from a focal point, banishing the demoness and sending Mari back, far and away onto the side of the living, and yet she hadn’t moved an inch. The pressure of hands shaking her shoulders was the first real thing her body felt again, and Carver's voice was the first she heard.

~

"Mari, Maker's breath, Mari," he muttered in an echo as she breathed heavily. The skin from her neck down seemed to be lit from within, and her garments clung heavy with sweat. 

A dozen human men and dwarves watched her from several feet away, spooked at the mage. Even Varric remained unsure of what to do. Her breaths ripped ragged and shallow until Anders laid a hand on her forehead, attempting to calm her with his own benevolent panacea.

Opening worrisome eyes, she looked first to Anders, and then her brother. "Make them go away," she whispered, noticing the strangers behind. "Tell them I had a nightmare. A very bad nightmare," she whispered, though she doubted anyone would believe it. 

"You heard her. Just a bad dream. All humans have 'em," Varric spoke up, attempting to diffuse the spectacle. The common excavators and dusters whispered to each other, but Varric motioned them away. "Our Grey Warden healer will make sure my partner is alright, but they need some space," he spoke again. He hoped it wasn't a lie, taking a look back at Hawke. Concerned eyes betrayed his charming tone.     

The light within Mari's skin slowly dimmed by the second as both Anders and Carver stayed kneeling. This... loss of control... never happened in Lothering, nor when she was very little. And the spirits - Malcolm was always there to stop the worst voices.

"I don't know what's happening to me," she conceded, her voice shaking. Was she possessed, or nearly? Was she an abomination?  

Anders glided his fingers over his roughly stubbled face. He meant to phrase himself in a way that wouldn't frighten her further, but the weight of the situation couldn't be understated. "It's happening too fast for you - the growth. This should've happened over decades, Hawke. The mages that this happens to, the Circle prefers be made Tranquil."

"Well that's not an option," Carver blurted. 

"Agreed," Anders answered, thinking of Karl, but Justice's thoughts veered to the Fade. 'The consequences of contact between mortals and spirits can be unpredictable, and this one has the smell of demons upon her,' the spirit observed. "What do you remember of the Fade?" Anders asked Mari.

She didn't wish to tell them all of it. She felt an overwhelming shame for the loss of control, but she couldn't say this was nothing. "I saw... spirits," she admitted. Anything more might spread to the others and cause a panic. 

"Is that, uh... normal?" Varric asked. The dwarf had no expertise here.

"She's never been normal," Carver complained. The lad looked at Varric boyishly.

"Carver, I have tried," Mari said to that, failing to hide the woundedness in her voice. 

'We're pushing her too hard,' Varric thought, placing the guilt squarely between Bartrand and himself. No longer was the expedition empty-handed, having recovered a fair bit of gold, gems, and dwarven oddities from grottos, graves, old mines, and crawler's nests along the way. What was the point of rushing to a thaig so deep that it might not be accessible anymore? Varric understood investments, coin, and loss, but magic and the Deep Roads continued to defy business predictions in spades.

"How long do you think you'll hold out, Hawke?" Varric inquired plainly as he approached closer. It needed to be asked; He couldn't simply presume. "It's a long way back to the surface. If worse comes to worst - and down here, it might - the safest thing would be to stay at camp wherever we make it."

"How far is the thaig?" Mari asked in return.

"It's hard to say. A day or two. Maybe more," Varric answered honestly. 

Mari heard the truth in that. Something drew closer with every step further into the earth. Many of them felt it, though no one had put it into words except Bartrand in his feverish moods. True or not, Mari couldn't stay at camp. How could she protect Carver that way? Unless she suffered wounds beyond healing, she wouldn’t stay. "I'll hold out, Varric. As long as it takes," she answered, to which Varric forced a smile.

~

After she seemed well enough to stand, Anders and Varric gave her privacy to change into drier clothing. Carver's first instinct was to have it out. He thought to argue or accuse impetuously out of what he felt, but the moment he saw her again, Carver softened and asked in a whisper, "What really happened? Are you alright?"  

Mari no longer glowed from within, but her expression remained utterly haunted. She held back in front of the others, afraid of how they might react and what they could say, but not so much with him. "I thought I saw Father," she finally admitted, wringing her hands and walking past Carver to sit on the ground warmed by nearby channels of lava. 

Carver took a moment to process it, relating to how she still grieved. "I've dreamed of him too." 

"Not like this. For just a little while, it felt like he was really with me again. I wanted him to stay, but he was... not pleased with me or what I've done."

Disappointed with the golden child? Carver thought that unlikely. "Whatever you saw, it wasn't Father. He can never come back. It's just the way it is."

"I know. I've told myself that for years," she said. She'd cried enough tears after his passing and proposed enough rejected bargains to the Maker to know that Father would never return. "How did you wake me?" Mari asked, changing the subject as Carver came to sit a few feet away.

"I heard you. I heard you struggling and I woke you. It took some trying. You even called my name once, I think," he answered. It wasn’t the whole truth, but enough. He wouldn't admit to watching her as she slept.

"Oh," she said, feeling more vulnerable and hugging her knees. She would’ve called for anyone, but for Carver first? Did that mean something? "I never hated you. You know that?" she admitted.

Surprisedly, he answered that with an endearing half-smile. "I didn't always." 

"And I do need you."

He still grinned subtly. "Why tell me this now? Something to do with Father?" he asked, as these admissions seemed to come from nowhere. 

"I can't say," she answered, hesitating to let him in entirely. "It’d only make you wish I were normal ." A cruel edge hung over that last word.

Carver exhaled and looked away exasperated. He hadn't meant it like that. Maker, he was never one to say the right thing. "I want to understand. Please..."

"It might confuse you... make you angry... or frighten you as it frightens me." The malaise of what she encountered beyond the Veil weighed heavily on her body and mind.

"I won't know unless you tell me!" his voice rose to a level above whispering as he turned to look at her again with pleading blue eyes. 

Her brow and lips trembled without a breath. "Demons," she finally admitted in the lightest of whispers, yet the gravity remained all the same.  

Carver ran his fingers through his messy black hair back and forth, holding in any exclamation as calmly as possible. 'Your sister will die,' he remembered Aveline's warning, hating the words. He couldn't let that happen. He’d do anything to prevent it, but what use was he in the Fade against demons? "I thought I'd only have to worry about darkspawn killing you," he said after a tense silence.

"You wanted to know." 

"Yes. I did," he accepted.

"Please don't hate me for it. Would that I could... I would give up this magic in a heartbeat," she whispered without a speck of joy. This burden weighed heavier than it ever did before. Even with Anders as another mage, she felt alone.

Carver shook his head in sweetly stubborn denial and exhaled. "No, you wouldn't... and I wouldn't ask you to." 

Now it was Mari who failed to understand. 

Carver rose only to find a scratchy wool blanket and wrapped it around her, gathering it around her shoulders and head as if she were a devout pilgrim on some holy calling. Her face had already paled from terror and grief, but its loveliness remained faithful.

'He wouldn't rather me without this power? After what I just told him?' she wondered. Her trust of him prevented her protest when he urged her down beside him in his arms, shielding and cradling her. She quietly worried someone would see, but the relief of being in his arms was stronger. She could only hope the space was sufficiently dark, and indeed, they were separated from the rest of the camp by pieces of a pillar that broke long ago. 

Carver's strength was equally soft when he touched her cheek and brushed a fallen wisp of hair back behind her ear. 'Does he pity me?' she wondered. So close in the dark, she discerned his eyes were still open and blinking slow, and his hand found the tender spot on the back of her neck. 'Does he love me?' Her pulse quickened, afraid of what that might mean.  

He touched his nose to hers gently, and both closed their eyes to bask in it. 

Only when Carver pulled back did they see again. Mari's hand found his wrist as he still cradled her neck, softly encircling her fingers around and feeling his pulse. Her gaze remained open and unsure even as Carver's mouth found hers. Breathing stalled as she squeezed his wrist slightly, and thoughts shot worriedly to Father. 'What have you done, Mari?'

What had she done? What was she doing now ? Carver's lips clamped down softly on hers, and she tasted him the same as when he stole their first kiss upon a shared bed in Kirkwall. Her eyes closed to the rest of the world, overtaken by this sweet bliss and she focused only on him, with her, beside her, and above her.

It was over in an instant, though he didn't leave this time, nor did she wish him to. Carver only held her in that blanket until he drifted off himself, but Mari stayed awake contemplating what it meant for both of them, and what the fallout may yet be. 

~{One day later}~

Leaving the true Deep Roads above and behind, the company ventured deeper into the coldest, most desolate pit of the earth. It had been a welcome while since Anders sensed the presence of darkspawn, but the passages still weren’t safe. Wagons and feet kicked up long-settled dust which lingered like fog, plaguing eyes and throats in equal measure. Stalagmites formed twisting, pointed columns along the paths strewn with rocks, animal bones, and fallen chunks of mineral deposits. Along with stalactites, slender blue veins penetrated out of the cave ceiling, eliminating the need for torches in some parts. Justice could hear ethereal singing from above and around, as did Anders, but only Justice thought it lovely enough to weep for, if a spirit had tears.

At the end of the line lay a cave-in with hundreds, if not thousands of broken rocks blocking the way. A heavy slab stood against it, appearing more of a grave marker than a warning. Varric's brow furrowed as he examined it, and his stomach couldn't help but sink. In broken old dwarven, he read, "By order of... our King... no dwarf... will enter. Stone... embrace our brethren... for all within are... lost."

"We've found it," Bartrand knew.  

Chapter Text

All Mari’s human eyes could pick out were flecks of blue floating amidst a black abyss. Torches shone too dimly to light the antechamber owing to its vastness until she sent up an orb of white with her hand which startled the men, yet revealed a stone-upon-stone vaulted ceiling and the shadows of all who stood beneath. Varric's breath escaped barely enough to whisper, "Holy shit," and a hint of a smile peaked on Bartrand's lips, though his brow remained hard. 

Further along, veins of lyrium snaked their way out of the walls and twisted around towering pillars like giant serpents. This was no hall of heroes such as Bartrand remembered in Orzammar, for there stood not one monument to a paragon or monarch. The area lay far beneath existing maps of the old dwarven empire, as Bartrand suspected it would be, but a confirmed location of a thaig missing from the Memories? Unfathomable. It could fetch sovereigns into the thousands, and if the centuries-old scavenger’s tale of temples were true? House Tethras would never want for anything again. 

Beyond great glowing gates locked from the outside, a calming low roar of flowing water waited ahead and mist rose up in a cavernous breeze. A long and narrow bridge spanned over a crevasse and falling white streams gushed from different points along the cave walls, drizzling lightly over the stairwells cut into rock where the expedition passed below. Further down, huge clusters of verdant crystals erupted in incredible growths, culminating at the long-awaited grotto. It lay so far down that neither humans nor dwarves could see the top of the stairway anymore.

Indeed there were temples below and palaces to behold, yet no perceptible paragon stood in glory, nor did a flow of lava warm the thaig. This defiance of millennia of tradition served to vex Bartrand rather than intrigue, meanwhile Varric noted that signs of war or disaster remained eerily absent. No skeletal remains lay outside the burial tombs, no purposeful or accidental destruction left mark upon the ancient structures, and no signs of Blight corruption could be smelled or seen. Was it possible that a darkspawn had never before entered this thaig? Perhaps the thaig predated even the darkspawn, but if that were so, what drove the dwarven King to seal this place and silence it from memory?

A frigid river pulsed through the grotto over which arched a stone bridge. On every far wall, temples were sculpted out of the stone almost as high as Varric could see, beautifully bordered by that vivid shade of blue. Tall and narrow windows revealed little more than black, but for a moment, Varric thought he glimpsed a flicker within one. The entire place made him twitchy. That intuition was given credence when on the first night spent within the grotto, a hireling spotted a dwarf of nothingness and fog walking over that bridge, though it remained oblivious to the living. Anders recounted his encounter with similar entities in Kal’Hirol, as did the scouts in the thaigs beyond Orzammar, but these shades seemingly posed no threat. They were not Fade spirits or demons, Anders assured, though it did little to calm the hirelings who fretted about what they saw or heard in the dark. 

~

At the center of an echoing chamber in the first temple stood a beacon planted in stone, bright as the moon at its fullest, pouring forth auras of marine and glimmering white. The dome above sparkled with sapphires, blue as the sea, and the beacon its shimmering pearl. On closer inspection, the beacon revealed itself as a weapon of sorts - an odd mingling of ornate maul and spear. It gleamed silver like moonlight - silverite, but more lyrium than metal. Bartrand’s eyes widened with lust, for a treasure of such timeless rarity could beggar every kalna in the Free Marches as they battled for ownership. Odd then, that this weapon was placed in the ground so openly, as if the dwarves who collapsed the passage were blind to it, or afraid of it. On the edge of its head, Varric glimpsed an engraving, perfectly clear as if freshly forged. 

Varric sounded out the runes. “Val-da-sine.” 

A sleek grating of sharp steel against stone rang as Bartrand blithely lifted it from its root, none worse for wear despite untold centuries resting. As he held the weapon in his hands, its chill shot straight to his heart, and images of its luminous beauty displayed in splendor at his estate flooded his mind. He envisioned no kalnas, no Varric, no Merchants' Guild, and no forgotten betrothed; Only his own incredible wealth and influence. Perhaps such a prize should stay with him in perpetuity if it pleased him so. 

Bartrand’s shoulder roughly brushed Varric’s as he pushed past - a fact Varric didn’t fail to notice. 

~

The brontos, wagons, and those who manned them were forced to stay behind at the entrance for practicality's sake. This presented complications with transporting recovered treasure back. More than once did a hireling accidentally drop a sack of precious jewels, baubles, and small relics halfway or higher up the stairway, as if pieces of the thaig itself objected to leaving their desolate abode.

Disembodied voices echoed hauntingly through the many estates and palaces in the dwarven tongue. Often, the living would pick up sounds of goblets clinking, hit steel singing on a forge, and doors opening or closing. Carver did his best to ignore this and reassure Mari, unnerved by day and restless at night, too hesitant to let her mental guard down and rest. She certainly felt the foreboding power in this silent city and the blurred boundaries between realms, but she said little, even to Anders. He still sensed the immense mana surrounding her, some latent power awakening and not yet fully realized. 

On the seventh day within the grotto, a drudging lack of sleep caught up with her. Under Carver’s watchful vigil, she gave into fatigue for a time and dreamed of the thaig… and Anders. His eyes were no longer kind, but burned with pale flame as he burned from within, making no sound. He only turned his fiery gaze from her to a towering stone door which opened to red upon red. She couldn’t know what that meant. 

~{The Forsaken Temple}~

The greatest structure took another two days to breach, locked and barricaded from the inside. Upon entering, lantern light shone dimly upon masterpiece murals that covered the high ceiling and curved walls as if depicting some sacred legend, but these remained incomprehensible to those who beheld it. Silverite reflected like watery mirrors trapped within tiles and etched pillars against the swaying light. Though the ground was strewn about with pieces of stone benches, the place still felt strangely hallowed, but this was no Chantry. Older gods than were ever worshiped topside were perhaps beseeched and honored here… but dwarves never worshiped gods - only the Stone. 

A vivid shade of red aglow from the far side of the temple arrested Mari’s cautious gait when she spotted it. Anders stopped as well, recalling a vision as he slept, but nothing about it felt fortuitous. A waning vibration quaked the air and floor, ebbing two and fro as the group continued their approach. The path to the altar was littered with broken pieces of pillar, pottery, mosaic shards, and statuary, and the altar itself was strangled with scarlet veins, luminous and crystalline. Atop it lay some sort of relic which hummed and rang on its own, reminiscent of struck steel. Little orbs of light swirled in and out of the strange metal, flickering as if scarlet lightning were trapped inside. As he inched closer, Varric discerned a face in agony, its eyes and mouth agape, but no bigger than a doll. There was something else, a boney body held in an embrace, but he could see nothing more without examining it closer. It sang lower than lyrium, Justice heard, but the color and sinister depiction were all wrong. 

A thud of something blunt and solid against unarmored flesh bade them turn back, quickly followed by the impact of said flesh hitting a wall. Pieces of broken stone and statuary floated around orbits of red aglow at its center as hirelings retreated in panic. It swung wildly, smashing against pillars and another unfortunate soul caught in its wake. Turning its attack to those near the altar, it brought down heavy sections of ceiling with a violent slam. Carver dove left, forcing Mari along with him, while Anders and Varric leapt right to evade the crush.

It hurt to land hands-first on stairs, and she barely had enough time to push herself up before Carver again shoved her out of harm's way. This… creature … was akin to nothing imagined on the surface. It approached slowly but insistently, assaulting pillars like an unrelenting storm and swinging a stone arm at Varric as he shot several bolts at it in rapid succession. 

Anders slammed it with several spirit blasts, which had enough effect on the colossus to force a moment of pause. Mari held Carver’s arm tightly behind their pillar, for no simple steel sword could possibly defeat a monstrous stone beast, but she suspected he would try. The broken altar dimmed the temple to black, and the only visible light came from inside the creature and from Anders’s spells which sent forth flares like a night storm, flashing against the mosaics as if the forgotten legends came alive.  

Just as the colossus brought down another section of ceiling, a blinding force struck it from behind and rung like great bells of silver, nearly shattering the pillars with its power. It rang forth again several more times, assaulting both the temple and the colossus. In a moment out of cover, Varric glimpsed Bartrand with that shining lyrium weapon, its metal brighter than daybreak as he swung. Varric dove to the ground as its force rang forth, or it might’ve hit him as well. 

When the creature finally crumbled, its light faded to black, but Valdasine still beamed in the dark. “So... that’s what this does,” Bartrand observed the maul. “What did you find?” he asked Varric, bypassing the fallen bodies of two hirelings. 

“Andraste’s ass, Bartrand!” Varric exclaimed, rushing over. The man below clung to life, but couldn’t move. “Blondie! See what you can do for this one,” he implored before checking the other. The second man failed to draw breath, nor did his heart beat any longer when Varric checked. They hadn’t lost anyone on the expedition until now. “Poor man. He never stood a chance," he stated mournfully, resting a hand on the dead hireling's shoulder, upset and shaken. "What in blazes was that? A rock wraith?” 

“That’s what it looked like,” Bartrand gave a cocksure answer. 

