#The Small Hands of Chokedamp

[sheilajsn]

The Hexologists de Josiah Bancroft

Yo recibí una copia de The Hexologists de Josiah Bancroft como parte del Novel Suspects Insiders Club. El libro es el primero de la serie del mismo nombre. La serie gira alreadedor de un matrimonio, Isolde y Warren Wilby, quienes son investigadores mágicos. La historia se desarrolla en la ciudad ficticia de Berbiton; una ciudad llena de secretos, misterio y, por supuesto, magia. Pero, cuando…

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#Josiah Bancroft #Novel Suspects #The Hexologists #The Small Hands of Chokedamp

[freckles-and-books]

Currently reading! I read the short story, The Small Hands of Chokedamp, that introduced this world and characters last night, and I thought it was so fun!

I haven’t been super invested in a story since the beginning of October, so I’m hoping this is the book I need right now.

#the hexologists #josiah bancroft #books #fantasy mystery #fantasy books

[pinkfadespirit]

“I never noticed your eyes were this [colour].” - for M!Handers?

I decided I wanted to use this prompt for my custom m!Hawke, who has really pretty eyes. I'm not sure about his first name at the moment because I decided to change it and I'm still not sure what would suit him best (this is probably why I usually stick to Garrett 😂). This is my first time publishing something about him! The only other thing I've written is the first chapter of an origin story about how he became a blood mage. Which I never got around to finishing. I hope to get back to it one day, but for now, here's a small piece about him and Anders sneaking into the Viscount's private gardens for @dadrunkwriting

...

It doesn’t feel much like Kirkwall up in this place. With each step Anders takes the grass is soft under his boots. The air is almost clean and he can sort of see why Hawke and Merrill like it here. He turns his head up to see the bright blue sky criss-crossed with branches adorned in soft pink blossom. It is certainly pretty.  

But when Anders looks back down, his eyes fall on Hawke with his ragged black leathers and unkempt hair and it doesn’t quite make sense after all. This place is pleasant but in such a Hightown way that Anders can’t quite enjoy it. Hawke is the wildest thing here. Even just walking along by Anders' side, not saying a word, he’s a piece of the sublime out of place in the pretty mundane. Anders can’t understand why it doesn't bother Hawke, knowing everything that lies beneath their feet. What enjoyment is there to be found for people like them in a place like this? 

“You come here a lot?” Anders begins tentatively. Breaking the silence around Hawke has always felt like a physical thing. He’s so comfortable in it. It’s strange to Anders how often he feels that way too around him. Anders is a talker. He’s never been good at letting silence be. Except for with Hawke. Sometimes anyway.  

“I like the quiet,” says Hawke, doing that thing where he hears the real question underneath the one Anders has asked aloud. 

“Yet you brought me.” Anders makes sure to let Hawke hear the irony colouring his tone.  

Hawke smiles at it, a small shy twist of his lips. “I like being with you too.” 

Anders doesn’t quite know how to reply to that. Justice doesn’t like it. Anders sort of does. Anything that makes them think that way, like they’re two rather than one, is usually bad news. Anders tries to ignore it. “Well, there are plenty of places to go. Not that this isn't lovely but...” he trailed off. He’s being a bore again. Isn’t that what everyone is always telling him? Hawke never says it out loud but Anders is sure he must have thought it enough times. He doesn't know why it bothers him so much.  

“I thought you could use the air,” Hawke says quietly.  

There's nothing argumentative in his tone but that doesn’t stop Anders from replying, “So could a lot of people.” 

Hawke frowns at him. Anders wonders if he’s also thinking about the recent chokedamp incident in Darktown or if he just thinks Anders is being an ass.  

He opens his mouth to apologise because he knows Hawke is just trying to be nice but he doesn't get the chance before Hawke turns his head like he's listening to something. Then he takes Anders’ hand and starts moving fast, tugging Anders along behind him.  

The next thing Anders knows he's being pushed back against the rough bark of a tree and when he looks down at Hawke there’s a certain gleam in his dark eyes. Up close like this he sees they aren’t quite black but a deep dark brown. There's a faded smear over the arch of his nose that Anders can only hope isn't blood. He’s unshaven and largely unwashed despite the fact that of the two of them, only Anders lives in a sewer. Hawke and his mother have been comfortably settled in Hightown for months now. And when he looks up at Anders with a smirk to match that gleam of mischief in his eyes and says, “I thought I heard something,” Anders suddenly gets it. 

He laughs quietly. “That's it, isn't it? You just really don't like doing what you’re supposed to.” 

“You're saying that to me?” Hawke looks somewhere between surprised and amused.  

“Yes. To the Hightown noble who hates Hightown and apparently enjoys sneaking into the Viscount’s private gardens without invitation because of how many other nobles it would piss off if you were caught.”  

Hawke's lips twitch into another smile that lasts just a moment before the corners droop and he’s frowning again. “Is that how you think of me? As a noble? Are... Are you upset with me for moving up here?” 

“No,” Anders sighs. “No, Hawke, I know you're just looking out for your mother. And it’s better for that house to go to you than another band of slavers...” Of all the things to be upset with Hawke for, rising up to the rank of nobility is low on the list.  

But Hawke has also done a lot for him and Anders doesn’t want to bring up old arguments.  

Perhaps sensing something amiss, Hawke insists, “I didn’t want it, you know.” 

“I know.” He’s here for his mother. Anders knows that. 

In the quiet that follows Anders picks up on the sound of distant voices signalling they’re not alone in the garden. Hawke presses a hand against Anders’ chest as if to remind him that they’re meant to be hiding. It makes him very aware that’s not the only part of Hawke that’s pressed against him. He’s leaning all the way into him, pinning Anders against the tree with the length of his body. Anders also becomes aware that he doesn’t exactly mind the feeling. He doesn’t remember the last time he had someone close like this. And the fact that it’s Hawke... Anders looks down into those dark eyes and he’s not sure exactly what look he’s giving Hawke but something in it is enough to make his face colour as he steps quickly back.  

Without thinking, Anders grabs his hand. “I thought we were supposed to be hiding,” he whispers but it comes out sounding strange. It sounds a little more like the old Anders. The one who was always breaking rules just for the fun of it. If it surprises Hawke, he gets over it quickly and steps back to press close against Anders once more. It feels so good to have the warmth of another person against him. Even better that it’s Hawke, who has occupied so many of Anders’ thoughts. Even if it’s only late at night when the clinic has closed and he’s not yet asleep that he lets himself indulge in them. Those are the only times they can’t be swept away, or directed elsewhere by a disapproving spirit. And Maker, has Anders indulged.  

Each of those thoughts come back to him now with Hawke’s close proximity and it’s a heady feeling how much he wants him. That’s the part he’s always tried to deny because there are so many reasons he shouldn’t: Justice, the cause, the blood magic. That should be enough to make him want to stay away. But when he looks into those dark eyes all he feels is desire, enough to push all other feelings aside.  

“You’re staring,” Hawke says, barely above a whisper but it’s enough to bring Anders back to reality.  

“Sorry I just... Your eyes. I thought they were black but they’re not. I’ve never noticed the subtle colours in them before...” No sooner are the words out of his mouth than he flushes. What is he doing babbling about Hawke’s eyes? Ridiculous. “Sorry,” he mutters again. 

But Hawke’s lips curl into a smirk. “No need to apologise.” 

The way he holds Anders’ gaze then is almost too much. He’s spent so many years holding back on what he wants and what for? Is he any closer to his goal because of it? It so rarely feels that way and maybe Anders just needs a break. Maybe for once he just needs to think of what he wants right now in this moment. Just for this moment…

Does Hawke want him the same way? Anders has suspected from time to time but never fully been able to tell. But the way he looks at him now makes him think yes. Those dark eyes are locked on his, the smirk fading from his lips, as though Hawke’s too distracted to keep it up. His hand clutches at the front of Anders’ coat like he doesn’t want to let go. Anders doesn’t want him to either.

“Hawke…” 

Fingers close tighter around the fabric at his chest and Anders draws closer, dipping his head almost unconsciously. 

“You there!”

The shout cuts through the haze in Anders’ mind. He pulls back to his full height, head whipping around to see where the interruption might have come from. Sure enough, one of the guards they’d been hiding from has circled round far enough to bring them into view while they were both distracted. “Fuck,” Anders mutters.

The hand releases the grip on his coat and, to Anders’ surprise, drops to his own, fingers slipping between his and holding on tight. Startled Anders looks back to Hawke’s face to find the dazed look wiped from his features, replaced instead by a familiar smirk and that old gleam of mischief in his eyes. He tugs on Anders’ hand. “Run!”

#Thank you for the prompt! #dadrunkwriting #dragon age fanfic #m!handers #handers #anders #male hawke

[tsuraiwrites]

"Shouldn't you be with him/her" for Fenders for DADWC? Please and thank you!

thank you so much for the prompt! this is definitely a piece that needs to be edited sober, but I hope you enjoy what I have here nonetheless. for @dadrunkwriting

Fic: Better to Ask Forgiveness

Darktown is as filthy and miserable as ever when Fenris steps off the lift, only barely missing a puddle eddying with putrid water. He adjusts the hood of his cloak, but even underground, there’s no escaping the rain. It sluices down the walls from pipes and holes above, the sewers for once fulfilling their intended purpose as polluted water forms shallow, fast-moving rivers on the ground. The smell is almost enough to cover the stench of chokedamp and rot.

Fenris moves gingerly, his long familiarity guiding him through the dark passages even with unsure footing. Only once does he slip, his foot plunging into an unpleasantly warm stream of sewage before Fenris can reel back. He curses, trying to shake the worst of the clinging damp away before it can sink into his leggings, but it’s of little use. His mood fouls further but he diligently continues on, not about to let the inconvenience of this whole matter stop him from reaching his destination.

No one bothers him as he approaches the clinic, either well-used to the sight of him or, more likely, wary of the large sword he carries slung over his back. Thus, his trip through the dank warrens of the city is quiet, giving him more than enough time to think.

Or more time to brood, as Varric would no doubt point out should he ever hear of this incident. Bad enough the dwarf was witness to Fenris’ shameful loss of control after killing Hadriana today. Bad enough Fenris put his foot in his mouth hard enough to choke on it not once, but twice. Bad enough that he’d already gone, head hanging, to Hawke’s door to apologize and ask for advice-

Fenris turns the final corner before his destination.

The lantern is out, and that of all things is what makes Fenris hesitate, his steps slowing to a stop as he nears the closed and barred door. If the lantern is out, that must mean the mage inside is asleep or working on his manifesto. The latter he does not care about interrupting, but if Anders is finally getting some sleep for once…

No, Fenris is just making excuses now.

Honestly he had not expected Anders to follow him out of that slaver den onto the coast, but in hindsight he should have; Anders’ footsteps ground in the sand louder than any decent warrior’s would. Fenris had been in no mood to listen to anything a mage had to say at the time, much less accept any platitudes he would surely offer, not after Hadriana tried to drip poison in his ear. So when Anders had put a hand on his shoulder, probably meaning to comfort or to question...

“Get your filthy hands off of me, abomination! Leave me be!”

His hands clench, gauntlets creaking in protest as he wrenches himself out of the recollection, still staring at the half-rotten wood of the door.

“Tell him you’re sorry, Fenris,” Hawke had advised him, as if words between them were ever that easy, when even months into their involvement a number of their conversations still end in sniping, though they’ve been much less vicious about it.

Until now.

Kaffas, but he’s stalling again. Before he can wander in any more mental circles he raises his fist to bang on the door. The wood shudders under his fist, but thankfully holds up under the assault.

“The clinic is closed!” a muffled voice calls from inside, confirming the mage is still awake.

“Then it is good I am not in need of healing,” Fenris says.

Silence descends but for the sound of water dripping, before his keen hearing picks up the rustle of footsteps approaching the door. There is the thump of the bar being lifted, then the healer throws the door open with a deep scowl on his face.

“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be with him?” Anders practically sneers.

Fenris blinks, his irritation giving way to confusion for a moment.

“What are you talking about?”

“You went to Hawke’s house, I saw you with my own eyes. I figured you had your company for the night. Non-mage company.”

Saw him enter Hawke’s mansion? That meant Anders had been all the way in Hightown… to see Fenris? He takes in the mage’s damp hair for a split second before the last part of Anders’ statement sinks in.

“My company- fasta vass, mage, I did not seek Hawke to sleep with him! I went to apologize.”

Anders’ mouth falls open with shock for a long moment, his cheeks flushing with an all-too-familiar anger.

“You went to apologize to Hawke for being an asshole earlier and not to me?”

“Perhaps you can look beyond your own nose for once and realize that I am standing here, speaking to you now!” Fenris snaps, then clenches his teeth as a wave of exhaustion follows. They will get nowhere in this if he flies off the handle at Anders’ every pointed remark. He tries to shove the bubbling anger down, lock it away. It doesn’t work well but his words do, for once, get Anders to close his mouth – and a flicker of blue cracks across the mage’s cheek for a split second before it’s gone. Fenris clenches his teeth but does not remark on the spirit’s presence, no matter how he longs to point out the loss of control it implies.

The spirit is not why he is here.

“May I come in?”

That, finally, seems to prompt the mage to realize they still stand half in the entryway, their discussion readily audible to any passerby.

“Fine,” Anders says, the wrinkle between his brows deepening. He moves out of the doorway and Fenris resists shoving his way in, waiting until the man is well clear to follow.

The clinic echoes with dripping water, though in the weak candlelight Fenris can see the buckets set out to catch the worst of the leaks. The room is thankfully otherwise deserted.

Anders picks his way back to his small, walled-off private space and Fenris watches his back until he reaches a makeshift writing desk. Curls of parchment covered with spidery handwriting cover the surface, but Fenris only has a moment to take them in before Anders turns, pinning him with a scrutinizing look. It finally prompts him to speak.

“I am sorry, for the words I spoke both in the caves, and after. It was wrong of me.”

Anders stands stiff for a moment.

“That’s all you have to say?” he asks.

“I will not try to placate you with flowery words, if that’s what you want,” Fenris grinds out.

“You could promise not to do it again, for a start!” Anders replies.

“Like you, I often do not think before I speak!” he snaps, then closes his eyes and reminds himself he can’t pinch his brow the way he would like to while wearing the gauntlets. “I can’t promise I will not lose my temper, as you well know.”

“I’m not asking you to not get angry, you’re more than entitled to feel anger after everything you’ve been through. I just-” He shakes his head, but before Fenris so much as opens his mouth to reply, he continues. “I thought you’d grown tired of my filthy, abominable hands.” Anders holds out those hands with palms up, spreading staff-calloused fingers wide. His mouth twists up like he’s trying to make a joke, but the words fall flat. “Tired of being with a mage. After the way you acted… You’ve been disgusted by me the whole time, haven’t you?”

“No!” Fenris denies immediately, before his brain can catch up with his mouth. Anders jerks as if surprised by his vehemence, dropping his hands. “That’s not the reason I pushed you away. I... needed to be alone for my own sake, which is exactly why I left without our company in the first place.”

“Then it’s my fault that I followed you?”

“Must you be so willfully obtuse? That’s not what I said.”

“Then what are you saying? Spell it out for me, Fenris, because if I have to listen to one more person tell me about the evils of magic I’m going to scream, I swear to the Maker.”

Fenris wants to laugh. As far as threats go, screaming is the least of what a mage as powerful as Anders could do in response to anyone who challenges him. After a long debate with himself he steps forward, reaching out, half-surprised Anders even lets him take his hand. He is careful not to let the sharp edges of his taloned gauntlets dig into the mage’s skin.

“I’m not disgusted by you. I am conflicted by everything I have experienced at mages’ hands, but you have yet to hurt me with magic.” He takes a deep breath, “I… care for you, and value what we have together. But I need to be alone sometimes to collect myself. After what that bitch Hadriana said-” he cuts himself off before his temper can flare again, looking up to meet Anders’ gaze. “I will not abandon you in a fight, but if I otherwise leave, you must let me go. I will return.” Return to you, pushes itself across his tongue, but he bites it back.

That, he’s not ready to speak aloud.

“...Agreed,” Anders says after a long moment, his whole expression weighed down with expectation. “But I need something from you, too.”

Fenris doesn’t tense – can already guess what the man wants. He waits.

“Unless I actually break out in boils and spine twisting, don’t call me that again,” he says, tone level.

“Agreed.”

“Then I forgive you,” Anders says, easy as that. The mage tugs Fenris closer by the hand, and where Fenris expects to be pulled into a kiss, he’s instead swept into a fierce hug. Tentatively, he wraps his arms around Anders’ torso, trying not to let a faceful of unkempt, damp copper-blond hair get in his mouth. Anders’ grip isn’t quite crushing, but it comes close, and after a long moment Fenris feels himself relaxing against the warmth of the man’s body.

For now, it’s enough

#fic #dragon age #anders/fenris #fenders #da drunk writing circle

[ondemonsanddaydreams]

First Impressions

Nox jerked awake, her breathing ragged and heart racing while her pale eyes darted around the dark room as if she expected to be attacked. It took a few minutes, but she steadied slowly as she recognized the dingy side room of a small house in Lowtown. She lay listening to her adoptive brother shift uncomfortably on the bunk above her and Kassel snoring on the floor beside for what felt like hours before she gave up on returning to sleep and slipped silently from the bed. It didn’t take long to pull on a black jacket over her dark trousers and red, sleeveless shirt, securing at least one blade to her belt before wrapping a forest green scarf around her neck, and pulling on her boots so that she could slip soundlessly out the door with a quick pat on Kassel’s head as she stepped around him.

It didn’t take long for her to find her way into the alleys beneath the city, either, following the by now familiar path into the slums, careful to avoid the chokedamp mist as she made her way deep into the maze-like sewer tunnels and mine shafts using the light of phosphorescent lichen clinging to the slick walls and her own natural night vision to navigate. Or at least until she found what she was looking for: a small band of the local gang, a dwarven crime syndicate looking for a fight. They attacked, looking to steal everything they could from her to sell later, but Nox was fast, agile, and ready for their onslaught, dancing around their weapons and targeting weak points with deadly accuracy. Still, a few arrows and a few blows with maces and swords managed to make it through her guard and by the end of the little brawl, she was bleeding more than she’d expected and actually a little out of breath, fingers digging into the slick layer of lichen, mold, and gods only knew what else that clung to the wall in an attempt to keep herself upright after rifling through their pockets because they wouldn’t be needing their things anymore and her adoptive family could always use the extra funds. Then she started through the tunnels again, holding onto the wall as much as possible and looking for the lit lantern she’d once heard marked the doors of a skilled healer.

Nox found the lantern she was looking for by following a familiar low hum of a wistful tune that seemed to speak of some faraway, long forgotten place, the blood loss and toxic gas making her a little dizzy as she knocked on the door and hoped for the best, sliding down to sit leaned against it and the frame while she waited, her hand pressed to her side where she could swear her ribs shifted more than they should with every breath.

The door opened and Nox slumped sideways at the feet of a rather tired looking man a few years her senior, light hair mussed as if she’d woken him up, the low hum a little clearer now, emanating from a pendant hanging from his neck embedded with mana.

“Sorry to—” she started to push herself back into a sitting position as she spoke but it didn’t seem to be working very well so he crouched beside her to help, quietly taking in the amount of blood on her clothes as she tried again, “sorry to bother you so late, but I uh…” she flashed him a sheepish smile, her pale eyes barely focused, he suspected from the combination blood loss and toxic fog, “I ran into a gang, you see?” The man breathed a heavy sigh before shifting to help Nox to her feet and get them both inside.

“What were you doing out this late?” His voice was quiet and even as he closed the door behind them, probing because he tried to avoid treating criminals when they tended to bring him too many problems.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she raked her fingers through white ended brunette hair when he left her leaned against one of the tables in his little clinic—she sounded deliberately vague, but she didn't seem to be lying if the dark circles under her eyes were anything to go off, “I figured I’d go for a walk… clear my head.” He was pretty sure he could guess what she was trying to clear, most of his patients still had nightmares about the ongoing war beyond the city walls.

“I can heal you,” he started to explain, to ask that in exchange, she not share his location with those hunting him, but to his surprise, she seemed to pick up on what exactly he’d meant and shook her head slightly.

“No, thank you but I’m okay without magic so there’s no need to waste your energy on me,” she spoke as if she was used to being left to suffer for the sake of others and something about it made him want to help her all the more.

“You appear to have several broken ribs and you haven’t stopped bleeding.” Nox flashed him another sheepish grin.

“I’ve had worse if I’m being honest,” the way she said it, he believed her, “but if you can spare some bandages, that’d be appreciated; Ælfreda will kill me if I go back like this again.” He was silent, debating for a moment whether or not to force real treatment on her before he took a deep breath and drew a roll of bandages from one of the crates nearby.

“Only on the condition you let me treat your wounds.” She seemed to hesitate a moment before relenting, pulling the scarf from her neck and shrugging painfully out of her jacket to allow him access to the worst of them and an unintentional glimpse of the knife in the back of her belt. He murmured an apology under his breath as he slid cool fingers up under the side of her shirt to get a better look at the fresh bruising across her ribs there and she shivered at his touch when they grazed a mark burned into her skin, the magic racing like a static shock across the connection. He didn’t look closer, figured there were more important things that required his attention at the moment than an old magic brand.

“Thank you,” her voice was soft when she finally broke her silence again, and tentative, as though she was waiting for him to tell her what the catch was. He didn’t comment, taking a moment to study the ritualistic scars on her arms embedded with a silvery-blue substance he recognized as concentrated mana in a strange combination of Norse culture and something else he wasn’t familiar with. His curiosity was almost enough to distract him completely from the places where blades had nicked her forearms rather than her torso or throat; she’d defended herself well if the wounds were anything to go on, mostly defensive in nature and shallow aside from the few places blades and maces had gotten lucky and slipped past her defense or she'd taken arrows. He made a mental note to look into the marks later to satisfy his curiosity before setting about cleaning and bandaging the worst of the injuries.

“Hall,” he offered her a hand once he’d finished his work, figuring she might be seeing him again in the future. Again she seemed to hesitate before she clasped his hand in a solid grip.

“Nox.”

#writer #write #writing #short story #fiction #nox #magic #first impressions

[tryvyalsynnes]

Hawke’s Mabari

I finally get to post the gorgeous art @lethendralis-paints made for this fic! I’m so excited to be posting the first chapter of my first actual fic in two years!!

1.

Fenris’ consciousness ticked him awake, alerting him to something, but his mind didn’t tell him what it was. Fenris groaned and rolled onto his back, wincing, shielding his eyes with an arm. Sunlight was streaming through the holes in his ceiling.

There it was again—the noise, a barely audible scratching and faint banging coming from outside of his room.

Yawning, he sat up, swung his feet to the floor and rested his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and then picked his leathers off the floor, shook them out, slid into the leggings and shrugged into his tunic, not bothering to fasten the clasps. The noise didn’t sound dangerous. It was probably being made by a cat or a rat.

Still yawning, he made his way down the stairs and stumbled through his gloomy greatroom, still not awake enough to see. The scratching was coming from his front door. It was insistent and repetitive—scratch, scratch… scratch, scratch—as if whoever was making the noise was pausing to listen.

“Coming,” he called, and the noise stopped. He cracked open the door and peeked blearily out.

Hawke’s massive mabari, Maric, pushed the gap wider and forced his way inside, and then turned and grinned, panting with its tongue hanging out.

Fenris examined the outside of his door. There were new, deep claw marks through greying wood and peeling paint.

Ruefully, he shut it and turned to the dog, curious. “To what do I owe this honor?”

Seeing the mabari without Hawke was unusual. The war hound barely ever went visiting; he was always either sleeping in front of Hawke’s fireplace or with Hawke. Maric was wearing kit, too. He had his armor and backpack on.

The mabari barked happily and jumped up. Fenris jerked away as the beast’s huge jaws clomped together near his cheek in greeting.

The dog took off, scrambling through Fenris’ mansion and into his room, scattering tiles and bits of mushroom. Fenris followed at a slower pace, and found the hound sitting by his armour, pawing and nosing it, his tail wagging.

“You want me to dress? To come with you?” Fenris asked, staring. “What is this about?”

The dog barked a sharp affirmative to each question, his tongue lolling out happily.

“All right, let me wash.” Fenris was fully awake. A visit without Hawke was strange enough, but having the dog invite him out had never happened before. He snatched a towel from the floor and strode to his bath.