“Bloody ancestors!” Varric exhaled, incredulous. Deepstalkers, darkspawn, and crawlers - those were the real monsters of lofty tales his mother told when he was a child. Rock wraiths were purely make-believe… but perhaps there was a bit of truth mixed in, after all. 

The altar at the end of the hall had been obliterated to pieces by a fallen chunk of muraled vaulting. Crimson crystals hummed and flickered where they fell, shattered and broken. Mari presumed the odd relic had been crushed as well, until Carver pointed to it a dozen feet behind where the altar was.

“Look!” he commanded, pointing to it.

Varric rushed up while Mari stood back apprehensively. “It survived?” she asked. It shone deeply red in Varric’s gaze, no worse for wear after the rock wraith’s assault.

“ What did?” Bartrand asked, intrigued as he approached. 

“Some kind of weird… idol,” Varric answered, still paused by its ghastly appearance.

“You don’t say,” Bartrand said once he caught a look at it. 

‘Quick. Take it before he does,’ Varric thought, which surprised even himself. ‘He already took the big hammer. Hurry up and take it!’ his own voice within insisted. 

“Careful, Varric. We don’t know what it’s capable of,” Mari warned as he reached a gloved hand toward it. The red. She dreamed of red. 

Bartrand scoffed. “If these humans were in charge, we’d come back with nothing!” 

Carver glared at the older dwarf with animosity, wishing to strike him in his big bearded mouth. Bartrand paid no notice as he approached intently, no doubt to take the relic for himself, but Varric looked once more to Hawke before swallowing his own hesitation. With one of his gloved hands, he picked up the idol, morbidly heavier than it appeared. 

~{That evening}~

Without timber for an Andrastian pyre, a small stone cairn was built around the body of the one fallen hireling. Bartrand only noticed the death long enough to dismiss it when Varric mentioned he would send the man’s wages and a consolation sum to the family - another bit of callousness from his brother Varric didn’t miss... but he rationalized they were all stressed to a degree. Was that enough for Bartrand to act this way, or to swing an incredible weapon in Varric's direction? 'I'm alright. I wasn't hurt. He didn't see me in time,' Varric thought, but it began to ring false.

The injured man aided by Anders lay concussed on a pallet, but he would recover. Anders had done only what the man’s body would allow, aided by magic, as the internal wounds had been so grave. Some remaining hirelings groused within sight, not in their usual Marcher drawl, but in fearful whispers. They were afraid of Anders - he could see that in how they utterly avoided him and Mari... and now, Bartrand. The only ones who would talk to Bartrand were the scouts and Varric, but even that was drawing to a close for the younger brother.

That night, once Varric slumbered atop a stone bed in one of the rooms of what was once a home, Bartrand sought a closer look at what his little brother swindled. Varric didn’t even lock the treasure chest, rendering it all too easy to find the statue within. 

Not a statue - an idol . It made no sense for the dwarves to create such a thing. The figures upon it were not even dwarven, for the skeletal bodies were much too narrow. Bartrand held it to better examine it in his own hands, and its weight alone was enough to make it a bludgeon. There was a central character with the visage of death; He, or perhaps she, wore a pointed crown and held another skeletal being in a deathly embrace. A third similar figure emerged from behind, missing one arm and the other locked upon the crowned creature. A serpent arched over a circle behind the three, its tail sinisterly twisted and coiled. More than a dozen glowing crimson veins dangled out the bottom, and as Bartrand lost himself gazing upon the idol’s monstrous beauty, he began to hear its song for the first time. 

He stole away again the next night to look upon it and listen, and once more the final night before the whole plan went to shit.

Chapter Text

~{Varric}~

Rations dwindled by the hour while no further orders came from Bartrand, holed up as a hermit in his palace of deafening silence. Frantic whispers grew to crazed laments at the hirelings’ dying fire, around which men shivered beneath unravelling blankets for semblances of warmth. Some gazed listless in a trance from trembling and the deepening weakness of hunger, but others paced fruitlessly out of what kept them going: fear. 

 “First the spiders, then the darkspawn... and that mage,” a man uttered in a thick Marcher drawl. “Then the ghosts, and the demon what killed poor Arry and nearly killed Griff…” 

“Curses upon curses down here. The Maker’s not in this place. Can you feel it? I’ve a chill in my bones no fire can warm,” spoke another Marcher, huddled with his head between his knees.

“A bit of meat from those lizards might keep me warm… but I ain’t never tried lizard before,” one man muttered, peckishly contemplating the scaly dracolisks where they were tethered. 

“I say we take a bit of treasure and leave the way we came.”

“Right. There’s more of us than them,” one agreed. 

“You’ll never make it,” Varric announced, eavesdropping from the shadows, which was not his usual place. “It’s one week back through the dark… with a thousand ways to get lost, or killed. How will you defend yourselves? How will you know the path we took? It’s only thanks to your expedition leaders that you’ve survived this far,” he explained, approaching them in a rare instance where he did not feel the urge to exaggerate or obscure the truth. He tightened his gloves.  

“You… Varric… you feel it, too, don’t you?” asked one of the huddled men, raising his head to see the dwarf. 

Varric placed no stock in ancient curses or the Maker. He was a dwarf of reason, but the expedition didn’t need the Fade or creatures of legend to bring its fall, for he glimpsed a more common danger filling the pools of the man’s sooty eyes. Starvation. Lunacy. It gave him pause.

“Your expedition leaders will get you all back to Kirkwall soon , but we need your help to do it. I’ll speak with my brother about how much longer we can expect to stay here,” he assured. Varric couldn’t elaborate on how much longer that would be without lying, and he didn’t wish to lie to them. He sensed their paranoia and desperate words weren’t entirely wrong. He felt the dread of this place before anyone, but that brought no comfort. 

~

Inside a decrepit unlit hall quieter than The Rose at high noon, Varric calmly brought the warning to his increasingly irritable and reclusive brother. Bartrand sat at the head of the table, as he always did before, but there was no banquet or company in this hall. “Bartrand, you’re tempting a mutiny out there,” Varric warned, popping a single almond into his mouth before saving the rest in a small pouch.

The incessant ache between Bartrand’s ears had been growing for some time… and a noise… ringing . “What do I care about a few humans?” Bartrand asked after an eternity, his voice riddled with apathy, for the hirelings outside seemed as insignificant as ants.

“We hired them, brother,” Varric pushed back amiably. “We need them,” he insisted. “Not to mention, they’re people ,” the ever-civilized part of Varric held true. 

“Always the good one,” Bartrand lowly derided.

Varric gestured emptily at the jibe before a question formed on his lips. “What’s going on? What’s the next step of the plan, Bartrand? You can shut everyone else out on this, but not me.” 

“Plan…” Bartrand muttered, but it did not seem to be a question. Visions swirled in his mind, but Varric wouldn’t understand. Perhaps that was impossible. “Walk with me, brother,” he commanded, unsheathing his eyes of ice. “There’s something I want to show you.”

The air seemed heavier in the passage to the inner chambers as Bartrand led on. What secrets waited there? A shaper’s tome? Some record or hint of what fate befell the dwarves? As the sound of their boots echoed down a dusty corridor, Varric anticipated the possibilities ahead, but truly he didn’t care, as long as Bartrand spoke sense. 

With callused thick fingers, Bartrand drew open a pair of clunking stone doors, unveiling a sprawling chamber bordered by yet more puzzling murals. It felt disorienting for Varric to descend stairs of onyx as if he might fall into imperceptible depths below. Ahead, a bloody hue emanated from a table of sorts, or a shrine, glowing and crackling before Varric realized what lay atop. 

“You took it,” Varric stated, almost struggling to believe his eyes as he stopped in his tracks.

Bartrand drew closer to the red. “You didn’t even notice. You used to notice everything, Varric.”

The twisted crimson artifact hummed ominously. Varric didn’t want it, not truly - yet he felt a sinister twitch whilst gazing at it again. He’d never felt anything so malevolent. “So, what… you want the statue, too, Bartrand?” Varric asked in an observant, acquiescing tone. “Fine. It doesn’t matter. We both get a third of the profits when we're back in Kirkwall."

Bartrand turned his gaze to the idol in all its abhorrent splendor. The ache within grew, half as agonizing as the warped, deathly figures shaped upon it. The idol’s fiery veins dangled like long bloody worms, warmer than a lover. What amount of coin it was worth, what this entire thaig was worth… To share it with lesser dwarves or humans surely meant Bartrand was less. As he lay one hand on the idol, it rang softly as if acknowledging him. It knew him; He felt sure of that. 

“That was what we agreed to, remember?" Varric reminded him, endeavoring to persuade. "Let’s just go home, brother,” he said, approaching. 

The younger brother never truly grew up from the vexatious little surfacer who raised himself after Mother drank herself to death, Bartrand thought. Weak. Soft. That made it easy. So easy. He grasped the crowned figure tightly and swung. 

“I’m changing the agreement,” Bartrand announced as the impact sent Varric crashing to the floor with a harsh thud, followed by the crackling and high ringing of the idol in Bartrand’s hand as it flared red as blood on fire.

~

Swelling flesh and bone atop the edge of Varric’s brow throbbed and twinged with pain when he began to wake, remaining uncertain of what just occurred. “Bartrand, something hit me...” he slurred, stunned.

The interior of the chamber was utterly black, devoid of light and silent except for Varric’s own pain and confusion. As far as Varric could tell, he was alone. A wetness of what he figured was his own blood dripped down his cheek, and he felt around on the ground for something - anything that might help to orient himself. He felt the angular shrine in front of him, but no idol lay upon it. 

‘Bartrand ,’ he finally understood. He turned with hands carefully reaching out and gradually found his way back to the doorway. His gloved fingers made contact with a hard, flat facade which he presumed was only a wall until he felt the shaped frame along the edges and the handles where the doors met. Closed. They would only budge slightly when he pushed and shoved them, having been barred or locked shut. ‘You backstabbing son of a...’ Varric stopped himself from finishing, thinking of their shared mother, but his whole body began to pulse with some sort of rage he’d never felt before. ‘ Brother , how could you?’

Betrayal stuck in his throat sharper than any dagger, but he screamed.

~{Mari and Carver}~

The constant rush of the white stream below filled the unexplored gorge with its endless song of whirling water, fed by the same river that fed the thaig. They came by a hidden back passage, treading down steep, damp stairs with no railing but the rock, while traversable ledges grew ever more narrow, causing Mari to tremble with anxiety and nearly lose her footing more than once. The scouts hadn’t helped; It was Carver who pulled her back each time, refusing to let death steal her away.

Beyond the thaig, they found little more than a broken bridge that once arched over the river and a collapsed tunnel, but nowhere held any sign of mushrooms, nugs, or artifacts to return with. Chloris seemed especially tense and unsociable on this venture, focused on a mission, but Mari couldn’t fault her for it. Only Blaz bothered to talk to the humans much - mainly Carver. He spoke enough to reveal he was part of the Warrior caste back in Orzammar - a soldier like Carver was - before some political incident exiled him to the surface. The dwarf also bemoaned an exemplary older brother who supposedly did no wrong, and the parallel wasn’t lost on Carver as he turned his gaze ahead. At least he wasn’t blaming his older sibling for his situation well into his thirties like Blaz, for it seemed terribly pathetic on the listening end. 

Weariness stained the soft skin like bruises beneath Mari’s eyes and hunger gnawed in her stomach unceasing. The expedition had to return to the surface soon, she and Carver both knew. Varric would get through to Bartrand - he only needed a bit more time, but patience was running thin. 

Caution abandoned the casteless Chloris suddenly as she dropped her torch to the ground and trotted ahead in a reckless hurry, deceptively quick despite the dangerous terrain.

“Chloris, wait!” Mari called, losing sight of the hooded scout.

Did she spot something? An animal? How could anyone be so sure-footed in the dark? Mari picked up the torch, shining weakly as mist from the river below sent up bouquets of cloudy haze. She watched where her feet trod, but still strode faster than she preferred. No living being stood on the path ahead, as jagged, uneven, and perilous as it lay. Blaz oddly didn’t hurry forth for his comrade, trailing a dozen steps behind with Carver impatiently after him, but there was no room to push past the burly dwarf without one or both falling off. 

At a spot on the ledge where the path expanded, Mari stalled and carefully peered over one boot into the abyss. “Did she fall?” she asked nervously to no response, almost ill from the height. Clouds of milky white shrouded much of the river and the brownish black of the serrated gorge. Pieces of rock jutted out further down like great black teeth amidst the breath of churning rapids. Could the scout have truly slipped without a scream? 

A lancelike shove pierced Mari from behind, protruding from below her ribs. The impact forced the air from her lungs in a sudden exhale and the torch dropped from her hand, lighting the way down like a shooting star. Something sharp had gone straight through, and balance abandoned her. Mari turned just enough to see the shape of a bow melting out of the shadows of a nook in the wall before another metal shaft penetrated beneath her collarbone, forcing her off, and she fell, unbelieving. 

Blood within Carver’s body froze like ice in what seemed a hellishly unbearable eternity devoid of reason. Aveline’s spiteful warnings echoed - ‘Your sister will die,’ - which he swore to never let happen, just as he watched the mist and darkness swallow his sister whole. Watching and being powerless to stop it... that pain was worse than any wound.

“Nothing personal, kid,” Blaz spoke, brandishing a dagger, leaving Carver neither enough time nor space to draw his sword. 

Carver struck quickly and hatefully with an elbow shielded by steel, mashing Blaz’s nose and teeth and slamming the dwarf headfirst into the wall and then off .

Had his heart ceased to beat? Everything seemed so slow and heavy. He couldn’t live long like this, he knew, but neither could he let them live. He drew the sword from his back as he caught the silhouette of the hooded scout ahead.

Chloris stalled for a moment, perhaps from the realization that Blaz was gone, but nocked another arrow and drew, this time pointed at Carver as he charged. Any fear of it killing him left him. He didn’t care, as long as he killed her too. 

“Come, boy. Let’s dance,” she whispered in the dark… and loosed.

Remarkably, the arrow pinged off a raised gauntlet. She drew another, which glanced off his pauldron, but she was out of time. The sword cleaved through the bow's wood like kindling and clanged against the cave wall. He swung at her, but she could see better than him in this dark. She rolled backward, dodging the long blade and unsheathing her own hidden knife. Another clever dodge placed her low at his side where she planted it deep into the back of his leg. 

The pain stung worse when she pulled it out and tried to plant it again, but he grasped her wrist. His leg began to fail him and he fell to a bleeding knee, losing grip of the sword in his off-hand. Chloris reached for another dagger, but he caught that wrist too. He wanted to hurt her - there was no other reason to go on, so he spitefully threw his own weight sideways and drew her down into the depths with him. 

She made a shrill shriek the moment she fell. Carver tried to make his peace in the blind plummet into the abyss and heard the violent smash of Chloris's body against rock, but to Carver’s surprise, the hissing water enveloped him instead. As the river pulled him under, it kissed as cold as winter in the Wilds. 

Its current swept him along a sightless channel, thrashing against unseen boulders and rugged walls. The natural instinct to resist drowning flickered as a dying flame as he caught the odd coughing breath, but there was no point. He would be brave in death. It would come soon, after which he would leave this body to be reunited with Bethany and Father in some distant paradise… and Mari. ‘I’m sorry,’ he lamented, knowing he failed to protect once again. 

Water dropped away from him and Carver descended through the air rapidly as the stream below caught him, forcing his body down and up again to the churning surface. Stiffness from the burning cold sunk further into his flesh, making movements and breaths unbearably heavy and arduous. He stopped fighting, letting the current take him, drifting to his fate. His eyes resisted oncoming torpor, glimpsing his own breath rise in dim light overhead, and the river had calmed somewhat, but there was no purpose. No point in seeing again. He was ready to let go.

He let his entire body go limp, perhaps for the last time. The whir of the stream underwater filled his ears as his pulse slowed to a crawl.

‘Carver,’ a familiar man’s voice spoke in his mind. It didn’t startle him, but summoned like an oncoming dream to take him away. As he floated, Carver didn’t even breathe until he felt the sense that something was stopping him in the current. Blue eyes woke once more only to find a black-bearded face and dark irises staring down at him like when he was a child. ‘Son, look to the light. I bid you stand, and live .’  

White light rose from the corner of Carver’s peripheral vision, and a primal shock spurned him to life again as he turned his head to see. He spun away from whatever shade held him and found a shaking purchase with his boots on the rocky riverbed below. Single-mindedly, shuddering and stumbling with paled skin and blue lips, he pushed and paddled through the water to the illumination ahead: Clinging to the edge of a shallow inlet, and to life itself, was his sister.

~{Anders}~

When Bartrand finally exited the palace and Varric failed to appear alongside him, Anders suspected something had gone awry. He hadn’t been invited by the scouts to explore the cavern with Hawke, nor did Varric request his presence in the palace, so he waited patiently for either to return. Unwelcome despite his aid to the hireling, Anders chose to stay well back from the others, overhearing enough of their discussions in murmurs. 

“Where are my scouts?” He overheard Bartrand ask the men who waited near the palace steps.

“They haven’t returned, Messere,” a Marcher answered. 

“What about the other humans?” Bartrand asked. 

“Haven’t seen hide nor hair of them,” the same Marcher answered as Bartrand strode by with Valdasine aglow on his back.

The elder Tethras impatiently untied both dracolisks from their makeshift stalls - one to serve as a mount and the second, a packhorse of sorts. The horned mount hissed obstinately as Bartrand secured a heavy leather sack to its saddle and climbed astride, but it didn’t reject him. “The rest of you just got promoted. We move out. Now ,” he commanded. 

That made no sense to Anders. Where was Varric? Had they fought? What about Hawke and the scouts? He remained silent and left the shadowy alcove where he sat, shifting away from Bartrand’s possible line of sight. 

“What about Varric, Messere?” another of the men asked.

Bartrand menacingly pulled out Valdasine with one thick hand, its beacon brightly aglow. “Never ask me about my brother. That ain’t your job,” he commanded. 

The men didn’t object or outwardly question, but instead shuffled to gather remaining supplies and packs of treasure before hurriedly departing. From the shadows, Anders watched Bartrand lead them to the stairway with Valdasine glimmering brighter overhead than any of the crystal formations growing nearby. The human part of him - the old Anders wished to call out and strike some sort of deal for safe passage to the surface, pitying those left behind, but prioritizing his own survival… yet Justice felt more concern for those clearly abandoned by Bartrand. The renegade mage waited a while longer before he felt sure Bartrand or the hirelings were far enough to not see him sprint toward the palace. 