After a quick scrub, the dog watched approvingly while he strapped on his armour, and then led the way to Fenris’ kitchen where he inspected and restocked the warrior’s pack. At the dog’s insistence, the confused elf kept adding bread and cheese and smoked meat and vegetables and apples until there was nothing left on his shelves.

At Fenris’ weapon rack, the mabari picked out a greatsword. Fenris didn’t object; he was mystified but fully engaged; each new demand was like a piece to a puzzle he had to solve. The sword was one of his favorites, a gift from Hawke, but he couldn’t help teasing a little. “Not an axe or a maul?”

The dog barked at him crossly. Fenris hooked the greatsword on his back, burning with curiosity, and followed the war hound to his next task, gathering every skin he had and filling one with fresh water.

When Fenris was properly outfitted, the mabari led the way out of the mansion and took off toward Lowtown at speed, circling back to snap at Fenris’ heels.

“I cannot run here,” Fenris admonished him. “An elf running in Hightown gets stopped by the guard.” It was true, but not exactly fair; anyone not nobly dressed stood a chance of being stopped in Hightown. Fenris knew some of the guard, notable members of the unit, but not all. He kept his head down. The dog whined impatiently but fell into step beside him.

To humor him Fenris loped down the stairs and through parts of Lowtown, only slowing to a walk in the markets. The mabari led the way to Darktown, and they ran through it together.

“Why didn’t we go through Hawke’s cellar... if we were coming here?” Fenris asked between breaths. “Surely Hawke would have... let you use the key?” The dog grumbled at him and tossed his head—no. They kept running until Fenris saw the familiar lanterns at the door of Anders’ clinic. They were lit. The mabari headed straight for the mage’s doors.

“Here?” Fenris asked incredulously, slowing to a walk. Finding out whatever the dog had planned suddenly became a lot less appealing. The war hound sensed his reluctance and woofed impatiently, jumping at the door until Fenris opened it.

Unsurprisingly, Anders was healing. The people Anders shared his space with gave Fenris wary, shadowed looks, no doubt remembering the fight the two of them had last time he had come. Anders’ patient was a surly human who had an arm in a makeshift splint and looked like a sailor.

Anders looked up and his eyes narrowed. “Fenris? Are you hurt?”

“No,” Fenris answered shortly.

“Then what—?”

Fenris gestured at the dog sitting next to him who was drooling and wagging his tail. “This was his idea.”

The mabari huffed in agreement. Anders’ staff was leaning nearby against a wall. Maric clamped it in his jaws and brought it to Anders, dropping it on the ground at his feet.

“What—no! I don’t want to play fetch or whatever, especially not with my staff!” Anders angrily seized his weapon, scowling at the slobber on it. “I’m busy and you’re in the way! Bad dog! Sit!”

The mabari’s ears flattened and his hackles rose. He snarled and barked back, spit flying and canines flashing. The healer recoiled.

Although he was tempted by the idea of seeing Anders bitten for rudeness, Fenris thought he’d better step between them. There were only a few patients in the clinic, as far as he could tell.

“We can wait. Right?” he asked the dog, holding his hands up soothingly. “You knew he might be working.”

The mabari growled. He stalked stiff-legged to a nearby cooking fire and lay down, staring pointedly at Anders.

Fenris followed him, easing his pack off his shoulders and setting it down beside the war hound. He returned to Anders and helped the mage remove the splint from the injured man. The man hissed and cursed as the healer reset the bone.

“What’s this about?” Anders sent a sidelong scowl at the dog.

Anders’ poor humor was mostly due to fatigue, Fenris saw. There were bags under the mage’s eyes. He looked unkempt and frazzled; some of his hair was flying loose, and his stubble was patchy, too long in some places. “A trip out of town, I think. He made me put together two days worth of supplies.”

“Two days? No.” Anders cast, his hands glowing with blue-white light. “No way. I can’t be gone that long.”

“You could use the break. You look like something spat up by a demon.” Fenris took a quick look at the mage’s shelves. “You are running low on reagents. Come along to gather some herbs.”

“That’s at most an afternoon’s worth of work, not two days! There’s always a risk of chokedamp after it rains, and three ships from Antiva docked this morning. I need to be here.”

“Aye, it means the pox, it does,” the sailor added helpfully, bending and stretching his arm.

“There are other healers in Kirkwall. Circumstance might make the Order allow Gallows mages to use their powers as the Maker intended.” Fenris suggested glibly.

The mage’s scowl deepened. “Don’t start,” he snapped.

“Many thanks, healer.” the sailor’s sour expression lightened into a smile. He slapped three silvers onto the cot before Anders could object, picked up his coat and left. Anders collected the coins with a sigh.

Fenris followed Anders to the next patient, a stout warrior with a lacerated lip and a black eye. He leaned his back against the cot, folded his arms and stared at the floor. There had to be some way to get Anders to agree to come.

“I could forgive some of your gambling debts,” Fenris offered. Anders ignored him. Reluctantly, Fenris added another bribe. “I’ll help process the herbs—cut up elfroot, powder embrium, boil spindleweed...”

Anders considered his proposal, holding the woman’s cut together and healing it.

“If we’re going to be gone for two days, you have to come help in the clinic for two days.”

“Anders—” Fenris warned.

“No pregnancies, I promise, I’ll deal with them,” Anders reassured hastily. “Help me make up salves for the brothels, do the laundry, pull the odd arrow, maybe a bladder stone.”

“Kidney stones too?” asked the warrior hopefully. “I don’t want to pass another one of those.”

“You might prefer it to my searching through your innards. I’m not a mage or a surgeon.” Fenris informed her darkly, and she blanched. He tried to think of a way out. “I have to work. I can’t be here for the entire day.”

“You probably won’t have another,” Anders soothed the woman, patting her shoulder. “There’s one left and it’s small, it most likely will never come out. Eat less cheese.”

To Fenris he insisted, “You spend most of your time drinking and moping. Two full days, unless you get work, or no deal.”

Kaffas.

“Done,” Fenris sighed resignedly. “I’ll douse the lanterns. We’re leaving as soon as you’re finished.”

He shook his head. Two whole days in the clinic, in the healer’s company.

It was Anders’ educated opinion that Fenris was capable of far more than Danarius had intended, and since he was a mage and Anders, he didn’t listen to Fenris’ objections.

For his part, Fenris knew little or nothing about how he had been created—only that Danarius had meant him to be a weapon—and had to admit he didn’t know what his full abilities could be. He was always becoming more attuned to his tattoos. He also had trouble looking into the desperate eyes of Anders’ patients and their families. His solution, so far, had been to avoid Anders and the clinic.

Hawke’s mabari was lying by the fire smiling at him approvingly with his tongue lolling out.

Fenris gave him a black look and mouthed, “You owe me.” The dog shut his mouth and stopped panting.

Together they went through Anders’ kit while the mage finished his work. As usual, Anders had no rations. There wasn’t a scrap of food in the clinic to pack. Fenris added hunger as another source of the mage’s foul temper. Fenris usually took care of victuals when they went with Hawke; they were a team and shared a tent, Hawke preferring the company of his better-humored friends to either of theirs. Anders had charge of their tent, a hand-held crossbow and extra blankets, and Fenris took care of their food, water, and cookware.

When the last patient had been ushered out the door, Anders picked up the tent and slung it on his back. The three of them set off for Lowtown, Hawke’s mabari leading the way.

“What are we doing?” Anders grumbled. “Are we actually going to follow the dog wherever he decides to go?”

The war hound stopped in the Lowtown market outside a butcher’s window. Sausage links lay in baskets behind the counter. The stall smelled of smoke and herbs. It was heavenly, and Fenris’ mouth began to water.

“Why are we here?” Anders leaned against the wall of the building. He scoffed when the dog pointed with his nose at a hanging carcass of a druffalo. “You can’t be serious.”

“You are carrying it.” Fenris told the dog.

The butcher appeared from the darkness at the back of the shop, wiping bloody hands on his apron. “What’ll ye have?”

The war hound peered up into Fenris’ eyes and cocked his head expectantly.

Sighing, Fenris began to guess. “Flank? Ribs? Haunch?” The dog barked. “Haunch. How much?”

The butcher leaned his elbows on the counter, sneering, looking him up and down. “Five silver.”

“That’s outrageous. That price is robbery.” Anders stepped into the butcher’s view. “It’s because he’s an elf, isn’t it?”

“It’s all right, Anders, I have the money.” Fenris muttered. He kept his eyes down and dug into his coin pouch.

“That’s not the point. How’s the hand, Moritz? One silver, thirty copper.”

“Oh, healer. I didn’t see you there.” Moritz’ tone became polite. Fenris noticed a long scar across the man’s palm when he patted the side of the carcass. “This ‘ere was meadow raised, came from a farm in the Marches. Three silver, eighty copper.”

“The forced march to Kirkwall was obviously too much for her. There’s no fat on her and you’re a thankless reprobate,” Anders snapped. “Two silver, ten copper.”

The butcher stared at him incredulously. “’Ere, listen, perhaps the cut isn’t for ye. It’s for the dog, yah? I’ve got offal and ends. Pigs’ ears and feet, fat, heart, brain, lung, liver, bones, beaks, and butt holes. Nug bits. Rat and pigeon too, naught but skin and best for soup. I’ll show ye.” He started to set baskets and trays onto the counter. Maric jumped up and barked with delight.

The butcher wrapped and tied the mabari’s purchases neatly in waxed paper and hemp string, and Fenris loaded them into the dog’s backpack. With the money he saved, he bought the three of them a smoked sausage each, and at other stalls, some sack, and pastries for the road. The war hound held an end of his sausage to the ground with a paw and tore off chunks, devouring it.

“I don’t feel so bad about losing to you at cards now. Do you always have to pay so much?” Anders bit the end off his link.

Fenris shrugged, his mouth full. Prices could be higher for elves. Some shopkeepers made a show of not wanting elven business and charged double or triple, and no one stopped them. Merrill had a sweet way about her, so she didn’t have to pay as much, but Fenris paid what was asked. Neither money nor the opinions of human merchants meant much to him, and he didn’t like haggling. If he couldn’t buy what he wanted, he usually stole it; it made up the difference. “Thank you for leaping to my defense.”

“It was unjust.” Anders took another bite. “That Moritz has some gall. He cut himself so badly last spring I nearly had to amputate. I spent an hour and two bottles of lyrium reconnecting nerves, and this is his thanks?”

Fenris shrugged again. The right to haphazardly interfere with a man’s livelihood might be a bit much to expect. He also had a suspicion druffalo meat might be more expensive than Anders supposed—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the healer eat it—but kept his peace. They’d be fighting soon enough. There was no reason to begin so soon over something so inconsequential.

Hawke’s dog paused at the north gate and waited by the fountain until Fenris had filled the water skins. They followed the mabari into the wilds and it soon became clear that Maric was heading for the Wounded Coast.

Fenris was glad he had come. The weather was fine; a cool breeze was sweeping from the ocean.

He had been right about the mage; Anders needed a rest. The mage straightened, his step quickened, and he looked ahead eagerly, smiling. The weight of his concerns seemed to fall away. “Should we be going by ourselves? I don’t fancy running into bandits.”

“We will scout, but I do not think we need to worry. We walked every path and cave with Hawke a week ago. There was nothing. There has not been much since that gang with the mabari hounds, and we killed the only dragon.”

“That’s true, and we have a hound with us who can smell out any threat.” Anders reached out and petted the dog.

The mabari leaned into his hand and woofed an agreement. He ran ahead of them on the path and off it, crashing through the scrubby brush, doubling back, sniffing the ground, leading them farther into the hills. They ambled after him. The dog was looking for something, and his manner got more urgent.

“I wonder what we are doing here.” Anders paused and leaned on his staff, watching the dog search.

Fenris hummed and nodded, offering the skin of wine he’d bought. Anders took it. Even though the healer couldn’t get drunk, he still liked the taste of alcohol.

They walked for most of the day, back and forth all over the coast. Hawke’s mabari paused often and howled. He was expecting something, but nothing happened.

Fenris killed a rabbit; Anders made them stop when he saw herbs he needed.

Eventually they got to a clearing as far up into the hills as they could get; they could see for miles in every direction. Anders’ bag was full of spindleweed and elfroot.

The hound sniffed through the clearing slowly in a wide circle, and then sat in the middle of it, dejected. He threw back his head and howled mournfully.

Anders found a rock and sat. “It appears we’re at the end of our journey. It’s a pity.”

Fenris climbed a prominence and looked around. He did not know what he was looking for, but he hoped his keen elven eyesight might serve the dog and see something, nonetheless. It seemed a shame that after so much effort, the poor animal would not be able to carry out his goal, whatever it was. The mabari chuffed sadly between howls, ears drooping.

It had been noon by the time they had set out, and now the sun was dropping in the sky. Fenris was about to step down from the rock and begin setting up camp when there was a low, angry, rumbling growl from underbrush.

He crouched and put his hand on the haft of his sword. There was something massive near them. He could see its hulking shape in the bush, but not what it was. He and Anders looked at each other.

Anders was still sitting, appearing unconcerned, smiling. The tips of his fingers winked white with a cold spell. The mabari let out a surprised, joyful bark and a welcoming whine, and his muzzle split into a wide, panting smile.

A huge war hound crept from the scrub. Her hackles were standing, and her teeth were bared in a ferocious snarl.

She was fearsome, larger than Hawke’s hound, and much meaner looking; her body was taut and rippled with muscle. A long, deep, badly-healing wound ran from the top of her head down to her jowl; whatever had made it had taken an eye. Her ears were nicked and flattened close to her skull. She growled and gathered herself threateningly, head low and tail raised, poised to spring at one of them.

“Oh, isn’t she lovely,” Anders grinned.

Maric huffed in agreement and scrambled to meet her, whining. She snapped at him angrily and he danced away from her, circling, insistent, trying to smell her. She snarled at him but Fenris could tell she was softening. Hawke’s dog was being very polite; his head and ears were down. He got his way and they sniffed each other’s bums and then she let him put his nose close to hers.

“A female?” Fenris let out the breath he was holding and stood straight. “Is this why you brought us all the way up here? So you could go on a date?”

Anders chuckled, and then he laughed and stood, leaning on his staff. “They’re well past dating.”

The war hounds looked at him. Maric’s expression was hopeful and he leaned forward, his tail wagging. The female mabari stance was less open. She kept her head down and her tail up like a standard, glaring at Anders.

“I was wondering why you wanted me along. That’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Anders laughed again. “They’re fine. They’re all healthy and growing well. Congratulations.”

#fic #writing #my writing #lethendralis paints #gorgeous art by lethendralis-paints #i finally wrote it #yay #hawke's mabari

[ocean-in-my-rebel-soul]

Small Blessings

[Read on AO3]

The news turned her tongue to cotton, dry and fat in her mouth.

“Are... are you sure, Danica? You’re absolutely sure?” Hawke asked desperately, the teacup rattling in its saucer when she put it down too hard upon the table. “I have a lot of scar tissue, damage—”

A wave of sympathy smoothed over the healer’s face. She took Hawke’s hand in her own and pet it gently. “I’ve been a healer for longer than you’ve been alive, dear girl,” Danica said, “and a mother just as long, I’d wager. You’re two months in, give or take a week.”

Hawke reeled and shoved away from the table. It was too much, too wrong. Her stomach lurched as if the tiny life inside her belly wanted to make itself known. Hawke hung her head in her hands.

“I… take it this isn’t welcome news,” Danica said diplomatically. She shuffled in her seat across the small table, hands folded along its surface. “Does the father know?”

Hawke’s voice broke into a tremulous laugh. “Maker, no.” She pressed a fisted hand to her mouth. “I… I can’t tell him. Not now.”

Not ever, she thought with growing despair. Anders had spent longer and longer nights scribbling in his journals, binding the copies of his manifesto as fast as he could produce them. He spent most of his time with the splintering remnants of the Mage Underground, the stench of revolution as thick as chokedamp on the rare nights he came home to the estate instead of tucking himself in his clinic or wherever else his secret life had taken him for the small hours of the mornings.

He was… different now, in a way that Hawke couldn’t quantify but that smelled like ozone and sulphur, one that sent bells careening wildly in terror in the depths of her heart. Vengeance, Anders had once called it, crying into her shoulder, and he had nearly shaken apart at the mere idea.

Hawke could barely recognize him anymore.

The healer’s voice broke into her spiraling thoughts. “What?” Hawke asked blearily. She wiped her face of the tears that dripped from her chin.

“I said, there are things we can do to help with your situation. If now isn’t the right time.”

Hawke pushed a lank lock of hair from her brow and straightened. “Is there ever a right time for children in Kirkwall?” she asked bitterly. “No, that was uncalled for. I’m sorry.” She shook her head and looked up at the older woman. Warm brown eyes stared back with a surgeon’s attention, a healer through and through.

“Please,” she said. Her fingers twisted anxiously in the thin fabric of the tablecloth. “I can’t do this.”

Danica nodded. She gave a last soft pat to Hawke’s hand and rose to disappear from her line of sight, leaving Hawke to her racing thoughts.

Anders would have said something if he knew. He hadn’t been home more than a handful of times in the last few months, and even that was mostly to take a furtive bath or to hole himself away in the library to frantically collate another copy of Justice’s manifesto before running off again.

Their manifesto, he always objected.

“It’s as much my work as his. We do this together.” Fire burned in his eyes as he spoke, his words hard and clipped. “I can’t stand idly by, not while my fellow mages suffer.”

“And what of you, Anders?” Hawke’s hand rose of its own accord to the sharp line of his jaw. He didn’t turn into the touch as he usually did, giving a shallow shake of his head. She rubbed her thumb along his cheekbone. “You don’t eat, you hardly sleep, and I never see you anymore. When will you rest? You promised—”

“You don’t understand, I have work to do.” He pulled away and paced, his hands pulling at his hair. “I make a difference here, Hawke. I have to do this.”

“Can’t more of your fellows share the burden?”

“They cannot do what needs to be done.”

A chill crawled up her spine at the tone, heavy and dark and tinged with raw power.

He turned to her, eyes blazing blue-white, the Fade crackling along his skin. Anders strode forward. “They need direction. Leadership. I provide.”

“Justice—” Hawke backed away quickly, her shorter strides no match for Anders’ long legs. “He tells you—helps you in this?”

Her hips met the blunt edge of the writing desk and her heart crawled up into her throat. Still, he approached, power emanating from him like heat from the nearby fire. Anders stopped less than a breath away, his focus narrowed to her face as he searched there.

“Let me work, Hawke, and we’ll come back to you, I promise,” he said beseechingly. Justice faded from his skin with a soft rush of mana even she could feel, so close as they were. Anders’ hands gripped her shoulders. “You… you are my home.”

“Then stay,” Hawke breathed. “Just… stay here, with me.” She reached out with a shaking hand to pull him close and press her brow to his. Her voice was a husky rasp when she spoke again. “Please, Anders. I miss you.”

Anders was quiet for a span of breaths, trembling where he stood. She could feel him nearly buckle; a cautious hope rose in her, only to be dashed when his shoulders slumped in a sigh.

“I can’t, love. I have work to do.” Anders brushed a soft kiss to her temple before pulling away. “I’ll be back soon, don’t wait up.”

It had been weeks since she had seen him last, there in the library.

Danica came back, a small bundle in hand. “Take one of these a day with food for three days. You’ll feel sick, crampings, and perhaps a bit of pain. You’ll bleed to pass it and then it will be over.” She peeled back the paper to reveal a trio of small balls the size of Orlesian bonbons, somehow powdery and sticky-looking at the same time. “I suggest a nice, long bath and lots of wine, personally.”

Hawke numbly deposited them in the bag at her belt. “Thank you,” she said hoarsely. She rose reached for her purse only to be waved off.

“Consider it a blessing. Kirkwall is hard on all of us, and, I suspect, even more so on you.” Danica cleared the table of their tea service. “If you have a mind, find the refugee co-op and make a donation there; Darktown needs whatever coin you’ve got more than I do. Though,” she mused, “you’re friends with the healer down there, aren’t you? You know as well as I already.”

A strangled noise tore from Hawke’s throat and she coughed to cover it. “Yeah, I’ll do that,” she said faintly. “I—I’ve gotta go. Thanks for… everything.” Danica may have said something else but Hawke was too numb to hear it, shoving herself into her coat and all but running from the small Lowtown house.

==

A week of cramping and intermittent nausea, and then a heavy bleed not unlike the usual monthly event. That’s all it was, and Hawke felt sick at how glad she was after the bleeding stopped.

She buried herself in a downy cocoon of her bedding. Orana and Bodahn attended to the needs of her house; she could sleep as long as she wanted. As long as she needed.

The bedroom door creaked open and a shush of robes followed. Her heart lurched in her chest, a sweep of knives beneath her ribs. Hawke curled into herself beneath the heavy quilt as he moved about the room, adding another log to crackle in the hearth. Anders surprised her in eventually changing into pajamas and slipping into bed behind her.

“Hawke,” he breathed, molding himself along her back. “I’m home.”

His hand slid over her hip to rest on her abdomen, smoothing up and down the network of scarring there as if in comfort, and he laid a soft kiss at the nape of her neck. Anders smiled into her skin and soon drifted to sleep, long limbs tangled around her.

He smelled of ozone, of bitter smoke and sulphur.

She stared ahead at the wall, mind carefully blank and eyes wet as she watched the firelight shift and play.

#cw: pregnancy #cw: abortion #Hawke #Anders #Handers #Soulrebel Writes #DA2 #Dragon Age 2 #people and relationships are complicated #and sometimes the right choice and best choice aren't easy

[fanfoolishness]

the space between (Hawke x Varric)

(Written for @rosycheeked as part of the Hightown Funk Hawke x Varric challenge.  They requested to see how Hawke and Varric’s relationship changes during the time between DA2 and DAI.)

***

After the Chantry, Kirkwall's changed in many ways. Despite the rubble in the streets and the chaos in the city, the greatest change for Varric is the absence of a single person.

***

For the first several weeks after the Chantry -- that was how people started referring to it, before and after the Chantry shattered -- Varric couldn’t get the smell out of his nose.

Kirkwall had never been a place known for its genteel bouquet, that was true.  Too much the smell of docks and fish work, not to mention the particular sewer stink of chokedamp rising up from Darktown.  Still, though, somehow it had all mixed together with the occasional clear breeze or blooming olive tree to come up with something that had always meant home to him.

Now the city stank of sela petrae and drakestone, of blood and mortar, of bodies rotting in the summer air before they could be burned.  It didn’t matter if he stood in Hightown or on the narrow quays, he still got it, strong and thick: the smell of desperation.

Varric frowned, kicking aside a chunk of loose tile from some rich person’s estate.  This building had survived just fine, aside from sandstone dust dirtying the windows.  One quarter over, though, and Bartrand’s home had had its windows blown clear out. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to it.

He raised his head as he entered one of Hightown’s squares, his feet carrying him on this path through force of habit. Carefully, he allowed himself a look at the familiar red banners of the Hawke estate.  Bodahn and Orana still kept the manor, and Sandal with them. There were no Hawkes in the Hawke estate, though. Not anymore.

Varric made sure Bodahn and Orana were paid just the same regardless; it was one of the few things they’d managed to talk about before she left.  Funny. Fleeing for her life, and all she could do was think about other people.

He’d almost headed to Hawke’s the morning after, barely able to walk after the battle through the city, even with Anders’ healing.  Who else would he talk about this shit with but Hawke? He’d gotten all the way through the Lowtown market and up the mezzanine terrace streets before he remembered that Hawke was gone.

His mouth thinned into a bitter line, his stomach twisting as he remembered.  She’d been beautiful the day it happened, ever as always, raven hair plastered with sweat to her forehead beneath her red hood.  The Champion of Kirkwall was bloodied, bruised, but she was alive, and that much was enough. He’d thought maybe they could get things back the way they used to be, with Meredith and Orsino gone, the fight finished.  Stupid of him, honestly.

They’d been sitting on broken stones, weakly laughing in exhaustion and catching their breath, when they saw her.  The Chantry messenger had cut a pitiful figure, pale with big eyes and her hands trembling on the decree. The way she spoke Hawke’s name had jangled in the looming silence of the gallows.

“We’ll run,” said Hawke, voice ragged.

“We?” Varric had asked.