Too dark to see inside, Anders formed an orb of light at the tip of his staff, holding it up and ahead, illuminating regally carved walls, stone tables, and empty hearths. “Varric?” he called. “Varric!” he tried again louder, nervous at the lack of response. 

A clunking sound of stone shook somewhere within the interior. “Blondie?!” a voice cried with relief.

He followed Varric’s voice deeper into the depths of the palace before coming to a set of heavy doors with a metal beam shoved through the handles. 

“What happened, Varric?” Anders asked, setting down his own staff to haul the beam free with both hands. He strained with effort, not exceptionally strong, for his foremost strength resided in his magic, not his muscles. 

“What it bloody looks like. Don’t put the light out, Blondie,” Varric urged. 

“Bartrand’s leaving. Hawke… hasn’t come back, and…” Anders grunted as he heaved with all his might.

The beam fell with a blunt ring when it crashed against the floor, narrowly missing Anders’s feet. Varric couldn’t have hoisted the doors open quicker.  

“Is he close enough to shoot?” Varric asked with aggression untypical of himself. Bianca still hung faithfully by his side. 

“I don’t know,” Anders answered sweating, picking up his staff. 

“I’ll shoot him. I don’t care how long I have to run,” Varric said, rushing past the mage. 

“Varric, you’re bleeding,” Anders pointed out, having noticed the gory mess dripping down the dwarf's cheek. 

Varric cared not. He raced out into the thaig as fast as his legs would take him, toward the high entrance that reached further than the roof of the cave. The pale beacon was still clearly visible, shimmering blue and white like the sun through stained glass. Madly, Varric took aim and clenched Bianca’s trigger. 

The bolt ricocheted off the cave wall a few feet from where Bartrand rode. The men clamored as another bolt pinged overhead. “Onward!” Bartrand commanded harshly. The top of the passage could be seen through the constant drizzle from the upper waterways, but Bartrand wouldn’t make haste. He dismounted the hissing beast and handed the reins to one of the hirelings, directing them forth. 

Unsheathing Valdasine from his back, Bartrand proceeded down the stairway, all arrogance, unconcerned for the bolts that bounced off the steps below his feet. At a point where the stairway cut away from the wall, he swung Valdasine as a sledgehammer. Down. The silver maul’s momentous impact cracked the stone in shapes like lightning strikes with a deafening clash, but the rock still held. He would make this whole thaig a tomb. Another terrifying crash rendered the cracks fragile and unstable, sending smaller broken pieces plummeting. A final impact shattered a substantial section of stairwell, so violent it unexpectedly stole a stair below Bartrand’s feet, causing him to scramble and grasp for any grip behind him, dropping Valdasine to save his own life.

“Fall, you bastard,” Varric vengefully urged fate. 

“Watch out!” Anders warned, moving back to evade falling debris. 

The broken stairwell and the maul both hurtled to the ground in a spectacular crash, smashing atop crystals, boulders, and the stone floor below, but Bartrand did not join them. He stood, spitting once into the void, vexed that he lost the maul, but quite certain that he sealed his brother’s doom. There was no going back.

Chapter Text

~{Mari and Carver}~

Feverish sequences of two decades' worth of recollections flashed across Mari's mind. Innocence amidst swaying grassy fields and laughter... Father's lessons… Mother singing her to sleep… Seeing her parents kiss and wondering what that was for. Bethany’s sweet voice of sunlight… Carver and the tempest he carried within. Gold summers and white winters. The Imperial highway lay eternally onward with Father always a step ahead, and endless forests entombing ancient ruins waited behind them both. Father leaving forever… The bloody tide of the Blight harkening an end to all she found familiar… The city of chains rising out of the cliffs bringing naught but strife… and, of all things she recalled, an oddly woven string of words that had been Flemeth’s double-edged counsel atop Sundermount.

It is only when you fall that you learn whether you can fly.

‘What a cruel joke,’ Mari despaired, falling unto abyssal demise, helpless to change its finite course. ‘I cannot fly. Mother, Father- ’  

The river consumed her in its utterly frigid and unsparing embrace. Her mind had practically escaped her wounds until the current dragged her across rocky walls, viciously scraping pieces of clothes off her flesh while twisting and ripping at the embedded arrow shafts. As the cold rushed over and through her core, she choked and coughed and choked again while stabbing pains seized her. Screaming would make it worse, if she could scream, which she tried as the swell drew her beneath churning rapids, but nothing escaped. 

Maker. Andraste. She couldn't breathe. She grasped frantically for the surface despite inexorable pain from her wounds and the burn of cold, but the water grew loud as thunder. ‘I can’t reach anything… I can’t see…’ The river thrashed her about again like the jaws of a giant beast, breaking off the head of the arrow which pierced her chest. 

The suffocating sensation overtook her body, driving thoughts to indecipherable madness. The current lifted her head above water for only a moment, but not long enough for new breath. Make it end. Thoughts shot to Mother alone in Kirkwall, ravaged by grief, and Carver… somewhere back and above, perhaps befalling the same murder. Carver. Frigid bitter air blew against her skin as the water fell away. 

The last submersion sent out another devastating wave of pain from her wounds, but the burn of cold had gradually numbed her flesh. Perhaps she should just stop kicking and fighting against the current. That would make it quicker, but a spark remained within. Her head came up enough to cough and draw half a breath into soaked lungs, but the remnants of her strength failed.

She sunk under again, limbs slower and feeble in movement. Both arms were trying to propel her up through the water when she opened her eyes to dim light and saw through blurred perception, the shape of a hand near her, reaching down through the surface. Beyond desperation, she grasped it with one of her own.

It gripped her, pulling her up and across the current as she coughed, bled, and struggled to hold on. Her knees soon met hard rocks beneath the surface and her wrists found a ledge as whatever phantom held her let go. She had no will look around, painfully hacking up water each second. Coughs cut short each breath, penetrating like another stab through her core and causing her to weep in agony. 

One hand shakily grasped the ledge, and with benumbed fingertips of the other, she felt the pointed arrowhead poking out beneath her ribs. High on her breast, she glimpsed the fletching of another that narrowly missed her heart. The wounds were grave indeed. Fingertips came away darkly bloody where she touched. She assumed the glow that made her surroundings visible had only been from nearby lyrium, but she realized… some now emanated from herself. Still partly below water, she tried to climb out, but her legs buckled worse than a newborn calf and her arms clung too weakly. She would die here instead, it seemed. 

“Mari…” a voice came from behind. She would know his voice anywhere, no matter how hoarse. A semblance of relief crossed her paled face, and she would've said his name too, but even trembling breaths hurt. 

Light revealed that Carver was not in much better shape when he approached unsteadily at her side, himself injured. He glimpsed the blood streaming down her chest and the hand where she clutched at her abdomen. He glared at those wounds and arrow shafts spitefully as a hated enemy, but softened when his eyes met hers again. "It's bad," she whispered. "I can't..."

He hushed her, carefully examining the shafts protruding from her back, both broken. Removing them might kill someone faster, but she was no normal human. Still, her lips had gone blue and her skin pallid, and she could scarcely hold his gaze. She was too faint already. 

He snapped the first shaft off cleaner at her shoulder and spoke insistently yet softly into her ear. “When I pull, use whatever magic that Warden taught you.”

"I... don't... know... if... I... can," she whispered in a shaking, pained murmur. 

"I'm asking you," he insisted. She winced, dreading it as his hand approached the fletching, and closed her eyes tightly.

Swiftly, he pulled the shaft out, trusting her to do the rest which he could not. Mari’s hand ignited ablaze with lightning-bright aura as she cried out. A swirl of ethereal blue and white energy encircled wildly as it mended flesh and bone, and Carver felt it, too, unexpectedly amazed.

He tossed the fletching away, blood covering his fingers. Only one more to go, but did she have enough strength left? She panted, her palm going straight to the arrowhead below that still tortured. “We’re almost there,” Carver urged. 

She shook her head tearfully, almost delirious as the light within faded to faint luminescence. Mages could expend their own life force if pushed past their limits, it was true, and Mari felt either at her limit, or beyond it. “I may still die in this water, Carver. Save yourself if I slip away. Please,” she whispered, trying not to move. 

No. He snapped the back of the second arrow off cleaner as she clung defensively to its exit wound. He gently nudged his head against hers as he reached to where her hand guarded. Her fingers slowly made way for his, around the steel arrowhead protruding. “I can't hang on,” she muttered in dizzying distress. 

“You can,” he believed. “You must.”

More tears streamed out as she nodded against him, and he pulled.  

~

Impenetrable blackness claimed her mind for a precarious long while, during which Carver pulled her onto the shore and waited for her to stir or wake. At first, she lay only still and damp as if death had finally taken her. Carver embraced her in the cold without anything to burn, so heat from his own body would need to suffice. Hours crawled by until a shivery sleep took Carver as well, but he woke again when he realized Mari was reaching deliriously up toward the cave ceiling, scarcely illuminated by crystals and lyrium further away.

“Do you see that?” she asked, her hand pointing weakly, catching sight of an ethereal blue orb hovering up above like a wisp.

“See what?” he asked in confusion.

“Father. There,” she insisted.

Carver remembered who he thought he saw in the river… but that couldn't have been real. He looked upward, but saw not what she did. “Mari, there’s nothing. You’re only dreaming.” He stroked her hair.

“No, Carver. He’s there. He still sees and hears,” she whispered faintly as strength for her arm gave out, collapsing below her breast.

“How would he do that? Why hasn’t he gone to the Maker?” Carver argued, partly hiding bitter contention.

“I… I don’t know…” Worries that her father was doomed to wander without rest swarmed her, but there was nothing she could do. She glimpsed the misty blue orb once again as it slowly travelled away.

‘I loved my wife and children too much to move on,’ she heard Malcolm’s deep voice faintly.  

“I hate that you left me,” Mari uttered sadly, seemingly to no one. 

Carver gently ran bare fingers over her chin as she slipped from consciousness again. 'I didn't leave you,' he thought, thinking she meant that for him. He placed a kiss on her temple once and considered: If Father was watching, or had been watching, did he know about them? Could he see into Carver’s heart, or Mari’s? Nothing here was more than a strong familial bond - an unspoken pact of survivors. He would've done this for Bethany without hesitation. And still, he felt a conflicted sense of dishonesty about himself and Mari hidden somewhere within. 

~{Anders and Varric}~

Valdasine landed loudly with a deep and eerie chime of lyrium and steel, but the maul remained unscathed despite its crashing descent. “Maybe you’ll make better use of it, Blondie,” Varric said while handing it to Anders, standing beside sections of fallen stairway. 

“Great, because the templars would never spot me with this,” Anders answered dryly, finding the artifact too unwieldy and noticeable compared to his own modest staff. Nevertheless, Anders was surprised by its low weight and tied it across his back. 

Bartrand left much abandoned in the camp; The bedrolls where the Hawkes slept lay empty with their larger packs, which Varric relieved of the Warden maps and anything that might help in an ascent to the surface. The room where Varric slept remained undisturbed as well, except for the idol, but Varric didn't care about that. His own pack remained, which held a bit of dried food, flint for fire, his journal, pencils, a map of the Free Marches, and extra bolts for Bianca. He felt certain he would need those most of all.

Within the largest temple, something had changed since they saw it last. Glowing red nodes as thick as men’s arms stretched partway down the altar stairs, around and over fallen pieces of mural and up the posterior wall reminiscent of sinister red snakes. The substance grew rapidly as a weed. Its fiery crackling and ringing filled the chamber with an unnatural hymn and heat. ‘Its song is too low for singing. I wish to be away from it,’ Justice thought as a deep twinge of uncertainty overcame the spirit.

“Holy shit. What in the flaming nugshit is this?” Varric exclaimed. “This shit could take over the entire temple!” 

“Don’t touch it, Varric,” Anders urged Varric away as the dwarf stared, bewildered and perplexed. 

Varric’s expression slowly shifted from bewilderment to disconsolate as he pieced things together in his head. “That blasted idol. We never should’ve taken it. Never should’ve opened this place…” Varric muttered in equal parts anger and despondence. The ends of a few veins cracked with heat and expanded longer and thicker, growing right before their eyes. 

“We need to keep moving, Varric, to find the passage,” Anders insisted. He could've gloated and reaffirmed his aversion for the Deep Roads and blamed both Varric and Hawke for bringing him here, but even Anders never anticipated this.

“They were right to seal this place,” Varric understood, and the guilt began to sink in.

~

Within the bowels of the temple, they found the damp and narrow passage leading toward the cavern. Down and out they went onto the steep stairway and perilous ledge path, but found no sign of Hawke nor her brother. 

The river roared below through an endless mist and Anders’s staff burned brighter to keep the path lit. It gave no hint of tracks, bodies, or blood until…

“Look,” Varric pointed, approaching what looked to be part of a bow. “It’s one of the scout’s,” he deduced, examining it. The wood had been cleaved through, as well as its string which hung loose. “Shit…” he cursed. 

Anders held his staff over the ledge, looking down with concern. Not for the scouts, but for Hawke.

“Shit!” Varric shouted, roughly tossing away the bow. 

“Hawke could still be alive,” Anders insisted with a semblance of optimism, or perhaps ignorance.

“Blondie, those scouts were stone-cold killers from Orzammar. Chloris could shoot a nug in the dark running,” Varric doubted. 

“Someone cut that bow, and I didn’t see any other dwarves leave with Bartrand. He left them behind, too,” Anders explained. 

“That doesn’t mean Hawke survived, or Junior,” Varric said, falling quiet. 

“You don’t know. I don’t know. We don’t even know if we’ll get out of here alive. Maybe we’ll be surprised.”

Varric still didn’t respond. 

“I’m sorry, Varric. It isn’t your fault,” Anders spoke with empathy. 

Well, Varric certainly felt like it was. “No, I’m sorry. I’m the one who talked her into this. Dangled the chance at a fortune in front of her like a carrot…” he bewailed calmly. “Maker, what’ll I tell their mother if I ever get back to Kirkwall? Lady already lost a kid.”

“Varric,” Anders took his attention. “One thing at a time.”

They passed several drops of blood a few moments later, but neither could hint at whose blood it was. A few strands of bloody hair and flesh stuck to the rocky wall further ahead, about the height of a dwarf, telling of a violent scuffle. Someone had fought back against the scouts. “Junior,” Varric knew, but what of Hawke? 

The ledge rose rockier and eventually passed a hopelessly collapsed narrow tunnel. Anders attempted to shift the stones with primal magic, but they had fallen in pieces larger than the exit itself, therefore would not budge. The ledge path soon split out into the abyss, having once formed a bridge over the river. 

“I once met another apostate who had a terribly useful trick. Good for escaping,” Anders reminisced. 

“What’s that, Blondie?”

“A secret, or else any mage could walk in or out of Kinloch Hold when the templars weren’t looking,” Anders explained. 

“I’m listening, Blondie,” Varric said, intrigued, as Anders reached with both hands out over the ledge. 

Chapter Text

~{Carver and Mari}~

Burning hunger gnawed at Carver’s stomach while the torpor of cold settled into his veins as the river nearby flowed unending into the dark. Not a bite of formerly dried meat survived in his sister’s ripped pockets, but he wouldn't take it for himself if any remained. No shade appeared to him on the shore as hours crawled. No voices, nor a vision of Father - only the flowing song of water and his sister’s worryingly slow breaths as he held her close, seeing each escape in dim white blooms. 

A dreamless sleep had been subtle respite from the inescapable chill of the earth. When her senses finally returned, she shivered goose-pimply but alive in Carver’s arms and examined the places where her wounds were in disbelief. She found nothing but closed flesh with nary a hint of scarring, and then glimpsed the discarded shards of arrows stained with her own blood nearby. It hadn't been a nightmare. 

“What happened to the dwarves? Did you kill them?” Mari asked with an air of morbid spite as she looked up at her brother, his face vaguely lit in bluish-green. 

“Yes,” he admitted calmly. 

"Good," she said, bitterly glad. His face and lips were ghostly pale, which gave her pause. “How badly were you hurt? Please... tell me and I'll help.”

“It’s fine. It closed up with… whatever magic you made. Healed,” he answered, mindful of where the dagger sunk in, rather awed. 

She drew her arms around to embrace him. "How did we both survive?"

He shook his head, unsure of how to answer. "Magic. Maybe something more, but I don't know," he admitted against her shoulder. "Where did you go, when you slept?"

"Nowhere. Only... black," she answered.

"No demons? No Father?" he asked hesitantly. 

"I don't think so. Only..." she trailed off, recalling a dream half-forgotten of Father. "No. I can't remember."

Perhaps she didn't remember her delirious waking, either. A pain gripped Carver when he thought, in some way, Father might still live. 

“Do you think Varric was part of it?” she broached, considering who could have given orders to the scouts. 

“I don’t know. This doesn’t seem like him,” Carver doubted, but certainty was lacking. 

“I should’ve… I should never have trusted,” Mari spoke in a regretful tone. “I wasn’t careful enough.”

“I underestimated them,” Carver affirmed, taking some of the burden of blame. “We both should’ve known better.”

“If Varric wasn’t part of it… he might be dead, and Anders... I wonder if he's still alive,” she sat up pondering grimly.

“We must think of us now,” Carver urged, but this time it was not from jealousy. “Only us. There’s no way back up that waterfall.” His gaze turned to the freezing waters through the murky abyss from where they emerged, which still hungered for their lives. 

No way back, neither to the thaig nor naivete. They could agree on that. “Going forward may end in water as well, Carver… but we’ll never know unless we try,” she stated without hope, turning to the dark where they hadn't yet ventured.

“Yes. Forward. Home,” he agreed with few words. “I can’t let them win. Not when we’re together.”

“Who?” she asked, unsure of who he meant. 

“Dwarves. Darkspawn. Anything in my way,” he answered with rage at the edge of his words.

With Mari still weak from the over-expense of magic and loss of blood, Carver flung one of her hands over his neck and scooped her up with both arms before she could refuse. “I’ll never take this armor off again,” he uttered once between steps, for he couldn’t shake the unsettled sense of violation.