“Anders can’t stay either, not after this.”  Blondie’s face was pallid, looking more dead than alive, his eyes shuttered.  Hawke shot him a desperate look, then turned to Varric. “But you -- you’ll be fine, Varric, and Kirkwall will need you and Aveline --”

Varric shook his head, willing himself to come out of his reverie.  He didn’t want to think of what had come next. How Varric had nearly begged Hawke to stay, tears in his eyes, in hers.  Varric didn’t want to remember the feeling of his arms around her, nor the way it felt when she shakily pulled away.

He shoved his hands in his pockets and hurried through Hightown, careful to keep his head down as he passed Hawke’s empty estate.  No sense winding himself up to miss her even more than usual.

Varric swallowed, wrinkling his nose.  Powdered drakestone again, the scent biting and mineral.  He wove through piles of rubble, brushing shoulders with Lowtown workers struggling to clear the ash-cloaked avenue, and made his way onwards.  Aveline wanted to talk, and with Hawke and Anders gone, and Fenris hunting slavers, and Isabela seeking a new ship, company was in short supply.  Without Hawke, who were they to each other?

He climbed the stairs to the Viscount’s Way, trying to find something positive about the situation.  

He cracked a grin he didn’t feel.  At least the air in the guards’ quarters would smell a little cleaner.  

***

Hawke sat in a grimy inn in Hercinia, resolutely stirring her spoon through a weak soup of seaweed, a few bay shrimp, and not much else.  It wasn’t much of a breakfast, but it was the only thing the small inn had on offer. She dropped her small hard roll into the soup and spooned the thin broth over it, then took a bite of squishy bread and broth.  It was something, at least.

She missed Orana’s pleasant “Good morning” and the Tevene-style pastries she would bake specially once a week, rich with spicy cinnamon.  She missed her own chair and table, and not this rickety table seating ten surly fisherfolk. She missed her hard-won home. She missed Kirkwall.

A fisherwoman with broad shoulders bumped into her as she sat down, and Hawke’s soup bowl jittered, spilling lukewarm broth onto the wooden table.  “D’you think adding wood to it would improve the flavor?” Hawke asked.

The woman looked at her in staid disbelief, blinking slowly.  “What?”

Hawke swallowed, abashed, and returned to her rickety bowl.  “Never mind,” she muttered, quietly enough that the woman didn’t hear.  “I take it folk here aren’t morning people.”

For a moment she smiled despite herself, Varric coming to mind.  Of all her friends, he was the one who was most decidedly not a morning person. Memories of him emerging blearily from a tent on the Wounded Coast, hair wildly mussed, cursing a blue storm, made her stifle a chuckle.  How she missed him!

She indulged herself, imaging him beside her, making snide comments about the shitty breakfast and the crap decor and how it felt like he was right at home in the Hanged Man.  If only things had been different. Maker’s breath, it’d be good to have him here….

But she looked around the inn, and saw the chairs were all the same height, far too low for a dwarf to sit in and still see above the table.  Hercinia was almost entirely a human town, no alienage to speak of and few merchant dwarves, and Hawke frowned into her bowl of soup. If Varric tried to join her on the long wooden bench, the table would hit at his nose height, which struck her as unfair and demeaning.  It wasn’t a good place for a dwarf.

It wasn’t a good place for her, either, if she was honest, but what would be the point of thinking like that?

Hawke brushed at her eyes, wiping them with the pad of her thumb.  She wished she could write home, let the others know she was all right, but not yet.  Not until she left the Marches. Antiva, maybe, or Rivain; they might be better places for a fugitive.

Her eyes stung, and she wiped at them again.  “I don’t even like shrimp,” she said to nobody in particular.

The fisherwoman turned to her, weather-chapped face wrinkled in confusion.  “Well, you don’t have to eat them,” she said.

“I --” Hawke blinked up at the taller woman, frowning.  “Well, I know that,” she said resignedly. She looked back down at her soup, and stabbed her sodden roll until it disintegrated, bits of soaked bread floating in the thin oily broth and bumping into small overdone shrimp.  She lifted the bowl to her mouth and slurped down the whole sorry thing, feeling sick.

She’d never thought she would miss the Hanged Man’s creamy fish chowder.  She tried to smile at the ludicrousness of the thought, and made a mental note to tell Varric the next time she saw him.

There will be a next time, she told herself sternly.   There has to be.  

The alternative could go fuck itself.

***

Varric settled in to his desk, a mug of ale at his elbow and pen and ink at hand.  He sighed, rubbing his chin, exhausted from the day’s efforts.

Kirkwall was slowly, slowly coming out of its fugue.  No one had heard from Hawke or Anders since it happened, and the Chantry messengers had slowly disappeared, empty-handed.  The city began to recover in their absence.

Hard work helped, but coin seemed to help more for what it could do: namely, inspire said hard work.  Kirkwallers were a practical people, and everything had its price, even the things that would benefit them all.  The city had its own funds, but more and more often, Varric found himself dipping into his accounts to renovate properties here, pay workers bonuses there.  He tried to tell himself it was simply good business sense, but he suspected that if he looked closely enough, he might find something almost like civic pride lurking deep within him, and that was entirely too disconcerting a concept to handle.

So he let Aveline boss him around when it made sense (and argued for days when it didn’t), and he helped Merrill help the elves in the alienage, and he paid out for things that helped people.  Everyone needed a hobby, right?

Writing’s supposed to be your hobby, he reminded himself.  He took a drink of ale, grimacing.  

He blinked at the stack of sealed letters piled up before him.  He’d been so busy the past few weeks he’d barely been keeping up on his correspondence.  The only things he’d been writing down were additions to the notes he’d kept over the past several years, memories sleek and stylized.  There was a story there, in Hawke’s easy grin, her pale blue eyes, her whirling blades. All he had to do was shift things, embellish, lead the narrative on the path it was meant to follow.  Maybe it’d get published yet.

Varric kept some parts of Hawke’s story to himself, though.  There were things that would never make a final draft. How her eyes sparkled after a wicked joke.  The scent of the perfume she wore sometimes around town, a buttery vanilla that cut through the Kirkwall fug.  The way she cried on his shoulder after her mother died. How badly he missed her.

Little things like that.

Varric nudged away the sheaths of parchment holding Hawke’s tale, taking a deep breath.  No, he really needed to get to his letters. The last time he ignored more than a few missives from the Merchant’s Guild, he’d woken up to friendly steel at his neck, and he was getting too old for that shit.  

As he suspected, the first few letters were from the Guild.  He jotted off quick replies to each query, heartened by the rapid progress he was making.  He paused, though, on a thin letter in grey vellum. He recognized the seal -- the false seal.  It looked official, but belonged to no known House when subjected to close examination.

Bianca.

He touched the seal with his fingertips, tracing its familiar pattern.  He hadn’t read the last few letters from her. Kept them, just in case, but hadn’t read them.  

He’d written her, months and months ago now -- it felt a lifetime -- that he couldn’t be there any longer.  Not the way she needed him, not the way she wanted him. Hard to carry on with all that cloak-and-dagger when you were in love with somebody else.  

He took another drink of ale.  Of course, he’d failed to mention to Bianca that Hawke had no idea about said feelings.  A small detail, that, and one he’d resigned himself to. It was fine. He was fine.

At least, he was fine before the Chantry.

He pushed aside Bianca’s letter, and moved onto the next.  Three more letters from the Guild, three more tidy replies.  He was pleased to be getting through them so quickly.

Varric hesitated on a particularly thick letter of yellow parchment.  He didn’t recognize the seal, nor the penmanship. He wafted up the scent of the letter in case of concealed poison, but didn’t catch any bitter tang that would have indicated a problem.  Curiously he cracked the seal.

Dear Varric, it’s me, your favorite human.  (Hawke, obviously.)   Sorry for the disguised handwriting on the address.  Did I fool you? It was rather fun trying to falsify my handwriting.  I’m sure I’ll do better at it next time. I’ve missed you so, did you realize--

Varric laughed out loud, a laugh that grew jagged at the end, a little too close to a different emotion.  He clapped his hand over his mouth, grinning at the letter and blinking rapidly. “Shit, Hawke,” he said to the empty room.  “It’s good to see you.”

He settled down to read over her letter, exhaustion and ale and Guild business forgotten, and imagined her there beside him.  The space between them, the countless leagues and unvoiced hurts, suddenly shrank to the small distance between his eyes and her words.

That?  He could work with that.

#hawke x varric #varric x hawke #dragon age 2 #dragon age: inquisition #hightown funk

[talktomanojpachaury]

Safety Lamp

A safety lamp is any of several types of lamp that provides illumination in coal mines and is designed to operate in air that may contain coal dust or gases, both of which are potentially flammable or explosive. Until the development of effective electric lamps in the early 1900s, miners used flame lamps to provide illumination. Open flame lamps could ignite flammable gases which collected in mines, causing explosions; safety lamps were developed to enclose the flame and prevent it from igniting the surrounding atmosphere. Flame safety lamps have been replaced in mining with sealed explosion-proof electric lights.

Damps or gases

Miners have traditionally referred to the various gases encountered during mining as damps, from the Middle Low German word dampf (meaning "vapour").Damps are variable mixtures and are historic terms.

Firedamp – Naturally occurring flammable mixtures, principally methane.

Blackdamp or Chokedamp – Nitrogen and carbon dioxide with no oxygen. Formed by complete combustion of firedamp or occurring naturally. Coal in contact with air will oxidize slowly and, if unused workings are not ventilated, pockets of blackdamp may develop. Also referred to as azotic air in some 19th-century papers.

Whitedamp – Formed by the incomplete combustion of coal, or firedamp. The mixture may contain significant amounts of carbon monoxide, which is toxic and potentially explosive.

Stinkdamp – Naturally occurring hydrogen sulphide and other gases. The hydrogen sulphide is highly toxic, but easily detected by smell. The other gases with it may be firedamp or blackdamp.

Afterdamp – The gas from an explosion of firedamp or coal dust. Contains varying proportions of blackdamp and whitedamp and is therefore suffocating, toxic, or explosive, or any combination of these. Afterdamp may also contain stinkdamp. Afterdamp may be a bigger killer following an explosion than the explosion itself.

Open flame illumination

Before the invention of safety lamps, miners used candles with open flames. This gave rise to frequent explosions. For example, at one colliery (Killingworth) in the north east of England, 10 miners were killed in 1806 and 12 in 1809. In 1812, 90 men and boys were suffocated or burnt to death in the Felling Pit near Gateshead and 22 in the following year.

Wood 1853 describes the testing of a mine for firedamp. A candle is prepared by being trimmed and excess fat removed. It is held at arm's length at floor level in one hand, the other hand shielding out all except the tip of the flame. As the candle is raised the tip is observed and if unchanged the atmosphere is safe. If however the tip turns bluish-gray increasing in height to a thin extended point becoming a deeper blue, then firedamp is present.Upon detecting firedamp the candle is lowered and arrangements made for the ventilating of the area or the deliberate firing of the firedamp after the end of a shift. A man edged forward with a candle on the end of a stick. He kept his head down to allow the explosion to pass over him, but as soon as the explosion had occurred stood upright as much as possible to avoid the afterdamp. Officially known as a fireman he was also referred to as a penitent or monk from the hooded garb he wore as protection. The protective clothing was made of wool or leather and well dampened. As can be imagined this procedure did not always preserve the life of the man so employed.

When they came into regular use, barometers were used to tell if atmospheric pressure was low which could lead to more firedamp seeping out of the coal seams into the mine galleries. Even after the introduction of safety lamps this was still essential information, see Trimdon Grange for details of an accident where pressure was involved.

The lack of good lighting was a major cause of the eye affliction nystagmus. Miners working in thin seams or when undercutting the coal had to lie on their side in cramped conditions. The pick was swung horizontally to a point beyond the top of their head. In order to see where they were aiming (and accurate blows were needed), the eyes needed to be straining in what would normally be the upwards and slightly to one side direction.This straining led first to temporary nystagmus and then to a permanent disability. Mild nystagmus would self-correct if a miner ceased to perform this work but if left untreated would force a man to give up mining. The lower levels of light associated with safety lamps caused an increase in the incidence of nystagmus.

First attempts at safe lamps

Both on the continent of Europe and in the UK dried fish skins were used. From them a faint bioluminescence (often called phosphorescence) occurs. Another safe source of illumination in mines was bottles containing fireflies.

Flint and steel mills introduced by Carlisle Spedding (1696-1755) before 1733 had been tried with limited success. An example of a Spedding steel mill may be seen in the museum at Whitehaven where Spedding was manager of the collieries of Sir James Lowther, 4th Baronet. A steel disk was rotated at high speed by a crank mechanism. Pressing a flint against the disk produced a shower of sparks and dim illumination. These mills were troublesome to use and were often worked by a boy, whose only task was to provide light for a group of miners. It was assumed that the sparks had insufficient energy to ignite firedamp until a series of explosions at Wallsend colliery in 1784; a further explosion in June 1785 which the operator of the mill (John Selkirk) survived showed that ignition was possible.

The first safety lamp made by William Reid Clanny used a pair of bellows to pump air through water to a candle burning in a metal case with a glass window. Exhaust gases passed out through water. The lamp gave out only a weak light though it was intrinsically safe provided it was kept upright. It was heavy and ungainly and required a man to pump it continuously. It was not a practical success and Clanny subsequently changed the basis of operation of later lamps in the light of the Davy and Stephenson lamps.

Oil lamps

Principles of operation

Safety lamps have to address the following issues:

Provide adequate light

Do not trigger explosions

Warn of a dangerous atmosphere

Fire requires three elements to burn: fuel, oxidant and heat; the triangle of fire. Remove one element of this triangle and the burning will stop. A safety lamp has to ensure that the triangle of fire is maintained inside the lamp, but cannot pass to the outside.

Fuel – there is fuel in the form of oil inside the lamp and fuel in the form of firedamp or coal dust outside.

Oxidant – there is an oxidant in the form of air present outside the lamp. The design of the lamp must allow the oxidant to pass into the lamp (and therefore exhaust gases to escape) or else the lamp will extinguish.

Heat – heat can be carried by the exhaust gases, through conduction and through burning of firedamp drawn into the lamp passing back down the inlet. Control of the transfer of heat is the key to manufacturing a successful safety lamp.

In the Geordie lamp, the inlet and exhausts are kept separate. Restrictions in the inlet ensure that only just enough air for combustion passes through the lamp. A tall chimney contains the spent gases above the flame. If the percentage of firedamp starts to rise, less oxygen is available in the air and combustion is diminished or extinguished. Early Geordie lamps had a simple pierced copper cap over the chimney to further restrict the flow and to ensure that the vital spent gas did not escape too quickly. Later designs used gauze for the same purpose and also as a barrier in itself. The inlet is through a number of fine tubes (early) or through a gallery (later). In the case of the gallery system air passes through a number of small holes into the gallery and through gauze to the lamp. The tubes both restrict the flow and ensure that any back flow is cooled. The flame front travels more slowly in narrow tubes (a key Stephenson observation) and allows the tubes to effectively stop such a flow.

In the Davy system, a gauze surrounds the flame and extends for a distance above forming a cage. All except the very earliest Davy lamps have a double layer at the top of the cage. Rising hot gases are cooled by the gauze, the metal conducting the heat away and being itself cooled by the incoming air. There is no restriction on the air entering the lamp and so if firedamp is entrained it will burn within the lamp itself. Indeed, the lamp burns brighter in dangerous atmospheres thus acting as a warning to miners of rising firedamp levels. The Clanny configuration uses a short glass section around the flame with a gauze cylinder above it. Air is drawn in and descends just inside the glass, passing up through the flame in the centre of the lamp.

The outer casings of lamps have been made of brass or tinned steel. If a lamp bangs against a hard piece of rock, a spark could be generated if iron or untinned steel were employed.

Examples of lamps

Davy lamp

In the Davy lamp a standard oil lamp is surrounded by fine wire gauze, the top being closed by a double layer of gauze.

If firedamp is drawn into the flame it will burn more brightly and if the proportions are correct may even detonate. The flame on reaching the gauze fails to pass through and so the mine atmosphere is not ignited. However, if the flame is allowed to play on the gauze for a significant period, then it will heat up, sometimes as far as red heat. At this point it is effective, but in a dangerous state. Any further increase in temperature to white heat will ignite the external atmosphere. A sudden draught will case a localised hot spot and the flame will pass through. At a draught of between 4 and 6 feet per second the lamp becomes unsafe. At Wallsend in 1818 lamps were burning red hot (indicating significant firedamp).

 A boy (Thomas Elliott) was employed to carry hot lamps to the fresh air and bring cool lamps back. For some reason he stumbled; the gauze was damaged and the damaged lamp triggered the explosion.

At Trimdon Grange (1882) a roof fall caused a sudden blast of air and the flame passed through the gauze with fatal results (69 killed).

Stephenson ("Geordie") lamp

A development of the Geordie lamp was the Purdy. A galley with gauze provided the inlet, above the glass was a chimney with perforated copper cap and gauze outer. A brass tube protected the upper works, shielded them and kept them locked in position. A sprung pin locked the whole together. The pin could only be released by applying a vacuum to a captive hollow screw; not something that a nicotine starved miner could do at the coal face.

Mueseler lamp

The lamp is a modified Clanny designed by the Belgian Mathieu-Louis Mueseler. The flame is surrounded by a glass tube surmounted by a gauze capped cylinder. Air enters from the side above the glass and flows down to the flame before rising to exit at the top of the lamp. So far this is just a Clanny, but in the Mueseler a metal chimney supported on an internal gauze shelf conducts the combustion products to the top of the lamp. Some Mueseler lamps were fitted with a mechanism which locked the base of the lamp. Turning down the wick eventually released the base, but by then the flame was extinguished and therefore safe.

The lamp was patented in 1840 and in 1864 the Belgian government made this type of lamp compulsory.

In the presence of firedamp the explosive mixture is drawn through two gauzes (cylinder and shelf), burnt and then within the chimney are only burnt gases, not explosive mixture. Like a Clanny, and the Davy before it, it acts as an indicator of firedamp, burning more brightly in its presence. Later models had graduated shields by which the deputy could determine the concentration of firedamp from the heightening of the flame. Whilst the Clanny will continue to burn if laid on its side, potentially cracking the glass; the Mueseler will extinguish itself due to the stoppage of convection currents. The lamp is safe in currents up to 15 feet per second.

Landau's lamp

The lamp is in part a development of the Geordie. Air enters into a ring near the base which is protected by gauze or perforated plate. The air passes down the side of the lamp passing through a series of gauze covered holes and enters the base through another yet another series of gauze covered holes. Any attempt to unscrew the base causes the lever (shown at f in the illustration) to extinguish the flame. The gauze covered holes and passageways restrict the flow to that required for combustion, so if any part of the oxygen is replaced by firedamp, then the flame is extinguished for want of oxidant.

The upper portion of the lamp uses a chimney like Mueseler and Morgan lamps. The rising gases pass up the chimney and through a gauze. At the top of the chimney a dished reflector diverts the gases out sideways through a number of holes in the chimney. The gases then start to rise up the intermediate chimney before exiting through another gauze. Gas finally passes down between the outermost chimney and the intermediate chimney, exiting a little above the glass. The outer chimney is therefore effectively a shield.

Yates' lamp

The Yates lamp is a development of the Clanny. Air enters through the lower part of the gauze top and leaves through the upper part; there is no chimney. The lower glass part of the lamp has seen some development however. It is replaced by a silvered reflector having a strong lens or bull's-eye in it to allow the light out. The result was a claimed 20 fold improvement in lighting over the Davy. Yates claimed "the temptation to expose the flame to obtain more light is removed".

The base also contained an interlocking mechanism to ensure that the wick was lowered and the lamp extinguished by any attempt to open it.

The lamp was "much more expensive than the forms of lamp now in general use, but Mr, Yates states that the saving of oil effected by its use will in one year pay the additional cost".

#miningmonk #talktomanojpachaury #manoj #manojkumarpachauri #theonlydaizy #kunikasok #ashokkumarpachauri #daizytbp #zakmedios #mining #lamphandling #lampsanditstypes #typesoflamps #safetylamps #Yates' lamp #Clifford #Landau's Lamp #https://www.zakmedios.com #theonlydaizy.in #ashokpachauri #ashwanikumarsaraswat

[weretoad-writer]

Consequences (pt 2)

Just a couple of short pieces that were originally supposed to be part of a larger thing.

The clinic was empty and dark. Anders was away and there were no overnight patients. Crispin sat in an empty corner, huddled in a blanket, his back to the wall. A small brazier stood nearby, cold and lifeless. Flames itched at his fingertips;  it would have been so easy to set it alight. Something deep in his chest craved the security of warmth, but the thought of the glowing bed of coals sent waves of nausea washing over him.

His hands cupped a small pool of blue light, the glow of magic keeping the shadows at bay. He was afraid of the dark. It wasn’t gentle anymore. It felt like sackcloth over his eyes and mouth, coarse and smothering, he lost all sense of self, all sense of place. In the darkness the clinic was nothing more than a dream, delirious wishful thinking, and the only thing real or certain was the memory of iron bars.

There was a sound outside the entrance and his body snapped taut with alarm. Someone knocking, calling out. He pressed closer into the corner, his whole body curled, cowering. Go away. Please. Please go away. His lips formed the words, a silent, pleading litany.

But the voice continued, its urgency infectious, a writhing anxiousness building in his chest until his own stillness was more than he could bear. They needed help. He was a healer and they needed help. His right hand pressed against the ground, pushing ineffectually as if he had forgotten how to rise. Maker, what was wrong with him?

They called again, pounding louder this time; the violent staccato hammering against his senses. He tried again to rise, but he couldn’t move. Sweat, cold and sticky was soaking through his tunic and the light in his hands began to flicker and flare. He was trembling. He needed it to stop, he needed the noise to stop. Please. Please go away. Make it stop. Please make it stop.

He clutched at his ears, at his scalp. He could feel the cracks. He could feel it again. It was happening again. Sweet Maker, why wouldn’t it stop? He could feel energy bleeding out of him. Not fire. Please not fire. Not again. He couldn’t hold onto it. He couldn’t breathe -- or he was breathing too much. He couldn’t remember how. He couldn’t--

He pressed the balled up folds of the blanket against his mouth and screamed. He screamed until he had no breath and then he sobbed, shuddering and hysterical, until he was doubled over, retching bile onto the earthen floor.

What was wrong with him? The question was just a whimper inside his head as he sagged to the ground, shivering; damp hair and tunic plastered against his skin. The clinic was silent once more, the quiet clearing the cluttering fog from his head like a sharp breeze. But there was no sense of relief, respite perhaps, but brief and uncertain; his mind was his own and yet not his own, not in a way he understood or recognized, and the only thing he felt in that moment with any clarity was shame.

Two days out from Kirkwall and he thought it would get easier, but every stranger he passed on the road filled him with cringing dread and he flinched at every raised voice or sudden movement. In the city it had been easy to blame his surroundings; he’d let himself believe that if he could only get away, somewhere he could see a horizon instead of walls on every side, breathe air that wasn’t thick with chokedamp and foundry smog, it would be alright again, that if he could step outside the Gallows’ shadow, he would be free of it. But nothing had changed, and this time the only constant was himself.

He hated himself for leaving, for running when everything was falling apart. He’d tried. Maker, he’d tried. The smallest tasks had overwhelmed him. Even basic triage -- questions, just simple bloody questions, and it set his heart racing until he could scarcely breathe. He would disappear for hours, curled up in some far corner, trying to work up the courage to do something as idiotically simple as changing a dressing or making tea. He had broke down crying in the middle of ladling soup. For no reason. No bloody reason.

The sense of helplessness felt like something crawling under his skin, itching and writhing until it made him want to scream. He couldn’t understand it. He was physically capable of pouring a draught of medicine or changing a dressing or preparing food. They were simple, physical tasks and when he thought of them rationally his struggles felt shamefully trivial. He felt certain that if he had just tried harder, he could have accomplished them. He was lazy, pathetic. He must have been. It didn’t make sense any other way.

His magic too had become unstable, his control over it tenuous at best. Things sparked or caught fire around him and it didn’t matter how quickly he put them out. He frightened people; at best his jumpy, anxious manner made them uneasy, reinforcing all the prejudices his friend had worked so long to change. He was a danger. A liability.