“I’m so sorry I got us into this,” Mari apologized, terribly close to his cheek.

He avoided her gaze and hushed her. “Just light the way. I can barely see where I step.”

She did her best to illuminate the rocky riverside with magic, but as they approached calmer waters, perhaps half a league downstream, Carver’s struggle became too apparent. Though he mostly hid this, she bid him to stop, feeling his racing pulse through exposed skin.

“Stop for a while,” she insisted. “Carver, please,” she asked again when he stubbornly ignored her.  

“We need to keep moving before we can’t move at all. Find food. Something…” he trailed off. 

“Let me down!” Mari protested, equally as stubborn.

By now, he was covered in his own chilly sweat, and feared losing grip on her as she struggled, so he relented by setting her down softly. He collapsed on his own hands and knees slowly gasping, disbelieving his own exhaustion and increasing weakness as his heart pounded. He never felt this weak… not since his days-long race through the freezing wilderness to reach Lothering. He hated it. 

Mari crawled over to the river’s edge to scoop water into her mouth - skin dry and beginning to crack around her lips. All ten fingers were stained dark with her own blood, which stayed even as she tried to wipe it away on her thighs. She could not even tell she was touching her own skin, owing to the cold. 

‘What can we do? What more can I do? Tell me,’ she begged silently to the darkness, for she couldn't summon the will to watch her brother crumble to nothing, nor the courage to die slowly on the shore, nor carry the responsibility of their deaths. ‘Even if only Carver survives,’ she bargained. ‘Mother will curse me forever if he doesn’t return. One more thing I could never make right.’ Mari thought achingly of Bethany, heavy with regret. She heard Carver approach, but remained silent with eyes shut. 

A slight glimmer of silver caught Carver’s eye beneath the water’s edge. Shards of a broken mirror? Some trick of light? He leaned closer through weary eyes and feared it would fade to black before him as a delusion of desperation. He braced for cruel disappointment as he reached for it, but much to his awe, he felt the unmistakable weight of steel upon its touch. His fingers grasped the intact hilt, so sweet that he could have wept, and salty tears streamed out and down the corners of his eyes.

“Your sword from the army,” Mari smiled in amazement as he drew the weapon up from the water. 

~

However sweet its recovery, nobody could eat a sword. Both struggled to push on for another day, starving and cold. “I can walk,” Mari insisted to preserve Carver's strength. “Just let me hold onto you so I don’t topple,” she said. So, she clung to him on wobbling legs and broken boots, holding tightly for stability.

Need for her magic to light the rocky path ceased when enough glowing auroric crystals hung like many bats from the cave ceiling, and it was strangely beautiful, if somewhere so desolate and dismal could be. The river decided to show a kindness more in the offering of a fish that ventured too close to shore, which Carver quickly skewered. Its eyeless, iridescent visage would unnerve anyone not desperate enough, but the Fereldans eagerly gutted and consumed its flesh raw.

Though it nearly made them vomit and their stomachs churn as if it they'd eaten rotten meat, the fish’s life fed their own and Mari felt her strength begin to return slowly, as did Carver. Both shivered as they hobbled, though Carver took that as a sign that their hearts hadn't given out. He held her tightly as they rested now, too tightly for any other occasion. Secretly, he envisioned moments that never happened - warm and naked in front of a burning hearth, but it was much too cold here to make it real. That was the only time she felt a hint of warmth in this place.

Carver’s eyes then opened at the feeling of Mari squirming out of his embrace. Urgently, she stood and crept over to something he didn't yet see: A milk-white moth fluttering out from behind a forest of tall stalagmites, its wings aglow in that turquoise hue. 

“Where did you come from?” she whispered suspiciously.  

“What is it?” Carver asked, already on his feet.

Mari approached the cave wall, neglecting to answer Carver as she banished the dark with an orb to shine brightly, leaving nothing to hide except sharply pointed stalagmites that reached taller than her. Between two, a narrow path revealed itself, leading to the wall. Mari felt its cold roughness beneath her hand as she made contact, and a looming crevice in the foundations hid more than vanishing shadows. It went deep into the rock, enough to be a possible passage. 

‘Please, please, let this be no trick,’ she dared to hope. 

~{Anders and Varric}~

From the miserable push through half-collapsed passages and an ancient mine, Varric was no longer clean-shaven nor clean. His facial stubble grew thick and scratchy while dust caked his coat and hair. Anders’s former stubble was now a beard, and he looked ever more like the haggard warriors of his ancestral homeland than a dashing apostate.

“And I thought nug tasted bad,” Anders complained after another tiny bite of deep mushroom. The scent lingered and reminded him vividly of his first and only sip of darkspawn blood, almost causing him to gag with revulsion. 

“Easy does it, Blondie. Disgusting foods are dwarves’ specialty,” Varric said, no more accustomed to it than the human mage.  

Petrified egg sacs cracked like kindling beneath the soles of beaten boots. Mummified skeletal remains lay scattered around the graveyard of a mine, some dwarven and others elven or small humans - those were difficult to tell. Varric eerily deduced that whoever they were, they were likely slaves from the Imperium. Old pickaxes, carts, and loose stone littered the way as Varric led the search for the passage out, for if miners and slaves once entered, there had to be a point of entry.

Rampaging through an entire pack of deepstalkers proved that the deepest creatures held no innate fear of people or magic. With the ambush routed, Varric and Anders finally found the mine’s point of entry - a shaft cut through the rock with nothing but darkness and chains reaching ever upward.

Creatures of many legs, fangs, and leeching poison guarded the rest of the way to the roads. When timid spiderlings gave way to blighted crawlers bearing taint corruption, Varric knew the danger of darkspawn loomed inevitably nearer. Some unseen force seemed to commune with him when they found a wide pillared path once again, without words, but simply an intuition that Tethras began to feel in his bones, little by little.

Eastward, the road fell away to a sweltering lake of fire, churning red and orange as it bubbled like the stomach of a mountain, and Anders’s escape trick was of no use. With that direction an impossibility, the pair forced a march west, weakening with thirst. Both thought it best to proceed stealthily, walking softly and wrapping Valdasine’s luminous head with layers of torn fabric to better catch any enemies by surprise. It wasn't just the desperation that made Anders nervous, but a feeling he couldn't ignore. He sensed something drawing near.

A day later on the blackened path, Varric dispatched what he assumed was a lone darkspawn while the mage crouched low, as if that might help conceal the taint in his blood. The creature wasn't alone, however, for they were soon set upon by a dozen. The Stone itself trembled with the piercing jolt of Anders’s lightning as a spiked metal shield conducted it away from the abnormally large genlock behind it. It charged like a raging bronto at Anders, knocking him violently aside. Varric evaded and loosed a volley of bolts at the creature from behind, yet it seemed confoundingly impervious, tossing a skull-sized stone at Varric as it spun around. 

“Get up, Blondie!” Varric grunted low with worry, but Anders didn't answer. The genlock held the monstrous shield between itself and Varric, banging it against the ground in a threatening show of dominance, utterly immune to Bianca’s bolts.

When it charged again, Varric dove towards Anders, so quickly the creature failed to see. Something else was hitting the shield as well, something solid, drawing the darkspawn’s attention. Anders stirred with a groan, but Varric stood again and fired into the side of the beast, wounding it. Even with a bolt in the neck, and several more in the ribs, it reached for a rock with its free hand and hurled it at the dwarf once again.

Varric moved in time, firing into its unshielded chest as he did, but he now realized he wasn't the only one firing. The beast growled low as it collapsed, its giant steel gauntlets and shield scraping over stone as it fully met the ground. 

Bianca was precariously low on bolts, but not yet empty as Varric raised her to a shadow that moved, when suddenly, a stranger’s voice stayed her trigger.

~{Carver and Mari}~

Misplaced elegance and unanswered riddles glittered throughout the winding cave passages in which the siblings wandered as quietly as ghosts. First passed were the bones of an unfortunate soul who might've died a thousand years before, covered in pale mineral deposits so that the skeleton practically shone like pearls. The rocky path angled upward, its damp floor uneven and sharp against Mari’s knees when she lost her footing. A moth fluttered overhead, spheres reminiscent of eyes painted upon its wings. Brilliant pale quartz emerged pointed like morning stars through sects of cave walls, as breathtaking as they were sharp. 

The passage led upward before widening into a rippling chamber. Mari glimpsed only a few glittering reflections from her own orb before entering, but when the light rose into the hollow, it illuminated utterly, its visage adorned with an excess of so many shining crystals that she couldn't hope to ever count them all. 

Mari gasped, and practically forgot she had been holding onto Carver when he left her hand empty, traipsing ahead to investigate something. A pair of elegantly wrought silver lines reached high into the chamber, perhaps twenty or more feet tall. The lines met in a pointed arch at its summit, and hundreds of jagged, broken pieces of grey glass shone scattered below like the forest floor after a hard rain.

“What is this?” Carver pondered, still a leap and bound away from the structure. “What would the dwarves build this for?”

‘If you happen to find any strange mirrors, don’t touch them,’ Mari recalled Merrill. That offhanded piece of advice never made sense, until… “Don’t touch it!” Mari shouted, rushing toward her brother. 

“What is it?” he asked, terribly curious.

“I don’t know,” she answered honestly, looking up and through it. Some glass still clung to its frame, sharp as fileting knives. At its base, the upper body of an unfortunate skeleton laid face down. Everything below its rib cage was simply gone, as if sectioned in half. “It may be elven,” she considered. 

“I see something,” Carver said, moving even closer. “Stay there. I don’t need you stumbling and cutting yourself up," he insisted.

“Carver, please,” she begged, looking up for pieces of glass that could fall on him from the structure. 

The skeleton’s hand lay next to its skull, a subtle luminescence penetrating from between digits. Carver brushed it aside, but whatever drew him had been planted into a small rift in the rocky floor by an impact.

“Why don’t you ever listen?!” she reprimanded close to him, gripping his pauldron. 

“You don’t either,” he argued. “Watch your step.”

Before she could ask what he was fiddling with, Carver already freed it. When he examined the prize, the object was no bigger than his thumb - symmetrical in the shape of a pear, latticed in gleaming silverite. A clear vapor swirled within, but even without touching it, Mari felt it was not simply water. She sensed magic within - powerful magic. 

“Think it might be worth something on the surface?” Carver asked.

“Maker’s breath,” she gasped. The design of it could predate the founding of the Dales. She knelt by Carver to get a closer look, and it was beautiful. Unworldly. “We have a long way to go before we find out." 

Finding elegantly sculpted stairwells shaped into the chamber further within the corridor, they wound through rock, dimly lit by lyrium and glowing minerals in paths untrodden for ages. Blood stained part of her boot’s sole where the leather had come apart, leaving bloody prints where she stepped. Though much of her lower body was already stained with dried blood, Carver noticed this blood was still running. It took him a moment to realize what it really was, streaming down the inner flesh of her legs. She hoped he wouldn't notice, but he did. A sense of shame swept over her for the inconveniences of her body even in this place so far from the world above, but Carver didn't ridicule or recoil in disgust. He simply stopped to remove his tunic from beneath his armor and ripped it for her to put to better use. 

Water dripped down frigid stony walls and from the ceiling in some parts. More than once did they stop to collect droplets within their palms and drank. Fatigue and nausea worsened for Mari and she wished only to curl up on the ground, but Carver pulled her on, away and up for what felt like a miserable eternity. 

Some days later, the hunger returned clawing with a feverish vengeance. They had broken through to the edge of a great chasm, forced to climb to what Carver insisted was a ledge. He would go first, he told her. ‘Maker watch over him… Hold him to the rock as a child to your heart…’ she prayed, watching him in dread. ‘I can’t do it,’ she shivered with fear. 

When he finally ascended atop the ledge, she swallowed, pulsing with anxiety. “Don’t look down, sister. It’s no bigger than the hills in South Reach,” he lied, crouching to better see her. 

She breathed and gripped, carefully finding the little edges that were steady. Every few moments, thoughts of Father entered her mind unbidden - a desperate wish to feel safe and protected as she clung to the rock face. 

“This little climb isn’t stopping you. It won’t. You believe me, don’t you?” Carver asked, trying to force encouragement. 

She wept, clinging hard. “Yes,” she forced the word out of her lungs before urging herself up again. Up, slowly scaling up until Carver could help pull her over the ledge with strong hands.

Once away from that precarious edge, Carver stopped to regard her, glistening with sweat. His grip loosened, as did hers as he leaned in, nuzzling his forehead to hers. Alas, there were no further displays of affection - not now with such dry lips and want of water. There would be time enough for that on the surface, Carver anticipated. 

Still, no water availed itself atop the chasm, and thirst suffered unsated as they searched for some sign of past civilization. When at last they spotted a dwarven statue, Carver smiled and squeezed her hand in his, but Mari wouldn't smile yet. Fate had been cruel enough to let them flee Lothering together before it snatched Bethany away. She would not trust.

~

At last while following the roads, they came to a silent bridge - wide, partly broken away, tilting around outcroppings of rock, and held up by towering pillars reaching from the abyss below. It was so long that they couldn't see the other side. 

“We have to cross, but we can't be caught in the open," Carver whispered. 

“Quietly then. No attention,” she agreed. 

The overpass proved stable enough to allow two humans across without crumbling, but slanted unstably where a supporting pillar had fractured long ago. Watching where she stepped, Mari noticed warm glows across the abyss. Fire - perhaps fumes of the underground burning, or dwarven torches that could burn for centuries if not extinguished.

Near the end, Mari knew she had been foolish to consider otherwise. It had been darkspawn, of course. Three genlocks patrolled the edge overlooking the last stretch of bridge. No further pillars served to conceal the desperate humans if they moved closer, so they waited concealed behind a heavy fallen stalactite.

“We can handle them, but if they alert others…” Carver whispered.

“We could distract them,” she suggested instead, gesturing to a piece of chipped stone. 

A deft toss drew the creatures’ attention in the opposite direction and both siblings sprinted as quietly as their feet would carry to the end of the bridge, praying silently that the darkspawn wouldn't turn their backs for a few moments more. ‘Away from the fires,’ Mari knew. ‘Away from the spawn.’

The stench grew awfully pungent on this side. That was when Mari noticed a monster of a hurlock standing just ahead with its back to them. She pushed Carver to the side as they stayed low to the ground, barely evading its line of sight as it turned toward the bridge, huffing in air, having caught a new strange scent. 

Several more creatures began to snarl to each other in some form of animalistic communication, their dreadful tones rippling lower and louder than capable of humans. Carver threw another small stone, luring the creatures away, ready to draw his sword at a moment’s notice.  

‘If we make it past, we might evade the rest. Just a little further,’ Mari thought as she glimpsed the road ahead. She and Carver stayed low, keeping away from firelight, eyes peeled for unseen others lurking about. 

Suddenly, the ball of Mari’s foot met with a fragile bone against the ground, cracking it like kindling. She resisted inhaling a gasp, but it was already too late. A lipless beast snarled in their direction alertly, black mouth gaping, and gave chase.

Carver drew his sword by instinct, but before he could place himself between his sister and the most immediate danger, she blasted the creature back, its body quickly engulfed in flames. 

The element of surprise now laid in ashes. “Come on!” Carver commanded, urging Mari toward the road, pulling her beside him at a full run. “We can’t let them flank or swarm us!” Deep inhuman noises roared out from behind, now in pursuit. 

As Mari kept up with Carver, that accursed feeling of being darkspawn prey during the Blight returned, of being a peasant chased and hunted down by a merciless, soulless enemy. Though her strained heart pounded rapidly to support the effort of running as fast as she could, she forced herself to look back once at her hunters. 

The ruined hall - towering, wide, and strewn with broken pillars, lit with a fiery bloom when she unleashed conflagration upon them. Fallen pillars and immense stones choked the path ahead, now visible in the light of the blaze. Ear-piercing squeals rang through the chamber as the creatures writhed and screamed below. 

Carver hoisted Mari up and over the first pillar before following immediately behind. Shadows grew along the edge of the hall, but all Mari could see when she glanced back was a hurlock stepping on the bodies of its brethren, crushing them into charred meat as it followed. It hefted a wickedly shaped maul some six feet long, if not longer, with both gauntleted hands. 

As they scurried up and over the next obstacle, darkness reigned again. Screeches akin to knives across glass danced in every direction as Mari summoned an orb of light, banishing the dark except a pale shadow rushing at her side. It moved so quickly that she barely saw its jagged claws of metal until it was too late. She barely moved out of its reach before Carver sliced it down, the creature too focused on its delicate prey instead of the blade. Then, there were more, moving faster than Antivan Crows. Carver swung, wounding one, but the shrieks shifted as swift as a breeze. In a sword stance, Mari knew Carver to be sure-footed, so she let go a force of her own will, knocking the attacking creatures back and off-balance, allowing Carver to make quick work of them. 

As they hurried past the last fallen pillar, the hurlock finally caught up, pounding its maul into the ground once in a primitive challenge. It stood much taller than Carver, perhaps eight or nine feet tall, and was covered in jagged metal plates that left its gruesome chest and neck exposed. 

“If I don’t make it…” Carver uttered, never taking his eyes off the enemy. He wanted to tell her to run, or something lethally romantic. 

“Then I don’t!” she shouted, trembling. 

“Beware its reach. Don’t be a hero,” Carver warned, raising his blade in a defensive stance as Mari forced herself to back away, her eyes wide with desperation. He carried not even a helmet or a shield. 

Her hand found the crystal phial in a hidden inner pocket, desperate for anything that might help. While the enormous hurlock swung with the deftness of a blind berserker, Carver’s counterstrikes were meticulous - perhaps enough to make even Aveline proud. Several times he thought his sword might break, opposing the power and brute-force weapon of the hurlock, and several times did he feel a familiar magic upon him, shielding him in a moment of need. The creature’s wild and unrestrained attacks soon gave way to an opening - its leg, now wounded, and finally as it collapsed, its throat.

More and more of the spawn were coming, ascending partly up the walls to bypass the fallen pillars. In a fiercely growing rage, Mari created lightning - something she'd never done before, and unleashed it on a cluster of genlocks. The shock cracked like the whip of the Maker, blowing them to pieces. Carver engaged several hurlocks with her support, striking the last dead only a moment before she glimpsed two long, black horns advancing high through the chaos. 

Fallen pillars slid and skidded roughly across the floor where the beast shoved them aside. This was akin to a nightmare, a horrible scar in their minds of the Blight, but all too existent now. She pulled Carver back with all her bodily strength, urging him to flee, and he did acquiesce a few steps, but then planted his feet decidedly firm. The hulking ogre locked its gaze on them, easily spotting the two in the open as it knocked aside the last pillar. 

Something changed in Carver’s eyes - midway between madness and vengeance. He would not flee. He stole one last look at Mari, all too brief. “We can do this… for Bethany. I love you,” he confessed bravely.

‘Bethany is gone! Carver, stop!’ her heart screamed as he engaged, speechless.

In that instant, the ogre hoisted a heavy slab of broken stone and hurled it at Carver with both monstrous fists. Mari cried out, raising her hand, and by some miracle, the stone stopped. Carver only smiled knowingly, and in a blast of rage instead of a spell, Mari sent the stone battering back at the beast, cracking across its breastplate. 

When Carver’s blade met the ogre, it was difficult for him to remain disciplined. Its flesh resisted steel, harder than drakeskin, and it swung both massive arms in wide arcs, yet Carver would not surrender. This was revenge against the monster that murdered Bethany, revenge for the army, and revenge for Ferelden. The ogre fought brutally with a wide, wicked skeletal scowl, almost grinning at the humans, eager to crush its unblighted prey. Faster than anticipated, it charged at Carver, its reach too wide to completely evade, throttling him aside. When the ogre lifted its horns again, it stood much too close to Mari. 

As it opened blight-clawed fingers, a hellish burst of flames seared its taint-black eyes and nasal canal, stalling it, allowing Mari a few moments to get out of reach. Carver engaged again, his sword battered and chipped, and the wind knocked out of him. 

Suddenly, a violet spell impacted the beast that was not her own. Mari looked to her left - even scraggly and bearded, she recognized Anders, and Varric who loosed a volley of bolts from Bianca. There was someone else with them - a man with a bow who loosed an arrow - one that indeed penetrated the ogre’s tough flesh. She regretted allowing herself to be distracted so easily, for just then, Carver planted the end of his blade shallow in the creature’s gut, the steel finally giving way as it shattered. With only a broken crossguard in his hand, the ogre struck him with an open-handed hook, sending Carver tumbling several yards away. 

The flanking barrage of spells and arrows now drew the ogre’s ire, more nuisances than true injury. It charged and slammed fists onto the ground, pummeling Anders and smashing his staff to pieces. An armored shadow melted from the dark, harassing the ogre below its knees, but too low to draw much attention, for it once again looked to the warrior as the true threat.

All Mari’s focus flowed into saving her brother’s life as the ogre returned for the kill. Blood leaked from Carver’s mouth as he struggled to rise, his armor bent out of shape and his body aching with hurt. Her thoughts became utterly frenzied, her connection to the Fade flaring brightly, and in desperation, she began throwing every destructive spell she had ever learned at the ogre. 

‘Blade! I need a fucking blade!’ was all Carver could think as he moved. 

Finally, Mari produced a lightning strike so terrifying that lit and shook the entire hall, knocking herself and Carver violently to their knees as the beast’s flesh smoked and caught fire. 

“Junior!” Varric called to Carver as the ogre fell to a knee, remaining alive. Varric hurled across the floor to him some long silver weapon like an answered prayer.

Snatching the maul up, he swung forward at the ogre as it raised an arm, breaking past steel spikes. 'Bethany. Bethany. Bethany,' he screamed inside, inflicting a sequence of brutal strikes as maul gored the creature’s temple and jaw, leaving the mandible detached on one side and taking everything from the ear to eye on the other. Carver was pulsing, overcome with a breed of rage that had not consumed him since the battle of Ostagar, but this time, he was winning. 

The Fereldan soldier retreated only far enough to reverse the weapon to its pointed end and returned, plunging it deep into the chest of the monstrous darkspawn as far as it would go, penetrating the heart. In that instant of death, the ogre fell limp, crashing to the floor with a death rattle to rival a dragon as Carver stood victorious. 

Chapter Text

Varric observed from a distance as the brother and sister stumbled their way determinedly closer to the other, each a dark silhouette bordered by flickering flames and smoke. Carver dropped the weapon carelessly, his vigour now spent. Mari glimpsed the blood drenching his mouth which ran down his chin and neck, worse than she ever saw him. A dozen abrasions blemished his sweet face and hid beneath his hair with streams of red trickling down. She hesitated to embrace him for fear of harming him, but he reached for her anyway with trembling arms and nearly collapsed in hers.

She almost called him a careless fool, but for this, she held her tongue. “Did it cut you? Is its blood on you?” she interrogated with immense worry. 

“I don’t know. Maybe,” he answered honestly. 

“You would feel it. Wesley felt it the moment it happened,” she remembered, steadying him. 

Carver thought hard for a few moments. “I… I don’t,” he answered soberly. She surrendered to belief, encircling her arms around his waist as his own clamped around her. “We won,” he uttered in her ear, happiness tinged with old hurts. “We won.”

Mari whimpered with equal hints of laughter and relief against his shoulder. The crystal phial she held glowed brightly, still entwined between her fingers. She held it firmly in one hand and guided her other palm, rising in luminescence, gently over his head and his beautifully familiar face as she looked up at him. He found the enrapturing colour of her eyes in that light, and never did she look at him more softly than in that moment. A feeling of renewal washed over him and he could've ravished her lips right there if not for the audience… and Carver felt certain she would've let him.

The mysterious archer reached a gloved hand down to Anders, pulling the apostate to his feet. Scraped and discrediting his own injuries, Anders clutched his elbow and hobbled forward, amber irises locked on the entire reason he joined the expedition, just ahead.

“Are you more surprised than I am, Varric?” Anders asked elatedly, looking at Hawke as she embraced her brother. 

Varric’s wry smile perked up. “Happy to be wrong, for once,” he acquiesced. 

Upon seeing her acquaintances again, Mari resisted an urge to run to them, but even as glad expressions of relief lit their faces, she chose to take Carver’s pace as she approached. 

'Holy shit,' Varric thought upon truly seeing the state of them. Where he and Anders were more grimy and covered in dust, Hawke and her brother were far more bloodied and battered. The sight of her clothes in shreds and her especially gaunt appearance sent a pang through Varric's airway, and he couldn't help but feel responsible. “That’s one for the stories, Hawke,” Varric uttered of the witnessed battle, stepping forward once and holding out a friendly hand. Where her eyes once played a sly game of unassuming misdirection, they could now glare holes into his soul. 

“I expect royalties, of course,” she jested calmly after a moment’s silence and shook his hand. “What in blazes happened to the both of you? Where is Bartrand and the rest?” she asked as Varric shook Carver's hand silently in turn. 

Varric winced. “Probably halfway back to Kirkwall by now,” he guessed, pausing for the right words. “I didn’t know what he was gonna do, Hawke. I swear. I had no time to warn you. He left me for dead. If not for Blondie, I would be.”

“You never saw it coming,” she understood.

“I never thought he would go that far. I was wrong,” Varric nodded sadly, still sore over the fact.

“How did you find us in this place? Was it coincidence, or something more?” Mari asked, now looking at Anders, though the question was for either of them.

“The darkspawn. We sensed them,” Anders answered, now letting go of his elbow. His magic could be cleverly subtle when needed. 

“By ‘we’, you mean them,” Carver deduced, having already noticed the trio of odd strangers a few paces away. A human archer stood flanked by an elf and a dwarf - each of the three more dour and darker than the next.

Anders nodded. “Wardens, like I was,” he admitted with a hint of regret.

“As the Commander told you before: You never truly leave the Order, Anders,” the archer spoke up with a noble Fereldan accent like mabari claws over castle stones. Mari could tell he was no commoner, but neither a pompous lordling.

“Have they come to take you away?” Mari whispered to Anders with suspicion. 

“They’re not here for me,” Anders answered, touched by her concern. “That’s Nathaniel. He might be the only Warden ever who tried to kill a Commander and ended up joining,” Anders introduced the archer who tilted his head in acknowledgement, standing roughly six feet tall and lean with muscle.

“I didn’t actually try, remember?” Nathaniel corrected, recalling how the Wardens presumed him to be a thief, sneaking around his childhood home before throwing him in the dungeon. 

“No one will remember that,” Anders brushed off the pesky detail. 

Long strands of soot-black hair bordered Nathaniel’s aquiline face, hinting that his hair was lengthy while a dark moustache protruded from his chin. His skin contrasted pale against black, giving him a severe, cold appearance unlike most of their countrymen. “You came all the way from Ferelden?” Mari asked.

“By ship. We entered near Cumberland,” Nathaniel answered. 

“Cumberland! Did we truly come so far?” Carver asked, incredulous as he uncrossed his arms. 

Mari became uncomfortably aware that these Wardens were on no rescue mission, yet she broached the subject carefully. “Can you… Will you help us find the way out?” she asked. “I don’t know how much longer we can last,” she admitted, still weak with hunger and thirst. 

“It takes us out of our way,” the elf refused sharply. A wooden staff rested across her back and a cloak of brown bear fur hung from her spindly frame. Vines and branches etched over her forehead and nose clearly marked her as one of the Dalish, though she seemed of the harder variety. 

“I can see her toes. She’s covered in blood - new and old,” an oddly warm yet shadowy voice professed while observing the state of Hawke. It came from the dwarf. A she-dwarf in armor of the blocky traditional style. “Lips only get that chapped when you haven’t had enough water. Nate, I want to help them.”

“I know, Sigrun, but…” Nathaniel trailed off. 

“I’ll guide them back myself if I have to. It should only take me a few days,” the dwarf insisted. 

“No need,” Nathaniel assured her. “We can spare the time, but Anders… you and I still have much to discuss," the Warden archer promised.

~

The Wardens made camp well away from the den of darkspawn and the broken hall. When he had time to search his pack, Varric presented to Mari a familiar runed gem of sparkling violets and greens - her gift from Sandal. He also brought her expectedly lightweight coin purse, taken from her meager belongings in the thaig. Both things he meant to return to her, or bestow to Leandra if he ever made it back to Kirkwall. Neither of these little things had any hope of easing the pain of losing two more children, but Varric would've tried anyway.

After an evening sating thirst with water and wine, answering questions from the oddly cordial dwarven Legionnaire, and forcing themselves to take only the smallest bites from food given, both Mari and Carver were awoken throughout the night by agitated whispers. At first, it had been Velanna, the elf, arguing with Sigrun about a missing sister. Later, it was Anders and Nathaniel who had taken up the excuse of keeping watch together, yet it remained obvious things were not fine between them. 

“You want me to say nothing?” Nathaniel deduced.

“Say whatever you want in your report. Just leave my name out of it,” Anders told him. 

“Did you really do it, Anders?” Nathaniel asked, unsure of some unspoken crime. What had Anders done, or been accused of doing? The mage muttered something about templars. Templars in the Wardens? It was too muffled to hear correctly with only one ear up.

"I never wanted to be a Warden anyway. I never chose it," Anders confessed, though to Nathaniel, that had long been apparent. 

"Many do not, yet they do not shirk their duty or hide from justice," Nathaniel countered. 

"What you know about justice could barely fill a thimble," Anders argued with a growl in his voice.

"Look in a mirror, Anders. The Wardens know what I've done," Nathaniel flung it back at his former brother-in-arms before quieting for a moment. The archer sighed with a weary exhale, not wishing to see his former comrade carted off to some desolate prison. "I won't tell the Commander I saw you. Velanna won't. Sigrun won't. But wherever you go to chase freedom, you’ll never escape the taint in your blood."

Mari sensed the sting of that. 

Two mornings after next, as the path joined an outflowing river, daylight shone down dimly upon a clearing in the rock ahead. It was the bottom of a rift in a mountain, fathoms below cloudy blue skies, yet the four survivors couldn't stop their smiles from growing. The Wardens waited nearby as Mari splashed herself to a semblance of cleanliness at the river’s edge, though this would take several hot baths in earnest. Velanna, in particular, glared in disgust, while Sigrun didn't bother to hold back her laughter at the human woman.

Their own voices and footsteps echoed amid the whistles of small birds in the crevasse while the sun emerged from rolling clouds above. Patches of greenery bloomed near the middle of the cavern floor and on upper outlooks, defying the shadowed places all around with shrubs and wildflowers. A narrow path stretched ahead alongside the river, flowing toward a green-golden abyss much too bright to see with eyes that had been in the darkness for weeks. 

"The mountain path leads out here. Stay on it. It will lead you down to the caravan paths. This is where we must leave you," Nathaniel announced. 

"Where will you go?" Mari asked.

"Wardens' business. Reconnaissance and recovery, if at all possible. More than that, I cannot say," Nathaniel explained without sharing too much.

"Glad to have not shot you, Howe," Varric bid the Warden a hearty farewell with a handshake.

"And you, Tethras," Nathaniel answered. "Anders, I’ll keep my word... though I suspect this may be the last time we see each other."

"Who knows? I tried to get away from you once before," Anders jested, not wishing to draw out the farewell with a hug. That would be too much for whatever shadow of friendship they shared. 

Nathaniel's gaze fell to Mari again - his eyes as grey as clouds heavy with rain. She suddenly felt very conscious of how unkempt her hair was, and how she must have looked to this man. Whether she reminded him of some sister of his own, or something else, she couldn't know. "If I'm ever in Kirkwall, perhaps we can share a pint together at the Hanged Man," he proposed, looking quickly to Varric to include at least a third person to stave off awkwardness. 

"I'd like that," she answered politely. "Farewell. And… Velanna ..." Mari spoke, turning toward the ill-tempered elf. "I hope you find your sister. I know what it’s like to lose one."

Velanna’s unfriendly expression softened for only a moment before she turned to leave with Nathaniel. The plucky Legionnaire smiled and gave a wave to the four as she returned toward the darkness as well. "Bye! Nice meeting you!" her voice shone brightly.

~{Nevarra}~

Guards and nobles alike glowered unwelcomingly as the haggard four entered the Nevarran city of Cumberland, a city as prosperous as it was sprawling with an air of effortless grace that put high Kirkwall to shame. A golden dome topped with a spire shimmered in the distance - it was the College of Magi, Anders said, though it held the look of a royal palace. Knowing that wandering through a wealthy area in such a frazzled state would attract the wrong kind of attention, Varric steered his compatriots toward the sea. A gentle breeze carried scents of traded spices while silks in colours of spring and summer flew like many streaming flags over merchants’ stalls. There, overlooking the city’s docks, they would spend the next night in a modest but well-kept inn, feasting on crab and buttered bread which Varric still carried enough coin and generosity to pay for. 

In her private bathroom, layers of blood and dirt drifted off Mari’s skin into the warm, soapy water as she studiously scrubbed all over. She could feel her ribs through her skin more easily now, as well as her spine. She hadn’t the nerve to examine herself in a mirror yet, lest her appearance have changed too much from what she remembered. Meanwhile, Carver waited outside so she might bathe in complete privacy, leaning half-naked in the hall as a self-appointed guard at the door. 

“Well, that’s going to draw some glances in this town,” Varric said upon exiting his own room with his hair still wet.  

“That armor’s bent beyond saving. Anything else I had is long gone,” Carver explained. “Ah... you lost your beard. Shame. You could’ve swabbed a few decks with that,” he joked harshly upon noticing Varric’s freshly shaved face.

“Now, now, Junior. Maybe when you grow up, you’ll have one,” Varric countered charmingly, knowing it would bother the little Hawke no matter what. Carver lost weight as well, Varric noticed, and his hair grew a little longer. It made the lad look younger and more vulnerable, even if he had just slain an ogre. “Listen, Junior. I’m sorry about what happened. I never thought that was in the cards,” he apologized unbidden.

“And you say you’re so smart,” Carver huffed, but the edge faded. “What’ll you do when we get back to Kirkwall? About your brother?” he asked. 

“Bartrand assumes we all died in that thaig. He’ll spin a story to the Guild, if he hasn’t already. As much as I’d like to show up at the next meeting, expose him and have the City Guard throw him in a cell…” Varric trailed off. 

“You’ll… what?” Carver wanted to know. 

“I’m not sure yet, but I know if Bartrand hears we survived before I move on him, we’ll all have targets on our backs,” Varric answered.  

“So… what would you have my sister and I do? Lay low until this is done?”

Varric nodded. “Yeah. I don’t want anyone else hurt because of him.” 

Carver might have liked to kill Bartrand himself, but he was still Varric’s flesh and blood. It was more personal for Varric, but as long as the backstabber paid with interest, it should satisfy. “Alright. I understand,” Carver answered. He could follow instructions when he wished to, after all. 

Later that evening, when Carver emerged from his own cleansing ritual, Mari was already blissfully asleep, warm in her own small bed with both arms wrapped around a pillow. Her fine hair was washed and scented with the fragrance of some sweet Nevarran flower while her skin shone dewy in what light remained. The moon was rising early, a silver crescent above purples and pinks, and the stars she missed so much scattered like diamonds in the dark. 'You're missing out,' he thought longingly. Her clothing laid in a mess atop a wooden armoire, unsalvageable without a needle, thread, and a great deal of time. Because of this, and her bare skin exposed above her blankets, Carver deduced she slept with nothing underneath. He rather hoped they would have time to whisper alone tonight, away from the others, but to wake her now would surely be a crime. And the secret thoughts that stirred in his head... if those were to ever come true, that would surely be another.

~

“Are you trying to spare me the stares of our dear hosts?” Mari smiled on the following morn as she examined the long linen dress of periwinkle which Varric bought for her from a nearby market. The bottoms of its sleeves would hang to her knees, similar to the gowns drawn in Leandra’s fabled storybooks. Simple peasant shoes of grey wool and leather would protect her feet, though Mari would miss her boots. “Thank you, Varric. You can stop beating yourself up now,” she changed her tone.

A navy tunic and simple breeches would see Carver back to Kirkwall, cinched by his own surviving leather belt. Mari thought that shade of blue had been positively made for him, as were all blues that played upon the shadows in his eyes; Eyes that beheld her so intently, yet with so much remaining unsaid. ‘Let it stay unsaid. We’ve already said too much,’ she did her best to convince herself. Kirkwall and Mother were waiting, yet part of her wished to keep going west, to see the Fields of Ghislain and beyond. 