But it went beyond uselessness, beyond being a threat or another mouth to feed: he had broken faith. People were dead because of what he had done and no amount of wishing or self-recrimination could unsay their names or take away the grief of those left behind. It marked him body and soul like the scar of a branding iron. There were words for people like him. Informer. Traitor. Just another of the Chantry’s creatures now. Anders claimed he didn’t blame him, but how could he not? He must have been glad to see the back of him.

#apricots writes #crispin amell

[fanfoolishness]

lies we told in summertide

Burgeoning Min Hawke x Varric, set in late Act III.  Also fading Hawke/Anders and a bit of Varric/Bianca if you squint hard.  Angst, violence, blood warnings.  A Buffy reference.  And because it’s Hawke/Varric, a lot of shit talking.  5350 words.

The summer days stretched long, long, long, humming with a tension that Min Hawke could feel all around her.  It was thick in the air like chokedamp, a foul miasma that made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.  She felt it in her chest.  Felt it in her belly.  Felt it in every kiss she shared with Anders, every time he brushed the hair back behind her ear, every time he embraced her, his face pale above those black, forbidding robes.

Sometimes she tried to give it a name.  How many times had she talked with Anders?  How many times had she asked him what was wrong?  But the answers he gave her were thin and glancing.  They eased for a moment, but left her feeling more uncertain than before.  She wasn’t sure if they were lies or half-truths, but neither sat well with her.  

Lately, it felt like Varric was the only one she could talk to.  It had felt good to get it all out a few weeks ago; she’d shown up drunk at his door in the middle of the night, and like a good friend, he’d taken her in.  Since then, it’d been nearly every night.  Some nights it was simple chatter.  Other nights it was the hard stuff, Carver and Bartrand, family and the weight of it, the strife between the mages and the templars.  And some nights it was just hand after hand of Wicked Grace with anyone who happened along.

Varric had let her open up in a way she could not with the others, even after years together.  Aveline was hopeless at anything romantic, Fenris would just as soon tie up Anders and leave him bundled for the templars, Anders goaded Merrill so mercilessly Hawke hated to bring up any problems with him to the elf, and Isabela had been gone for years now.  Bethany, too.  She’d thought of writing Bethany more than once, but Bethany always sounded so distressed about Warden life, and she couldn’t bear to weigh her sister down with anything more.  Especially since the terrible letter she had had to write about losing Mum.

But Varric just listened.  Let her talk. Let her rant.  Let her cry.  She loved him for that.

She sat on the end of the bed she shared with Anders, summer heat leaching in through the walls as she kicked her heels.  She was sticky with sweat and suffocating in the heat.  Outside the bedroom, she could hear the conversations of Bodahn and Orana, Sandal’s excited interjections, Molossus snoring happy doggy snores.  She wondered that any of them could breathe at all, it choked her so.

She had to get out of the manor.  Early evening was the worst, not late enough to sleep her anxieties away, too late to head out to somewhere outside of Kirkwall with the others.

She shoved her feet into her boots.  The Hanged Man it was.  Again.

The summer twilight was a muggy, sweaty thing.  Kirkwall’s stone held the heat jealously, and the fug followed her down the familiar streets of Lowtown and into the Hanged Man.

She pushed her way past sticky elbows and the funk of unwashed Lowtowners, stopping only for a pint from Corff that she carried up the stairs.  The foam sloshed over the edge of the tankard, but she didn’t mind.  She’d have another in half an hour, anyway.

Her knuckles beat a familiar refrain on Varric’s door.  “Come in,” he called, and for the first time in days, she felt something she couldn’t quite place.  It felt good.

“Just me, Varric,” Hawke said, sidling in through the door.  “Are you free?”

Varric sat at the end of the table, sheets of parchment in front of him, pen in hand.  She caught a glimpse of him in deep concentration, brows knitted together, pensive written all over his face.  Then he caught sight of her, and his face split into a grin.  “Always for you, Hawke.”

“Flatterer,” she said.  She took the closest seat, setting her tankard far from his papers.  They looked important, Varric’s looped script small and tidy over fronts and backs of the parchment.  He set down his pen, a curious gold-plated thing that seemed terribly intricate.  Dwarven; had to be.  Quite a bit less messy than a quill.  “Am I interrupting anything?  Hard at work on your latest tale?”

Varric chuckled.  “Just keeping track of my connections.  There’s an unbelievable amount of paperwork in keeping a spy network, even one as small as mine.”  But she couldn’t help noticing that as he spoke, he carefully tucked the papers away to his other side, keeping them from her sight.

She narrowed her eyes skeptically.  “I know it’s quite a bit more elaborate than you say.  I’ve my own sources, you know.”  

He held out his hands.  “Ahh, Hawke, let me practice my deflection a little more.  Aveline’s going to be around for drinks with Donnic later, and I have to pretend all I do is sit on my ass and write my books.”

“I think she knows you rather better than that after all this time,” said Hawke.  She wondered what he was really writing, but she knew better than to needle him about it.  Varric was either disarmingly honest or infuriatingly obfuscating, and she didn’t feel like obfuscation tonight.  “We’ve all seen a lot of shit together, haven’t we?”

“That we have.  We’ve been in the thick of things.  Where do you think I get my story ideas from?”

“Do you ever miss how it used to be?” she asked.  “Before the Deep Roads, before everything got so… complicated.  Just the group of us, running round, getting into scrapes and hauling ourselves back out of them.  For a while there, it all seemed so clear.”

“Feeling nostalgic now, are you?” asked Varric.  “Keep it up, I can take some notes.”

“I don’t understand how it is it always comes back to that.  Not everything’s a story, you know,” said Hawke slowly.  “Sometimes it just is, and you have to sort it out as you go, not parcel it out afterwards into neat chapter and verse.”  She took a long draught of her drink, fighting back an abrupt wave of moroseness.  “I used to quite like stories.  Then people started telling them about me, and I -- I don’t feel like a Champion, Varric.  I’m just me, and it’s not enough.”

Varric held up the pen.  She stared at it, wondering what he was doing.  Then he rolled the papers up around it and tossed the whole package unceremoniously onto the empty chair a few feet away.  The pen clattered as it hit the hard surface, rolling out from the sheath and falling to the floor.  Varric made no move to pick it up.

“So we’ll skip the story, then,” he said.  “I was tired of staring at that shit anyway.”

“Varric,” she began.  Looked at his face, broad, ruddy, open.  The feeling from the doorway came over her again, and this time she could name it.  Trust.  She looked down into her drink.  “Everything’s going to shit, isn’t it?”

He tilted his head, gazing at her.  His hazel eyes were warm, their expression soft.  “You wanna talk about it?”

She laughed, a real smile feeling most welcome on her face.  “I really don’t.  Is that all right?”

“Course it is.  So what do you want to talk about instead?”

“Anything else,” she said, casting about for conversation ideas.  Nothing normal came to mind.  Bullshit it was, then.  She squared herself to face him, and began to unspool pure ridiculousness.

“All right, then.  I heard a rumor that Meredith has an adult-sized rocking horse in her office and rides it when she gets angry.  And that Orsino wears a bright pink dressing gown with tassels to bed.  And that Elthina has forty-three different lovers, all of them half her age at the oldest, and the real reason the Chantry’s locked at night is because she likes her orgies in private.  Care to verify any of it?”

“Well, I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, Hawke, but it’s utter crap.  Word on the street is that Elthina’s a black widow and kills off every suitor after the penultimate moment, so orgies would make that a lot more complicated.  Everyone knows it’s Cullen with the pink and the tassels, since Orsino only sleeps in the finest Antivan silks.  Meredith had a rocking horse as a kid but beat it to death since it was insubordinate.  What else you got?”  Varric leaned back in his chair, smirking.  

“Summer,” said Hawke with disgust.  “What’s this blasted Marcher summer about?  It’s sticky and revolting and entirely antithetical to the Fereldan way of life.  We’re meant to be freezing our arses off at all times.”

“You Fereldans wouldn’t know the first thing about decent weather.  You know your brains are all scrambled, too much exposure to cheese and damp dog hair.  It’s sad, really,” said Varric, shrugging.

“Now you’re just being silly.  There is never enough cheese.”

“You’re right.  That was a lie.”

“Lying is wrong, Varric.”

“So I hear.”

Hawke shifted in her chair, picking her feet up and curling up within it.  Being a dwarf’s chair, it was a bit difficult to do, but she was up to the challenge.  She rested her arms on her knees and grinned at him.  “I’m not sure what I’d do without you, you know.”

He folded his arms.  “Lying is wrong, Hawke.”

“Not lying,” she said simply.

“Right.”  For a moment, he seemed almost pained; something about the way his mouth twitched, the way his gaze slid past her purposely.  Then he was all smiles again, hazel eyes bright and playful.  “That’s because I’m indispensable.”

“It’s true.  Everyone needs a trusty dwarf,” she said.  

There was another knock at the door.  “That’ll be Aveline and Donnic,” said Varric.  “You’re welcome to stay, of course.”

“I think I will,” said Hawke.  She uncurled herself, stood up to answer the door.  Before leaving the table, she leaned down close to him, her breath making a loose strand of his hair flutter faintly.  “It’s just -- I know you must be getting sick of me, but do you mind if I come back again tomorrow?”

He looked up at her.  This close, she could appreciate the lines at the edges of his eyes, carved by years of easy winks.  The scar on his nose was a sharp red line surrounded by faded freckles, and his grin, when it came, dazzled.  “Hawke, you don’t even have to ask.”

The summer nights were inky, star-flung things, the only bit of blessed cool relief to be found.  She even fancied she felt a chill.  When the slivered crescent moons swung low she made her way out from Varric’s, daggers at her belt, boots soft and silent on the stone, her feet carrying her home.

Years past, it had always been just a night or two a week at the Hanged Man.  Now it was nightly, a far better option than the alternative.  She’d never been so good at her constellations before now.  

Some nights Anders told her he was staying at his clinic, and she didn’t leave the Hanged Man until dawn.  Some nights he stayed in, and when she asked if he wanted to come out for a drink, he said no, staring down at his manuscript in the study.  She’d kiss him, tell him she loved him, pull him close to her.  Every time she wondered if he’d return to her, the man she’d fallen in love with.

Sometimes he would, in a shy, sweet smile, or a tilt of his head, or passion alight in his eyes.  But more often he’d hug her as if she wasn’t really there, and return to the study to sit in silence with the books.  And she’d be off to see Varric again.

Hawke rubbed at her eyes with the back of her hand, hurrying down her alley shortcut, wishing she had perhaps declined a few of those later rounds.  Her head swam.  Lowtown was always eerie this time of night, and she knew she should have her head on straight, should remember where she was and what she was doing, but the world was badly made, damn it, and --

Footsteps behind her.  She rounded, daggers flashing silver in her hands, and faded into the shadows of the alley, ready for blood.

Varric stood there, shaking his head.  He’d clearly come after her in a hurry.  His overcoat was on crooked, and something about his silhouette just felt off.  “You’re slipping, Hawke.  I tailed you for three streets before you noticed.”

“Well, you aren’t creepy at all,” said Hawke, delightedly slipping her daggers back into her belt and stepping from the shadows to face him.  “What are you doing here?  I thought you were heading to sleep.  Which begs the question, do you sleep in a nightcap?  Are there special dwarven ones?”

“I don’t, there are, and you don’t even want to know what they look like,” said Varric.  “You were already gone when I realized you’d forgotten something.”  He pulled a dagger from a pouch by his belt.  “Missing this?”

“My favorite throwing dagger!  Let me guess, I left it in your wall after throwing practice tonight?”  That was right, she’d gotten it out to do a bit of target practice on Varric’s wall after Aveline and Donnic turned in for the night.  She hadn’t been sure if he still wanted her there so late, as he’d clearly been distracted by something; she’d caught him fidgeting with his parchments more than once with a pensive expression on his face.  But he’d insisted that she stay for a while, and so she had, sharing a few more rounds with him and tossing knives into the wall until they both felt better.

She took the finely made blade from his hand and carefully replaced it among her stash, though part of her wondered why he simply didn’t give it to her tomorrow.  It was a bit odd.  Helpful, though.  “You’re the best, Varric.”

“I’m just a simple dwarf who does what he can,” said Varric.

She rolled her eyes hard enough she was worried she strained an eyelid muscle.  “You’re far more than that, and I won’t hear tell otherwise,” she said.  