On the caravan path east of Cumberland, where summer waves crashed white along the coast of the Waking Sea, an old elven man stopped his wagon as the four moved aside to let him pass a treacherous ledge. 

“Where ya headed?” he asked, lowering his hood as if to better see a few feet in front of him. His shaggy chestnut mare was brushed and cared for without a crack in her hooves, Carver noticed.

“Kirkwall,” Varric spoke eloquently first.

Marbled eyes of green-and-brown that had seen much in many decades examined the four, perhaps looking for immediate malice or danger and finding discernably little. “Hop on,” the old man ultimately decided, pursing his lips.

Politeness forbade them from touching the elf’s belongings when they climbed aboard the back of the wagon. A small brown trunk and crates of fruit rode closest to him, and beside him lay a curious wooden walking stick topped with a sunny yellow crystal. 

“That’s a fine staff you have,” Anders eventually complimented shakily after the horse began its descending trot over bumpy terrain. 

“Fishin pole,” the elf corrected.

Anders tried to set the old fellow at ease. “It’s alright. I’m a mage too. An apostate,” he confessed. 

“Not a mage or... a... aposty...” the old man denied and became flustered. “Whatever thing you called yerself.” 

“Sir, there’s a glowing crystal on your ‘fishing pole’,” Anders persisted.  

“Old elven trick. You wouldn’t understand.”

Chapter Text

~{Kirkwall}~

More than a month passed since Leandra received the shock of Carver's departing letter. No further word arrived from either of her children in these empty days with only dust and Gamlen for company. One morning, she even ventured to the Merchant's Guild to inquire about Varric Tethras, but was turned away by the shady doormen, even as a templar woman with eyes of ice exited the same door. 

"Are they ever coming back, Malcolm?" she asked the silence that never answered, and she began to lose hope. 

Old eyes played cruel tricks on her, turning random humans beneath the glare of the sun into her son and daughter. Upon looking twice, familiar faces would vanish into unfriendly strangers. After another long day spent in the bazaar on sore feet with a weary heart, Leandra returned through the slums while light still reigned. She was only a stone's throw from Gamlen's stoop when she glimpsed two human figures and a stocky dwarf outlined in sunset. 

"Mother," Mari called out softly before breaking into a run.

The girl was pale and gaunt as if she had suffered through the Void itself, but this time, Leandra's eyes did not deceive. 

Varric feared spoiling the moment as the human family reunited in fond embraces, but he looked once at Carver sternly, imploring the lad to remember their agreement. They were indeed back in Kirkwall, but that never meant safety. 

~

Alone, Varric returned to the Hanged Man through a rarely-used side passage to avoid being seen. All seemed well as his boots met the weathered wooden floors, but when he reached his room, the lock was suspiciously broken. Shattered glass and loose papers of manuscripts were strewn all around. A small safe of coin that should have sat beside his bed was gone, and the bed itself smelled horribly of urine, much to his disgust. Worst of all, within the cold hearth lay shapes of books in ash, shrivelled and burned black. Varric winced and tried to pull one from the pile, but it disintegrated in his glove.

"You can't be in here, serah. I'll call the Guard," a Marcher woman's voice asserted behind him. Varric calmly stood, for it was none other than Norah. "Oh! Varric..."

He raised a finger to his lips, urging her to be discreet. "When did this happen?" he asked about the ransack.

Norah tried to recount it as best she could. "A few days ago, some masked men broke into your suite. Made off with some of your things, they did, but they ran away before the guards could arrive." 

Varric shook his head, not in disbelief, but all too willing to believe in such personal malice. Was this meant to be Bartrand's final insult, or had he simply told his guards to trash the place? "Listen. No one can know I was here - not even Corff. Can you do that?"

"I'm not the best at keeping secrets, messere," Norah confessed unsurely. 

"One day. Will you give me that?" he bargained with the barmaid. 

"One day…" Norah mused, wondering if she could keep quiet about Varric's return half so long. "Alright," she decided.

~{Varric: Retribution}~

Clouds were swirling like dark burgundy wine by the time Varric stepped into Hightown. The streets were emptying, but the wealthy could still be heard through open latticed windows. Unless Aveline took up night patrol again, she would have returned to her own apartment near the Chantry square by now. Between caged trees and pruned greenery, Varric stood at the precipice of the Viscount's Way and its lengthy path to lawful justice. One turn to the right and Varric could be at Aveline's doorstep within a few minutes. Yet, the scabbed and terribly bruised wound over his brow still stung bitterly from the betrayal, as did the invisible knife in his back, and Varric turned west toward the Merchant's Guild instead.

Many estates owned by members and associates naturally surrounded the Guild complex, and the Tethras family estate sat inconspicuously among these. The few guardsmen patrolling thought nothing of a dwarf in these parts, so Varric did not seem out of place. He slipped down a narrow alley toward the back entrances and gardens, scrambling over a tall gate with unassuming agility. There would be no common city guards back here - only private security for the paranoid. 

Peering carefully through a tall vine-covered trellis, Varric glimpsed the overgrown hedges and dead flowerbeds of the Tethras estate, though it was unabandoned, betrayed by the laughter of women beckoning from within. The back door was locked and unpickable, but perhaps he could reach one of those windows on the second floor.

Bartrand's distinctive voice carried from somewhere within. 'He's here,' Varric knew. He tested the ivies on the wall for stability, and with renewed determination, he climbed deftly up, hoping any vigilant neighbours would not see this intrusion.

He entered silently through the study and ensured Bianca was loaded and ready in his hands, though now, his limbs began to shiver with nerves. Bartrand was so close and surely held no concept of how dearly he was about to pay. There were no living souls on the second floor as Varric crept stealthily forward, but heard their voices echo. He suddenly felt an uncanny stare upon him, but upon turning, it was only a small painted portrait of his mother, Ilsa. 

Overlooking the main hall carefully through an ornate railing, Varric finally sighted Bartrand, seated like a king in the center of a grand sofa with a pretty dwarven courtesan on his knee. One of her arms was draped around his shoulders, giggling into his ear as he inhaled wine from a golden goblet encrusted with gleaming sapphires. 

A dozen Marcher mercenaries waited around the main floor with corseted company from the Rose. Wine and ale were flowing and a nervous bard played a tavern tune on a lute when Varric took aim. Whatever happened afterwards, he did not care. Bartrand was in Bianca's crosshairs now, and Varric pulled her trigger. 

The metallic thud of Bianca and the impact of a bolt penetrating Bartrand's wristguard were quickly overpowered by Bartrand’s shock of pain as he dropped his goblet and shoved the courtesan off. Varric had meant to hit his brother in the heart, but Bartrand lifted his drink at that last cursed moment.

Bartrand panicked as he scrambled behind the sofa and clutched his bleeding wrist, shouting that there was an intruder as Varric fired two more bolts which narrowly flew over his head. Varric's pulse grew frantic now, which rendered his aim off-balance. 

"Upper floor!" Bartrand yelled as the mercenaries readied and the scantily clad workers fled. From behind the sofa, Bartrand took a better look at the bolt in his wrist. It was shorter than average. Could it be? Was this some restless ghost back for revenge?

Varric turned the first two mercenaries to climb the stairs into pincushions, sending their bodies tumbling back down. Incoming arrows forced him behind a pillar when he noticed on the wall beside him, a painted portrait of himself and Bartrand as children. 

“Is that you, little brother?!” Bartrand shouted, almost in amazement.

"Who else?! How many more have you betrayed since me?!” Varric retorted, peering out quick enough to shoot the leg off a lit candelabra. It fell with a thud, forcing Bartrand out of his hiding spot and into a covered alcove. 

"You should've stayed underground!" Bartrand responded from somewhere unseen. Varric aimed Bianca at another of the men who made it up the stairs and squeezed. The scent of smoke tickled his nostrils, but it was only a start.  

"Who in blazes is this prick?" one of the archers muttered, barely evading one of Bianca's bolts below. 

"VARRIC TETHRAS!" the younger brother shouted as he shot, taking down an archer who tried to take cover near a statue. It was then an epiphany surfaced: The busts, the displays of wealth, this whole damned mansion itself. He would make Bartrand suffer in more ways than one. He stopped shooting long enough to topple a display of prized plates, letting their delicate clay shatter against the floor. From cover, he fired bolts into the bust of an ancestor until it crashed and chipped on its face.

"What are you doing?!" Bartrand’s voice exclaimed as a dangerous smile crossed Varric's lips. 

As Varric continued with his destruction, Bartrand emerged from the shadows only long enough to hurl something with his uninjured arm at the upper ledge, exploding in a shower of bright flames. The scorching heat seared Varric's leather duster and forced him away from the pillar as everything that could catch flame near him did. Out of cover, Varric dove to evade arrows until he reached another pillar for protection.

"What am I paying you blighters for? Can't you kill one dwarf?!" Bartrand berated the mercenaries. A prized woven tapestry was burning up, as were the wooden display plaques of antique weaponry which clanged as they smashed into the ground. The sofa was engulfed, as were his business ledgers on the nearby table. Madly, he dashed out for the books, but not unarmed. 

Varric spotted his brother again, shooting only once before he noticed the grenade flying toward him. It hit the wall behind him in another violent ignition as Bianca's bolt struck the flesh of Bartrand's thigh. Varric was less protected this time, suffering burns to his chest and legs where bits of fabric sizzled against his skin. On the floor of the main hall, Bartrand called for his remaining guards as he painfully limped away, trailing blood. 

The rug at Varric's feet was now aflame and smoke too close. His airway clenched, refusing to take in breaths without coughing, and his eyes could not see beyond mists of grey and orange. He patted out the spots upon him before stumbling toward the stairwell with Bianca still in hand, his boots becoming so hot they could have melted into his feet. "No," Varric uttered in desperation as he glimpsed a few silhouettes shuffling out the vestibule. 

Trapped between fire ahead and at his back, Varric leapt over the railing to the floor below, landing hard. A banner with the sigil of House Tethras burned overhead, placed where their parents' portraits once hung. Through the haze of smoke, Varric stepped over fallen heirlooms, pieces of statuary, and bodies until his knees failed him. He pulled himself the rest of the way to the front door, heaving it open as he tried for one last breath. 

~{The Guard-Captain’s Office}~

"You're telling me this was a simple accident in your brother's estate, dead mercenaries and all?" Aveline asked from across her desk of stacked papers. 

"What can I say? Some people can’t handle that much wine and dwarven ale," Varric lied nonchalantly, his skin still bearing black marks of smoke. 

"How does that explain the bolts found in the bodies? Or the absence of your brother? We can’t seem to locate Bartrand for questioning," Aveline interrogated. 

"I hope you'll let me know if you do. I'm quite worried about him," Varric played coy. 

Aveline, unsold on Varric’s tale, looked to Hawke as she stood near the locked door. "You've only just returned from your expedition and look what's happened in Hightown," she seemed to accuse. 

"I had nothing to do with this one," Hawke admitted. 

"I know, or you'd be in this chair," Aveline retorted before refocusing on the dwarf in front of her. "Where is Bartrand, Varric? What happened in that mansion?"

Varric sat cleverly stone-faced until Hawke herself lost patience. "Tell her, Varric. Just tell her what happened."

His sly expression changed to subdued anger as he looked once at Hawke and then back to the Guard-Captain. He took one deep breath before telling his true tale. "Bartrand tried to kill us in the Deep Roads. Left us for dead. We barely made it back alive,” he explained. “I wanted to make a case against him once we reached the city again, a proper case with the courts, but..."  

"You should've come to me. As soon as you both returned, you should've come to me with this," Aveline interrupted. 

"Varric told Carver and I to lay low while he handled it," Hawke defended herself. 

"I just wanted to be the one to end him. You ever been betrayed by your own family, Guard-Captain? It's not something you just forgive,” Varric confessed. 

"Maker, what a mess," Aveline exhaled and sat back. "I don't care to drag you through the courts for killing a few mercenaries, but the mansion fire is another issue. If you promise to pay for the cleanup, I'll let you off without an arson charge." 

The Guard-Captain was serious enough, so Varric agreed. She dismissed him, but when Hawke turned to leave as well, Aveline demanded a word, without the dwarf.

~

"I don't want reports about you coming into this office," Aveline protested once Varric left. "There's only so much I can do if you get arrested."

Hawke brushed it off. "I've been gone a month, and I'm not the only person who's done a few favors for coin."

"Involving yourself with a Magistrate's family was stupid. I don't understand why you didn't let the Guard handle it," Aveline whispered as she began to pace, visibly stressed. 

Maker, Aveline knew about that? "He was paying well, but light on the details. He never even told me that was his son, and I didn't let him know after I found out."

"But surely you discovered what the fugitive did, even if Vanard didn't tell you," Aveline reasoned. 

Damn it. Hawke's expression shifted from defensive to guilty as she avoided eye contact. "It made me sick when I heard. Sicker when I heard him talk about it. The coward wanted to die, but I needed the sovereigns, so I forced him out," she admitted. "At least the girl survived. If anything made me want to rip him apart, it was the things she said."

Aveline stalled her pacing. "It wasn't your responsibility. You shouldn't have been anywhere near there, and of course the guards reported the strange bounty hunter who usurped their duties before handing off the fugitive to them. A mask and a hood, Hawke? Give me some credit."

Hawke exhaled and ran her fingers back over her hair. "I know it was wrong. I was desperate," she confessed. Sliding a hand down her throat, ill with considering consequences and that innocent elf girl, she envisioned what might have happened since. "Has he killed again? Is he free?" she asked. The girl's own father feared that would happen if the fugitive was taken alive. 

"His father's status earned him certain privileges. House arrest, mainly," Aveline explained. "He did kill once more. Himself. Vanard hasn't been back in the Keep since it happened. I'm told Kelder was his only heir."

'Better him than some elf kid,' Hawke thought coldly. "Oh. Well, I suppose there is some justice in that. More than Vanard would've given him."

Aveline shrugged, deciding to let the matter rest. "On another note, Brennan tells me you've been to the Gallows. Are you trying to be discovered?" Aveline interrogated further.

Hawke scoffed. "I had some business in the market there, which is open to the public. Stop telling your friends to watch me," she insisted.

"Templars are trained to look on every civilian with suspicion, especially the Knight-Commander's templars. I don't think Wesley would've liked it here," Aveline said before letting out a long exhale. "I know we haven't been the closest of friends... Maker, we never would've met if not for Ostagar..." she trailed off, struggling to find the right words. "But I don't want to see you locked in the Gallows. It would be nice if you took it seriously," she added with a strangely personal tone. 

~

Mari had much to ponder, descending the long staircase down the steps of the Keep. Varric leaned against a wall at the bottom, still unwashed and untreated for his burns.

"I'm sorry, Hawke,” Varric somberly spoke regarding the night before. "I fucked it up."

'Royally,' she thought, but wouldn't berate. "Varric, you don't need to apologize."

“No, I do. I could've finished this between Bartrand and me,” Varric insisted as they continued down the Viscount's Way. Rooks cawed as others swooped to land above the tall portcullis ahead as the sun beamed through a clear blue sky.  

“Are we still in danger from him? What if he’s hiding somewhere, waiting to strike?” she pondered. 

“If he was in the city, it wouldn’t take long for me to find out. I don't think he ever expected this,” Varric answered. "I still don't know what he's told the Guild, or how many of our expedition actually made it back."

“Will the Guild still do business with you if he's gone?” she asked, noting the haggard state he was in. 

“I'm not eager to deal with them, but I will. It wasn’t all for nothing, Hawke,” he stated as she shot him an oddly apprehensive look. “I mean that. I'll make sure you get a return on your investment. I didn’t promise before, but I’m promising you now.” 

“Varric…” she softly tried not to doubt. Wealth seemed too much to hope for at this point, even with the few unique treasures and artifacts they carried out of the Deep Roads. 

“It'll take time, but I will find my brother again, and ask him why.”

~{A Play In Lowtown}~

Human troupers with papier-mâché horns molded to their heads and skin painted greyish bronze stood atop a raised platform, mock spears locked in a stalemate with others in Imperial costumes.

“In the year 6:30, the Age of Steel, a race of giants invaded Seheron from a land unrevealed,” a young actress in rags lilted in verse. “Conquering the north, the Arishok proclaimed, ‘from Tevinter to Rivain, here we shall remain.’” The staged battle commenced and the Imperial soldiers failed to hold off the assault, falling dead one by one.  

This was a dramatization of the Qunari wars, Mari knew. Current tensions couldn't possibly be lost on the playwright, for the shipwrecked warriors still waited in a barred section of the Docks district. A nervous expression dampened Isabela’s carefree grin as her eyes dashed toward the open doors on the main floor, one flight below where she stood.

“Something wrong?” Mari asked.

“I… I don’t think I’ll like this play. Hanged Man later, yeah?” Isabela said before she crept away. 

The stage darkened before lighting once more, revealing a towering man in nefarious black robes who hefted a menacing staff with the head of a dragon. His baritone voice boomed, “I say your White Divine is false, that I be true, but in our grievances with the Qun, our differences are few,” to which the crowd responded with a few disapproving jeers. 

“What is your proposal, O Black Divine? Is your Maker not the same as mine?” a graceful woman in white asked with her hands clasped. A tall white mitre sat atop her head like a pale eagle. 

“What I propose is this: Qarinus and Seheron for me, and the realm of Rivain for thee. We are stronger in each other’s company,” the Black Divine responded as the lashings of battle commenced. 

“But a lasting peace was not to be, for Antiva and Estwatch fell to the dread Qunari,” the girl in rags lamented. Streams of blue fabric waved across the stage to mimic the sea as eyepatch-donning sailors behind facades of ships waged battle with massive dreadnaughts. An unseen stagehand smashed a drum to mimic the sound of blackpowder exploding, frightening some in the crowd. “Unlikely allies of pirates we made, for the Felicisima Armada turned the tide upon the waves.” The crowd cheered as the dreadnought sunk beneath swaying blue sheets. 

Darkness fell again as the dreadnought rose atop the waves ominously. “Yet the Qunari would not relent, returning to prove they were not spent. From the coast of Ostwick they struck at the other free cities, first Starkhaven, then Kirkwall, unleashing their mages without pity,” the White Divine mourned with a single light upon her. One of the costumed ‘Qunari’ returned to the stage which rapidly flashed white to mimic lightning as costumed soldiers stormed on, collapsing one by one as his thundering spell hit them. “But where Starkhaven prevailed, Kirkwall failed,” she said as extras fell to their knees in surrender. “And for four brutal years of occupation, her people toiled in utter subjugation.”

The crowd stirred as battles commenced atop the stage and rose to applause when the ‘Qunari’ collapsed in defeat. The applause was short-lived when they saw the sleek silver mask of a chevalier and heard the actor’s grandiose Orlesian accent as he stood like a peacock in gilded armor. “Long have I fought to break the siege of Kirkwall, and faithfully I have prayed that I would save you all,” he proclaimed, sheathing his blunted sword and supplicating the crowd. “Yet I see the people have had all free thought driven from them, so let them return to the one true religion.” 

Merrill shrunk smaller than she already stood, put off by those last words. Some in the crowd jeered at the Orlesian, as if a chevalier were no different from the Qunari. The play carried on, but Mari stopped paying attention when she spotted a familiar blonde approaching from her right.

“I thought I might find you here,” Anders said. “What do you think of it?” he asked about the theatrical display.

Mari whispered to avoid drawing attention. “Well… if this is how they react to Orlesians, I know people like us wouldn't be welcome.” 

“People like us, or people like us?” he asked slyly, meaning Fereldans or mages. 

“Both,” she knew. 

Anders changed the subject swiftly after a subdued smile came over his face. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you.”

“So talk,” Mari insisted boldly, but her reciprocated smile indicated warmth.  

Anders felt taken aback at her sudden blunt tone, but laughed it off. “Maker’s breath, what have you done with that charming young lady from Lothering?” 

“She might be here somewhere,” Mari jested nonchalantly. 

“Merrill, would you mind if Hawke and I…?” he asked, wishing for a more private audience. 

The Dalish elf looked curiously to Hawke, then to Anders, and back to Hawke again, wondering if it was something dirty. “Oh!” Merrill exclaimed before walking away, turning once with a giddy grin for whatever Anders had in mind. 

“Bartrand is gone. I have far less coin than when I left. We’re alive, but things aren’t good,” she confessed. 

“I know I said it wouldn’t happen again, but…” Anders’s voice softened. “I keep thinking about you.”

“About me?” she asked, suddenly wringing her hands. “And this is a problem?” 

“Well, it’s not a good idea. I’m not a normal man or even a normal mage. I’d hate myself even more if you were hurt because of me," he admitted, much to the annoyance of Justice. 

“Because of you?” she asked in confusion. 

He readied himself to elaborate in sincerity, careful to keep his voice low. “If the templars drag me off one day, they could do to me what they did to Karl. I couldn’t live like that. Someone would have to end it, and that’s if the templars don’t kill me outright. If we were together and they found out, it would be even worse. They’d use one of us to get to the other. There’s also the Wardens and the taint in my blood. It gets worse over time. After a certain point, even if I survive, my body will succumb to it.”

“Anders!” she exclaimed in a startled whisper. 

“So you see, right? You agree it wouldn’t be good for either of us,” he assumed, trying to force a rejection before she could, to soften the blow. 

“You probably tell all the girls this,” Hawke jested, hiding her shock.

“Don’t tease me with that. There hasn’t been anyone in a long time,” Anders looked away. “I didn’t think there could be after…” he trailed off.

“After what?” she asked. “The Wardens?”

He hesitated. "You could say that.”

“Anders, I want to know the truth about something before you say anything else,” she told him. He looked back at her nervously. “You trust me, don’t you?”

“You haven’t given me reason not to,” he answered. Not yet anyway. 

“Why did you really leave the Wardens?” she finally posed the question. 

Anders subtly pursed his lips as he took in his surroundings. Onlookers were focused enough on the play below, but nobody made use of a rickety table and chairs near the wall behind them. He nodded that way and hoped she would follow. 

Hawke could hear the play continuing to the sounds of instruments and rhyming verses when she sat. Whatever Anders would tell must've been ominous indeed, for he wouldn't speak until he felt certain nobody would eavesdrop. “What did your father teach you about abominations?”

It seemed utterly irrelevant, but his question was genuine, so she answered in kind. “It’s when a person is possessed by a demon. I lived my whole life without seeing it happen until that night at the docks,” she recalled, for Anders had been there as well. “That frightened woman captured by Tevinters. I know it wasn’t truly her doing, but at least she killed them.”

Anders nodded somberly. “What if you saw one sooner?” 

“What are you talking about?” She was utterly puzzled now. She never witnessed an abomination before Olivia. Never. 

“I don’t want to scare you. I’m trusting you with this, Hawke… with my life. My… secret,” Anders spoke forbiddingly.

“Are you a blood mage?!” she asked in a scandalized whisper. 

“No,” Anders admitted. “I swear I’m not.”

Hawke paused considering. “What are you then?” 

“More than I was,” he answered, cryptic and vague. “When I was helping the Commander in the Blackmarsh, we met a spirit in the Fade. There was a battle with a darkspawn emissary and a pride demon, and when it was over, we found the spirit trapped on this side of the Veil in the body of a dead Warden. It never meant to cross. It never meant to enter that body, and it didn't know what to do in our world. I’d never met a spirit of its like. I’ve often felt them, but never spoke to one as clearly as I’m speaking to you now. The spirit had no name, only a virtue: Justice.”

‘Maker’s breath,’ she thought apprehensively. “In the Deep Roads, I heard Nathaniel ask you if you really did it. Did what, Anders?”

“Mages in the Wardens are supposed to be outside the Chantry’s authority. The templars already blamed me for the deaths of those who brought me to Vigil’s Keep, but by the time they made their move, Justice and I…” he struggled to finish, realizing how it must have sounded. “I’ll try to explain. Justice was the first being to make me consider helping other mages, rather than only myself. He showed me that if I was free, I owed it to other mages to ensure their freedom.” 

‘Ambitious, but noble,’ she thought. “And how did that progress into… what I think you’re implying?”

“The Commander let a man named Rolan take the Joining. Rolan showed up about a month after my recruitment, calling himself a ‘former templar' who fought at Ostagar, but I knew better. Never saw him before, but I knew.”

“Did you talk to the Commander about him?” she asked. 

Anders nodded in disappointment. “After losing so many Wardens to the darkspawn, and with enemies cropping up in the arling, I think the Commander grew desperate to bolster ranks.”

“What happened with this templar?” she asked, eager to know.

“Justice couldn’t stay as he was. The body he was trapped in was falling apart. I didn’t want to lose my friend, and Justice wanted to help me, so we made a deal with each other. One day, after I visited an old friend in Amaranthine, Rolan tried to kill me… and he would've succeeded, if not for Justice.” 

“So the spirit helped you,” she assumed. Perhaps Anders only had a spirit friend. The man sitting here was no out-of-control monstrosity like Olivia turned into. 

“As he did that night in Hightown when I tried to rescue Karl,” Anders stated chillingly, knowing Hawke would remember. A reluctant understanding fell over her delicate visage. His incredible power that night, his eyes and skin which burned with ethereal fire - it made perfect but haunting sense. “You understand now.”

She broached her next question in a cautious whisper. “How are you in control?”

“I’m always in control, until he comes out. I wouldn’t call myself an abomination, but I am a host. A partner. Justice is part of me. I can explain it in no simpler terms.”

She sat with that admission for a moment. “Do the other Wardens know?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. They only know I killed Rolan. Some travelers were drawn by the screams, and they must’ve reported it. Not that I blame them. There was no going back after that.”

“I see. I’m… sorry,” she sympathized. Somewhere below, the stage curtains closed. 

“You’re the first person I’ve ever told,” he said before letting out a weary breath upon standing. 

“This is a lot, Anders.”

“I know. It’s why I didn’t expect...” he interrupted himself. “I know it would be impossible.” He meant being with Hawke.  

He looked so sad. How could he be possessed when he held such fragile humanity, and if he was a host to a spirit and not a demon, was that completely irredeemable? Perhaps tainted blood was the greatest of his maladies, and maybe there was yet a remedy for that, somewhere. She raised a hand to his stubbled face, her soft touch a surprise. “Hawke…” he let out a single relieved breath. 

Just then, she glimpsed an unmoving shadow at the far side of the floor as the audience emptied, tall and dark, staring steadily at her from behind Anders. Even in Kirkwall, she knew it could only be one person. Apprehension caught her voice. “Forgive me. I need… time,” she said, and left Anders wondering.  

~{Sleepless In The Hovel}~

Mental rest evaded as Mari’s mind cycled from Anders to Varric to Carver and back again. Anders - handsome, tainted, and host to a spirit, and Carver who might've uttered a confession of love somewhere along their terrible journey - something she insisted was impossible since her own feelings became clear. A ballad of rain pelted the building’s walls and street outside, which brought comfort compared to the regular sounds of hacking coughs, sudden screams, sex, and cries of infants in the slums. 

Leandra stirred nearby, but Mari knew something was wrong when her mother’s hands began to reach upward as if drowning or trying to grab hold of something, or someone, in a dream. 

“Mother,” she nudged, but that seemed to worsen the night terror. “Mother!” she insisted louder as she sat up and placed her hands on Leandra’s shoulders. 

Groggy blue eyes opened to the darkened room. Only a hint of cloudy moonlight entered through the barred window, but she could discern the shape of her daughter’s face. “Bethany. Thank the Maker, it was only a dream,” Leandra sighed as the malaise began to lift, but the touch of her daughter's hair was not as wavy as she remembered.

“Mother, it’s me.”

The voice was tragically wrong as well. Leandra’s head collapsed back defeatedly as her chest slowly heaved in a giant painful sob.

~

Before dawn, Carver found his sister sitting alone on the stoop as he did months before. In her old clothes, she looked the part of a discreet smuggler again. 

Seeing her half-dressed brother looking pityingly at her from the building's entrance, Mari explained little. “Mother says the Blight will never be over, not while there’s just three.”

“I heard," he answered. Only Gamlen hadn't woken from Leandra's sobs. 

“But the Blight is over. It’s done,” Mari exhaled in despondence. “I can’t believe this is what we fought so hard to come back to.”

“Maybe…” Carver mused as he sat beside her, considering how much silver he still kept stashed away in his lockbox. “Maybe it’s time we took that ship.”

Chapter Text

“I could get used to this,” Mari remarked contentedly, standing near the bow of the ship.

“It suits you," Carver said, admiring how she wore her hair free now, long enough to brush the middle of her back. "You don't belong in some old fucking estate in Hightown." 

“Where do you see me belonging?" she asked coyly. 

'With me,' the possessive part of him thought before answering, "Somewhere you don't have to fit someone else's boots."

Scraped-together silvers for a mariner named Mac Eanraig had bought Carver and Mari passage aboard the Squall. She was a legitimate trading vessel out of Highever, bound now for Denerim, and her captain tough as barnacles, but sparse on words. Mari remained cautious of him and the others, yet with only sunny skies above and a knitted shawl flapping around her elbows, Mari felt she could finally breathe more clearly than in Kirkwall.  

'Oh, Carver...' she thought, knowing that fierce need to prove himself. She dropped his gaze for a moment, noticing the grizzled captain watching from the quarterdeck, wary. “You know not to lower your guard with these sailors, don’t you? Fereldan doesn’t mean friend,” she warned her brother, shaking her head subtly. 

“I know. I won’t let you down this time,” Carver assured. He no longer possessed a sword to carry, only a dagger at his waist and his own bare hands. 

“Let me down? You haven’t,” Mari chided defensively of him, recalling their own failed murders beneath the earth. “You never have,” she insisted, hoping it would stick. 

Carver tried to believe that, but it was difficult to forgive. They stood so closely whenever on deck that the sailors assumed they were together-together, but that only amused Carver. “You know, twice now someone has called you my missus,” he told her. The wind thankfully obscured voices across the deck when spoken low. 

“And you didn’t correct them,” Mari countered mischievously, biting her lip slightly. 

Was there any harm in letting the others assume? Carver thought not. He looked past Mari’s sunlit eyes for a moment, spotting a dark string of pearls emerging from across vast blue. Land. A flurry of butterflies breezed through Mari’s stomach when she glimpsed the same. It was Ferelden.

“The Storm Coast. I’m told we’ll be sailing around Brandel’s Reach, not Amaranthine,” Carver explained. 

“Pity. I might’ve liked to see where I was born,” she regretted. 

~

The Storm Coast isn’t named thus for nothing, for although Mac Eanraig expertly evaded the first oncoming deluge, the second wasn’t so swiftly avoided in the midst of a foggy eve. Mari retired early to the hammock she alternated with Carver, hoping to rest off an onset of nausea when suddenly, a jolt roused her like a giant battering a dragon. Above deck, mariners scurried to keep the ship afloat, while others suffered similarly rude awakenings below. Two sailors were the first to tumble roughly about the hold, flung from their sleeping spots as thunder and waves did battle against the ship. Mari hung onto the hammock tightly until a savage impact of a wave shoved her out. Feet on the boards, she gasped and clung to the first thing she could reach - a standing beam to keep from being thrown about. A wooden chest skimmed past her, narrowly missing.

Other chests, buckets, bottles, and tables slid and smashed violently, colliding with a few unfortunates and knocking some out cold. The entire ship growled, the sea hungering to swallow the vessel down, tossing and churning its prey when a pair of arms surrounded both Mari and the beam. It startled her for a moment, but she knew these arms, strong and familiar, belonging to someone who would do anything to protect her. 

Her eyes wanted to close, but remained stubbornly open and aware as she clamped to that beam. ‘Shall this ocean be our grave then, deeper than the Deep Roads?’ she wondered morbidly, feeling Carver’s breath on her neck and shoulder until the crashing waves slowly faded to a bearable swaying. It was only then that Carver finally loosened his grip, hands falling away from her as he retreated, leaving her wanting.

The fear had taken the sickness, but Carver had taken away his touch. “I don’t want you to let go yet,” Mari confessed in a whisper as she turned, beckoning. "Stay with me."

“Mari,” he whispered as his hands found her chin and neck, and she advanced, caressing his lips with her own, drawing him closer. 

She worshipped his mouth with her kisses, desperately craving more even as he kissed more intensely. Did he ever kiss like that before, so deeply? Soon enough, he was pressing her up against that beam so they didn’t fall over. She wanted more, still more, so much that her thigh wrapped around his hip, causing Carver to realise that untimely swelling of his below. 

“Not here. We can’t,” he regretted breathlessly, breaking away from her lips, but keeping her in his sure grasp. Her raised foot fell with a slight thud. 

She almost wept as he kissed her forehead in a kind of mercy. "I don't want to hold back anymore," she whispered under his kisses, all other men forgotten. He would give her more, if they’d been anywhere with solitude. He pressed nuzzles into her hair as her eyes opened, herself becoming aware again of the others within the hold, vaguely witness to the lustful display. 

“How strange that my chastity should be guarded by sailors,” she snickered with a defeated smile in the dark.

~{Denerim}~

Five seafaring nights later, they sailed west from the open sea into a gulf with Denerim at its heart - an overgrown village in disrepair, mingled with stout old castles and tall stone walls. Ramshackle roofs appeared so packed to be piled one on top of the next, overlooked by fat round towers, battlements, and in the distance, an ageless spectacle of the old Imperium: Fort Drakon. Carver and Mari thought not of how it all compared to Kirkwall or Cumberland, but only of the archdemon and the tide of darkspawn which assaulted the city only months before. 

On legs that still felt the rocking of the sea, they waded through the damage wrought by the Blight, evident in scars on the city itself and its people. Though much of Denerim was already crumbling before the Blight, many homes and keeps were reduced to mere debris and ash. Heavy pieces of broken stone were still being cleared from streets, congested with native residents and refugees alike. Pigs and chickens wandered freely among rubble, coughing children, and bloodstained cobblestones, and indeed, a cesspool might’ve proved cleaner. Only a few armed guards patrolled the streets, but their presence made Carver somewhat nervous, bidding him to pull up his hood. 

“The army must think I deserted. I did desert,” Carver admitted reluctantly, feeling a lash of guilt, even though he never left out of cowardice. “I can’t help but feel I should’ve been here for that last great battle.”

“You chose us. You came back for us. I doubt they’ve noticed one missing soldier in a time like this,” Mari contended, noting the widespread squalor. “They probably think you died.”

“It’s best they believe that for now. They hang deserters,” Carver answered. 

She squeezed his arm in hers. ‘They wouldn't dare. I'd kill every last one of them,’ she flared silently, keeping him close.  

It’d been a long while since Carver last visited the capital, but he remembered its layout well. They’d docked on the south side of the river, a seedy area, close to brothels and the alienage. Those and a maze of crumbling buildings lay between the docks and the palace district. One of the bridges over the river was broken and yet to be fixed, so they took the long way around which brought them nearer to the city gates. Scorch marks from fire were everywhere, and though the bodies had been moved, the blood of many races still stained the ground. That place, more than any other, still bore the stench of death. 

A dreary and humid afternoon running favours for a local Chanter through the Market district earned the pair a small pouch of silvers, and the flies began to settle once the sun waned. “All sins are forgiven! All crimes pardoned! Let no soul harbour guilt!” a balding old Chanter recited in a form of thanks.

‘I suppose this is what they can spare,’ Mari thought, hiding her disappointment. "Thank you," she nodded politely. 

Carver stood examining a board where letters were stacked a dozen to a nail, all from those searching for missing friends and family. He read the names silently: Irvine. Langley. Surana. Norwood. Couldry. Tabris. Hundreds more. He didn’t recognize any.

“Well, shall we go?” Mari asked him joylessly.

He smiled sadly and took her hand in his, nodding subtly. He could’ve kissed that hand. “There’s nothing for us here,” he answered. 

Though the nearby Gnawed Noble Tavern was certainly better kept than the Hanged Man, and Mari held enough silver to rent a room, the pair settled for a booth instead. A blonde waitress brought them brown rye bread and butter, and each a glass of reddish piquette which Mari amusedly sipped and Carver paced himself. They sat not on opposing sides, but together on the same bench, close, squeezed cosily into a corner with inexorable smiles and effortless fits of laughter. This seemed to irritate the proprietress, who twice suggested a small table for the two, and both times was refused. 

When nobles came calling for supper, a freckled minstrel lad brought out his lute and began to pluck a slow tune of a song half-remembered. Feeling that minstrel strum on her heartstrings, Mari quieted, and Carver snaked an arm around her so she could better rest her head on his shoulder. 

“Would we still be like this, if we’d come here instead of Kirkwall?” she asked quietly, entwining his free hand in both of hers, his palm and fingers a fair bit rougher than her own.

“Maybe it would’ve happened sooner,” he answered, nuzzling her hair. 

She looked up at him, sobering, but hesitating with words. “You told me something in the Deep Roads. Did you… mean it, or was it only the rush of battle?” she asked. Or did she imagine it? 

A smile crept on the corners of Carver’s mouth, recalling that reckless clash with the ogre. “A bit of both, but I meant it,” he confessed without shame. He was done feeling ashamed over this. “What’s wrong?” he asked, seeing the concern on her face.

“Wrong?” she scoffed softly at their predicament. “It doesn’t feel wrong. That’s the strangest part. It doesn’t feel bad or wrong,” she admitted, her gaze falling to those soft lips of his. 

“We’ll be alright,” he whispered, leaning into a kiss sensually as if she still needed winning over. Her hands found his neck and her kisses quickly became passionate.

“Edwina! Perhaps those two should take a room!” a noblewoman scolded from the next booth, drawing the proprietress’s attention. The minstrel even stopped the lute’s song. 

“Want to?” Carver whispered, pupils dark and wide. 

“I…” Mari considered it, but the air of the tavern felt so humid and stifled. “I wish to feel the grass under my feet tonight,” she decided dreamily. 

“So let it be,” Carver answered as if suddenly a man of devout faith. He placed a single silver for a tip on the booth’s table while Mari ran her fingers over her hair, combing away messy strays as if that mattered to Carver. Then, he took her hand and led her away. 

~

Passing through Denerim’s battered gates and bloodstained ground, together they took the West Road under a sublime dome of azure dusk. Carver finally let down his hood and stood tall, no longer hiding, his black hair tickling his cheekbones where it fell. Denerim faded low and small as patches of green grass, shrubs, and sprawling whitewoods grew ever more stubbornly near the Drakon River. The Voyager strung in stars began to sail high in the distance, and a brisk breeze blew sweet-smelling petals from lilacs around Carver and Mari both. She smiled wide and began to laugh with joy, and Carver followed suit, spurring them both to a frolicking run through the brush. 

A few grazing wild harts fled prancing across the shimmering glade, their tails flashing like candles above swaying grass. Mari’s shawl waved like a fish’s tail amid falling blossoms with her soft laughter echoing, and Carver wanted to catch her and love her right there, but the sight was too lovely to spoil. The sky darkened to ever deeper blue as their troubles blew away, and little glows of yellow sparked within grass and trees. Both knew them as fireflies, luminescent little creatures looking for mates, and Mari began to slow. Her breath left her when Carver spun her around and lifted her high above himself, rotating and gazing not at the starry sky or fireflies, but into her dazzling eyes as he lowered her to her feet. 

The terrain grew rougher near peaks to the south, far away from the roads, blissfully lost in the night. Through billowing trees and swaying heathers, Mari spotted a ruined tower, taken back by centuries and nature. She smiled, and it was her who led this time, as if a promise of heaven waited at the top. Moonlight bathed the old tower stones, streaming through where it had broken long ago. Small white wildflowers claimed parts of the floor, and Mari knew them as Andraste’s Grace. She removed her shoes upon entering, but there was no door. She walked within as Carver watched, her shawl trailing behind like some veil of starlight, and she seemed no more a stranger to this place than the blossoms around her feet. She turned back with a certain knowing, bidding him to enter. 

Carver’s heart skipped a beat, and he threw off his cloak and the daggered belt at his waist before approaching such ethereal grace. She held out her arms to embrace him, settling on the muscles of his chest when he reached her, while he caressed around the back of her waist. Never had he beheld such beauty, or thought it existed, and she’d never seen eyes so blue, as if her entire universe rested within his soul. She wanted him now, not never. “Brother,” she called him in a whisper, so he finally joined her mouth in a kiss. 

Clothing fell carelessly to the ground, first Mari tugging at the ties of his tunic, and Carver helping her with her dress and shift. Carver removed his boots, quickly followed by his trousers, which collapsed around his ankles as he stepped out of them. Mari’s hands traced the muscles of his arms as Carver kissed ardently down her neck, her voice quavering from the touch of his teeth and tongue, and giving a shy gasp when he untied the linen brassier from around her back. Unbound breasts fell forward, but he quickly caught them in his eager grasp, their jellied flesh enough to fill each hand. He kissed Mari’s collarbone and trailed across her breasts, worshipping the skin where arrows struck her only weeks ago. Her heart pounded beneath his breath, her fingers tousling Carver’s hair and struggling to remain upright in front of him. Now on bended knee, Carver kissed down her belly, looking back up at her once more as he drew down her underwear, sliding them over her hips and letting them fall away. That sacred place of dark hair lay between her hips, the same shadowy shade as on her head, but she knelt as well, her excitement defeating any patience.  

She kissed him again, pulling Carver possessively over herself, long hair framing her silhouette enchantingly as flushed skin met the cool stones of the floor. Only one of Carver’s legs was between hers, but he didn’t rush to spread them, though his cock stiffened and began to engorge where he hadn’t yet undressed. A hand fondling her breast glided down below, making Mari gasp against his joined mouth when he touched that place no man had ever touched before, so sensitive that it sent a jolt through her body at first contact.   

“Breathe, sister… breathe,” he whispered, breaking their fervent kiss. He gazed into her eyes, fingers taking a reverently slow pace at the delicate skin of her vulva and clit, but her focus went hazy as she inhaled deliberate, deep breaths and sighed through each one. He kissed down her jaw and neck, her arms holding him devotedly, both hungering for more as she became slick against his fingers. Wet stroking gave way to gently sliding his index in, beckoning sugary sweet sighs from her throat. Mari’s heart beat so heavily that it could’ve exploded as that digit of his explored her, penetrating her from shallow to deep till her cunt practically swallowed him. “That’s it, yes, make it wetter for me,” he breathed encouragingly as he kissed her breast, taking a plump pink nipple into his mouth, making Mari giggle in surprise. A wicked smile flashed across her lips when his tongue excited the sensitive skin there, licking it until she gave a little scream. Maker, his erection swelled so hard it could probably tear through the linen if not freed soon. He needed to fuck. 

As Carver urged another finger inside, he looked deep into Mari’s partly-lidded eyes for an answer. “Too much?” he asked, unsure, though her sex certainly gave more slip the longer he prepared her. Maker, had he ever felt a cunt this wet? Neither her voice nor her hazy pupils told a coherent answer, still acclimating to this much girth, so Carver kept it at two. At this rate, he might spatter before he could even shove his cock inside, though from how she clinched and clamped deliciously around his digits, he knew she would be the best fuck of his life.

Mari’s legs began to tremble down to her toes, her moans rising to forceful whimpers, and her grip on Carver’s shoulders tightened as he brought more and more sweetness and pleasure. He whispered commandingly near her neck, “If you need to come, just come.” What did that mean? A few more shaky, shallow breaths and her mouth opened, crying out, her whole body heaving repeatedly against his fingers, wailing in blissful surprise over and over as he worked those tidal waves out of her. Carver breathed hotly through his own smile against her cheek when it passed. So, that’s what it meant. Stars twinkled like diamonds far above Carver on the canopy of sky, and Mari giggled breathlessly, still feeling his digits within.  

Carver withdrew, his fingers slippery and shining with her. Still shivering and humming from such recent pleasure, Carver muttered hungrily near her ear, “I need you. I need you now, sister, I can’t wait anymore.” Her attention went to him, skin from head to toe electrified, and soothingly grazed her fingers from his ears to his neck, sympathising with his need. 

“Yes, I’ve wanted this so long,” she admitted in a tender whisper. Carver climbed off her and tugged down his drawers, freeing the hands-free weapon imprisoned within, bordered by the same dark hair as hers. Mari looked up at him glistening with sweat, fondling her own breasts as her parts tingled, with her toes already curling lightly in anticipation. “I’m ready, brother. Please,” she beckoned, lustful eyes drinking in the etched muscular lines of such sublime male form.

He descended like a shadow over her, covering her with his body as she parted her legs around him, thumbing his pouty bottom lip teasingly when her hands found him again. Stiff cock brushed high on the inside of her thigh, twitching and leaking a few clear drops, but she wasn't ready to take it in hand. Bold by nature and bursting with craving for her, Carver began to rub its slick head against her soaked entrance, up and down her clit, the squishy sounds of it nearly drowned by their own breaths. The mere touch of his cock was enough to make Mari’s heart race wildly. “I need it to be you. I want it to be you. I trust you,” she told him between feverish kisses. She stretched as he pressed his member into her, the pressure a melody of pleasure and pain as she sighed, mouth wide and Carver above her. Fuck, Maker, he’d never done it truly naked like this, without a sleeve around him. His heart could’ve burst as he sank deep into her cunt, grasping one of her hands and bringing it over her head, entwining fingers with his own. “Carver,” she delicately whimpered, her whole body trembling as he began to rock them both back and forth, his motions slow, but steady, grinding against her hips. A throaty moan escaped his lips and he broke eye contact, losing himself. 

Carver drew breaths deeply and roughly beside her ear, his black hair blending with her own, and she could see his muscled shoulders rising and falling with her knees on each side of him. She liked that, and it felt better and better the more she breathed. “Mari… Mari…” Carver began to moan rapturously, his pace quickening. 

“Yes…” she sighed, throwing her head back as he fucked her. 

Forceful groans escaped his lungs as he let go of her hand. Mari gasped at the sudden void below as he withdrew, thick white spend exploding forth onto the dark curls of her open mound as Carver rapidly stroked it out, some hitting her abdomen. He’d held it in for so long, and it was all for her. He growled until the last of his load dripped messily from the head… but he wasn’t yet done. 

Tears had formed in Mari’s eyes through their coupling, but she looked up at Carver in stunned amazement, caressing his sweetly stubborn face with a blissful smile. He had to claim her lips again, such was the affection felt. No one could ever kiss or fuck her like him. “I belong with you, sister,” he uttered between their lips as she snared him in her arms again.

“With me, always…” she keened and felt him pushing his cock inside again, easier than the first, inhaling in surprise. Carver’s primal instincts took over again, thrusting into her, the sounds of it wet and vulgar as the power of his hips and core crashed against her cunt and inside of her thighs. Maker, how was he so good at this? She entwined her legs on the back of his own, shaking like leaves in a storm with each thrust. “Fuck… Oh, fuck me,” she began to beg depravedly, nuzzling his shoulder as he complied.

Blossoms of Andraste’s Grace were crushed beneath them, some stuck and scattered in Mari’s hair, but it only made her more beautiful. ‘There’s no one else, Mari, I swear,’ he promised without spoken words as he kept up his hard pace. 

“I…” Mari uttered, barely able to speak sense, breathing hot against him as he sunk his cock deeper than ever, planting it there for a long moment, savouring the moan it wrought from her. “Ohhh…” He plunged in again, her legs quaking as he railed, himself nearing another peak. Maker. Brother. Carver. Ohhh. Ohhhh. She exploded again, crying out in ecstasy, her toes curling out of her control. Carver’s thrusts became rough and fast as she squeezed his cock, gasping as his own muscles went rigid, when finally, any resistance gave way. Groaning harshly, he loosed again, his shaft still deep inside her. The grip of Mari encompassing him and her own dulcet cries urged him to fuck through it with several more deep, insistent, possessive thrusts, claiming her as he moaned the last of it. Maker, he’d never done that before, but it felt right with her. Utter consummation. 

‘Did he…?’ Mari wondered, barely catching her breath as Carver trembled, still planted deep as a sword. He swallowed and opened eyes of dark azure, sobering for a moment as he stroked both sides of Mari's face, glistening and rosy, both understanding what they’d tempted. He almost wanted to apologise, and perhaps he should’ve, but Mari shook her head lightly. “It’s alright,” she murmured hazily and sweetly, feeling the wetness of it overflow, legs still shivering atop his, and Carver felt spent seed dripping down his sack.

He collapsed atop her, ravishing her with kisses once more, and reached an arm between her back and the old stones below. Maker, he’d never loved anyone this much, adoration of her unrestrained and shown by the effortless dimpled smile that lit his face. He drew Mari over him this time, making her exhale in surprise from the shift in weight. 

He beheld her naked from below now. No flower or jewel in Thedas could possibly be more radiant, more beautiful, lovelier, or more exquisite than his own sister above him on this night. He’d never forget this moment, Mari draped only in moonlight and surrounded by stars, both thighs straddling him. “I love you, sister… You know that, right?” The question rolled off his tongue before he could even phrase it in his head. 

She giggled softly. “So you’ve confessed to me once before,” she teased, her fingers tracing his pecs before coming to rest midway down his belly.

“You don’t feel the same?” he asked.

She leaned closer, those long ebony tresses falling around her breasts and elbows. “Perhaps I’m just saving it for an inopportune moment like you did,” she teased again, biting her lip.

“Then answer me this,” he instructed, still in the midst of euphoria. “Do you love the way I kiss you?” he asked, propping himself up, grazing a thumb over Mari’s mouth and gently down her throat.

“Yes,” she confessed, craving his caress.

Those big hands of his snaked their way down, squeezing the shapely curve of her ass before coming back up to fondle her tits. His cock began to throb inside her again, perhaps to give the last of what he’d held back. “And the way I touch you? That too?” he asked. 

“Yes,” she nodded. “And the way you dance with me, how we fit together like this,” she added, halfway between a giggle and a moan. She began to stroke that bundle of nerves at the most sensitive spot above where his cock was still buried, trembling lightly as her hips rocked forward gently. Carver’s grip found her thighs, shifting his hips beneath hers, aiding that sweet friction. She’s good at this. 

‘Yes, touch yourself, love,’ he urged silently, slick streams of cum dripping down the base of his shaft. She began to grind harder, more insistently, keening and throwing her head back. Carver matched her pace, amazed at what a fucking natural she was. 

“Once more… please… please…” she moaned slow. He couldn’t refuse. He pulled Mari closer and thrusted into her faster and wilder, making her quake all over. She screamed as he did it, eyes shut tight, but he never took his own off her. 

Even his own legs trembled with the effort he gave, his strong arms holding Mari close to him. Her hips quickly gyrated back and forth uncontrollably against him, the inside of her thighs slippery with cum, squealing and panting incoherently at the intensity.

His pulse pounded as rapidly as his own cock, and the feel of Mari on him, screaming, wailing, riding him, or rather hanging on for dear life, was enough for that irresistible electric tingle of tension to build low in his core. Through increasingly wet thrusts, that peak rose higher and higher until his own head fell back, ready to let it take him. He couldn’t have held this tide back if his life depended on it, so he surrendered, hips jolting, then moaning violently as massive spurts from his stones shot through his shaft into her, all senses leaving him except for this.

Mari whimpered collapsing over him, her body quivering, feeling his cock pulsate, knowing what he was doing inside her. The muscles of her soaked cunt slowly clenched around him through no will of her own, loosening for a moment, then tightening again. An unwilling primal reaction, though it felt all the sweeter. She breathed softly by Carver’s ear as he finally returned to this realm and this broken tower, his grip on her relaxing.

He stroked her hair delicately, both recovering. She didn’t wish to move after becoming one with him, and even gentle kisses placed above her brow wouldn’t reassure her. Her legs felt too weak to even stand. Carver brushed hair back from her face where it fell messily. The pupils of her eyes had grown so round and black as to leave only a sliver of violet around them, and long lashes shone wet with tears, and Carver had a few of his own. He placed his forehead to hers to prove that he was still here, they were together, and he wasn’t going anywhere. Slowly, he sat them both up and turned with her clinging to him, lowering them back down to where Mari was once again against the floor. 

Gentle as her silky hands releasing him, he extricated himself from her, the head of his shaft making a soft pop against her folds when it came out. She brought her thighs together finally and laid divinely still, only now noticing the sound of wind dancing through the glen below. Carver gathered Mari’s clothing and the cloak he’d removed earlier, just a few feet from them both, and laid down next to her, that pale aura of moonlight remaining upon them both. 

He brought his arm around her again for warmth, as well as the cloak. Both remained quiet, gazing up at that eternal celestial abyss, when Carver recognized a certain cluster. “Isn’t that the one the lovers’ tale is about?” he asked.

Mari may not have noticed if he hadn't spoken, still enraptured by what just transpired between them. “That cluster there?” she asked, pointing at it. Above shone a glimmering beacon high in the heavens, higher than any tower, and a sparkling ribbon of crystals flowing away. “Yes,” she exhaled with a hint of despair. 

“You don’t like that story?” he asked, holding her a little closer. 

She shook her head slightly, her bottom lip beginning to quiver in sorrow. “It’s very sad,” she answered. “See the bright one there, on the other side? That’s the soldier.”

“I see it,” Carver answered. He imagined the silver shine to be a glint from the man’s sword, or perhaps a shield. Better yet, a greatsword.

“And poor Alindra is over there, across her river of tears, crying forever for her beloved, even after they couldn't be together in life,” Mari explained. Two teardrops escaped her own eyes, and she sniffled. 

“I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Carver said, reaching for her hand that lay over her belly, pulling it to rest over his own heart. “It is a sad story,” he admitted. He wouldn’t want to be away from Mari, or to be kept from her, even in death. That cruelty was enough to make his own eyes water. 

“Too sad,” she affirmed, turning sideways, nestling her head on the side of Carver’s chest, feeling the slow breathing motion of his lungs. She draped her arm over him as if to keep him from falling up into the sky to become his own tragic tale. 

He nuzzled her, feeling her warm tears against his skin, wishing to slay all her sorrows, to make her smile again on such a perfect night that they would remember forever. “Let’s say that… just for tonight, Alindra is with her soldier love again. They're together.” 

"For only one night? It wouldn't be enough," Mari pitied the idea. She didn't look up.

"Then every time we look up at these stars," he proposed decisively. "See the river? It reaches across now, and there's her soldier, making his way back to her," Carver imagined out loud.

"She's supposed to go to him," Mari corrected, raising her head enough to look at Carver, a smile of hers hinting at this forgotten detail.

"And so she is," he concluded, joining Mari's lips ardently once more.