They both fell quiet for a moment, and Hawke realized what looked different about him.  “You -- you forgot Bianca?”

It was difficult to make out his expression in the dark.  “...huh.  Guess I did.  I thought I’d catch you closer to the Hanged Man,” he said, disquieted.

Noises around the corner of the alleyway.  “I hope we don’t regret it,” she muttered to him, hurriedly leading a path away from the sound and handing him back the throwing dagger, slapping it grip first into his palm.  For a moment it seemed as if they were in the clear.

But when they rounded the next corner, a knot of hulking men approached, their bodies taut and predatory.  “We were just leaving,” said Hawke brightly, but her hands were on her daggers in an instant.  

She had just a second to wish that she’d come fully kitted out, laden with smoke flasks and Antivan fire, but she’d gone out for drinking, not full-on war.  The men rushed at the two of them and she had to make do with what she had, lashing out in a dizzying whirlwind of kicks and daggers, flourishes and footwork.  She might’ve been drunk, but not that drunk that she couldn’t do serious damage.

She knifed one lackey in the neck and slashed another across the top of the thigh, bringing them both down, then ricocheted into the gang’s leader.  The man leapt forward with a twin strike.  She sidestepped to evade him, but he stepped with her, and before she could counter he grabbed her in a chokehold, one foul-smelling forearm locked under her jaw and the other arm pinning hers to her sides.  

Shit, shit, fuck.  She gagged as his arm dug against her throat, planted herself, and struck him with a headbutt to the chin, but he barely staggered.  

Black spots flickered at the edges of her vision.  Her lungs burned for air.  She was desperately trying to angle her leg between his for a kick to the groin when the man dropped like a stone.  She whirled back to see him flat on his belly, her throwing dagger neatly embedded between his shoulder blades.  She glanced up and there was Varric further down the alley, pulling back his arm after the throw.

“Nice one, Varric!” she called, but his name hadn’t quite left her lips when the last man darted forward and buried his dagger in Varric’s back.

She screamed as Varric crumpled to his knees, but the sound caught in her bruised throat.  So she ran forward in a vicious charge, blades singing in the night air, and she hurtled into the last bastard so hard she knocked him over.  Then she was upon him, panting, scrabbling for any weak spot in his armor, blades tearing through belly and elbows, back and throat.  Blood fountained in a black torrent, punctuated only with a terrible, fading gurgle. She ripped her blades out of his body and ran to Varric’s side, dropping her daggers on the stone below with a piercing ring.

He was curled on his side, the blade’s handle still visible around his right shoulder, cruelly jutting out at her.  She ignored it for the moment -- one never knew if removing it right now would do worse harm -- and gently rolled him enough to see his face.  “Varric,” she gasped.  “Varric, please, tell me you’re all right.”

A hoarse, rattling cough as she rolled him.  “Ahh, fuck,” Varric groaned, staring up at her.  He was pale, face twisted, sweat beading on his forehead.  “That’s my favorite coat.  Do you know how much --” he winced, gritting his teeth, “--good tailoring costs?”

“How bad is it?” she asked, slipping her arm under him so that he could sit half propped up, leaning against her.  Her heart thundered in her chest.  

“Not a healer, remember?” Varric asked with a wheeze.  He was getting greyer by the minute, his breathing rapid and labored.  He coughed, blood flecking his lips.  “A guess? Bad.”  He closed his eyes, sagging against her.

“No,” she hissed, “we are fixing this, Varric, that’s your -- your crossbow arm and your writing arm, and your wanking arm probably, and you’re going to be just fine, do you hear me, this isn’t that bad --”  

She suddenly remembered Anders, packing potions into a hip pouch for her.  You’ll want to keep this on you, love, if ever I’m not with you.  I couldn’t bear to think of you being hurt.  Poultices that smelled of deep mushroom and elfroot, things he’d charmed with wisps of spell and healing mana.  Not as good as a healer at your side, of course, but they’ll do in a pinch.

Her hands fumbled at her belt, digging frantically.  She cursed the fact that the last few ales had her dizzy, or was that the fear?  “Hang on, damn you!”  She ripped off the pouch she’d never needed before, her hands shaking, and pulled out two cloth-wrapped poultices and a small silver flask.  She pulled the top off with her teeth and thrust the flask’s mouth through Varric’s lips, hand still shaking violently against his cheek.  Once she’d emptied it into his mouth, she tore the front of his shirt open, searching for a wound.  

Nothing on the front.  At least the blade hadn’t gone all the way through.  “Stay with me, Varric dear, got to see how bad it is,” she muttered as she shifted him so that he lay half across her lap, leaving access to the hated blade buried in his back.  He was dead weight on her legs, a realization that only served to increase her terror.  She grabbed her fallen dagger and sliced through layers of leather and Highever weave, tailoring be damned, until she could peel off the blood-soaked cloth in strips and finally expose the wound.

The blade rose and fell with each shallow breath he took.  Hawke stared at the blood slicking his broad back, trickling from around the blade’s base in steady rivulets.  She tore open the outer cloth bindings on the poultices, remembering Anders’ words.  See this inner binding here?  Keeps it all together, but it’s thin enough the herbs can get through to do their work.  You could place it into a gut wound or an open fracture and it’ll work right through that inner layer.  I just hope you never need it.

She packed them around the blade and into the edges of the wound, blood hot against her fingers.  She took a deep breath, then leaned down and whispered.

“I’ve got Anders’ healing poultices on you.  They need to get down into the wound to help, but I’ve got to remove the blade.”

A faint reply, enough to make her vision blur with sudden tears.  “Trust you,” he mumbled.

She wrapped her hand around the dagger’s haft, her other hand hovering over the poultices.  She pulled -- a short, sharp groan -- the blood welled in a rising flood -- and she stuffed the poultices deep into the wound, flinging the blade aside and putting pressure on the wound with both hands.

Hawke whimpered, fighting back a sob that threatened to overwhelm.  She bowed her head, hands trembling with the effort of putting pressure on Varric’s blood-stickied back, and she tried to count his breaths.  “Come on, come on,” she bit out.  Her voice seemed to catch in her throat, making it hard to form words, but she didn't care.  She couldn’t think of anything else to do but pray, though it was nothing like what you’d hear in the Chantry.  

“You’ve got to make it until we can get you to Anders.  You’ve got to.  I can’t lose you, you foolish dwarf.  Why didn’t you bring Bianca?  Why would you ever leave without her?  You know what a shithole this city is, you know there’s wretched thieves and murderers round every step, we both know it.  Look, you can’t go like this, it’s not nearly noble enough and we both know you’ll either go out in a blaze of glory, or comfortably in your old age atop a pile of ill-gotten gold, and, and, neither of those is today so just come on, Varric, come back, come back to me.”

Movement beneath her.  Varric’s back muscles shifting as he moved his arms, tensing beneath her pressure.  “Hawke?”

“Careful, careful.  Let me see how it looks,” she said.  Cautiously she lifted up one hand a few inches, and when there was no fresh bleeding, she lifted the other one.  The poultices were bloody, but seemed to be holding even without her hands applying pressure.  She wiped the tears from her face and fumbled in the pouch again, finding a roll of clean bandage material.  “Here, let me wrap it.  I think the bleeding’s stopped.”  She wrapped the bandages round his chest and shoulder, tying them in place.  “How do you feel?” she asked uncertainly.

“Weirdly, like I got stabbed in the back,” he said, voice still faint.  “But… better.  Help a dwarf up?”  She obliged quickly, helping him up to a sitting position so that he leaned against her, her arm around him.  He rested his head against her chest.  He no longer had that awful, greyish cast to his skin; he was still pale, but there was at least a hint of color to his cheeks again.  Blearily, he blinked up at her.  “Shit, Hawke, what happened to you?”

Hawke swallowed past the bruising in her throat.  “Got choked a bit, but I’m all right.”

“No, I mean…”  He gestured weakly at her face and arms.  “Lot of blood.  You okay?  Any of it yours?”

“It’s all yours, you daft dwarf,” she said, making a noise that might have been a laugh, or a sob.  She couldn’t tell which.  She noticed her hands, coated in blood past the wrists, and remembered wiping her face just a moment ago.  She probably looked a bloody maniac, though it didn’t matter.  “I thought I was going to lose you.”  

The sound that followed was decidedly not a laugh.  She leaned her head down against his, her cheek pressed against his sweat-damped hair, and cried.

The summer dawn was bright and piercing, heralded by the screams of gulls and the smell of rising chokedamp.  Hawke spent it sitting on a cot in Anders’ clinic, keeping watch over Varric as Anders worked.

Poor Anders.  The expression on his face when he saw the pair of them -- Varric bandaged and bloodied, shirt and jacket in tatters, Hawke covered in his blood.  He’d clearly been shaken, though his fear had turned to relief when Hawke explained that Varric was the one who’d been hurt.  

Hawke ached for Anders and his worry, yes, but she also resented the relief that had crossed his face, brief as it had been.  She knew it was only that he feared for her, but she was still strangely irritated.  It might not have been me, but it was still Varric!

Together they helped Varric onto a cot.  “What happened?” Anders asked, magic flaring crisp and clean from his hands over Varric’s bloodied back.  His face showed intense concentration; he’d always found Varric the most difficult of them to heal due to his dwarven nature.

“Dagger in the back down in Lowtown,” said Hawke, watching closely as Anders laid down his magic in weaves and layers she didn’t quite understand.  His style had always been so different from Bethany’s, or Dad’s.  “I had your healing kit on me.  I don’t know what might have happened without it, Anders.  Thank you.”

“I hadn’t realized you’d gone out,” said Anders sadly.  “I might have been able to help more, had I been there.”

“I knew you were at the clinic tonight,” said Hawke.  “I didn’t want to trouble you.”  Which was a lie, of course, but she didn’t find the distinction to be important.  She swung her heels, kicking them back and forth as she sat on the edge of her cot.  

Anders spared her a small smile, which made her feel worse somehow.  “It’s true I was needed here tonight.  There are five other patients in the back.”  He let out a long breath, the magic flickering down to nothingness.  “I’m glad you were with him, Hawke.  The poultices helped a great deal.  Varric?”

There was only a quiet snore from the cot, and Anders reached out for a nearby bowl of clean water and a few cloths.  A shimmer of a flame spell heated the water briefly until steaming.  “Good, I hoped he would sleep.  He’ll mend fully within the week, though it’s going to leave a nasty scar.”  He sighed.  “I love Varric, but dwarves are just beastly to heal.”

They both turned at a faint voice from the backroom.  The call came again, and Anders looked down at Varric’s sleeping form.  “I’m sorry, love, but would you mind looking after him?  One of the boys back there is quite ill with fever.  Would you be able to clean him and get him some blankets when you’re done?”

Hawke nodded.  “Of course, Anders.  Listen--”  She reached out and gripped his wrist, dried blood cracking and flaking off her hand as she flexed her fingers.  “Thank you.”

He just gave her one of those crooked, wistful smiles, pressed a kiss to the top of her head, and headed into the back, grabbing up his staff and some bandaging as he went.  She watched him go, then shook her head.

She turned her attention to her hands.  The dried blood seemed a baleful omen, even though the danger had blessedly passed.  She dutifully scrubbed them clean in the water Anders had left her, tingeing the water pink.  Once they were clean she took the cloth, soaked it in the water (it was all his blood anyway) and began carefully washing Varric’s back, taking great care to stay away from the wound near the shoulder.  It was beginning to close up already, thanks to Anders’ magic, but she knew from experience that terrible injury wasn’t healed in an hour.  It had taken her a full two weeks to get back to fighting shape after the Arishok, even with Anders working on her daily.  Varric’s wound was centered now in a field of blooming bruises in purple and yellow, and she shivered to see it.

She cleaned gently, methodically, dipping the cloth in water periodically as the water turned darker and darker.  His skin was firm and surprisingly smooth beneath her hands.  She cleaned and cleaned until no more blood remained, then got to her feet and fetched a cloth to dry him off.

As she worked she found herself murmuring to him.  “I thought I’d lost you back there, you know.”  His back rose and fell with deep, steady breaths.  “It’s something I learned leaving Lothering.  You don’t always go out in glory.  Sometimes the other man just has one good day.”  She sighed.  “With Carver it was an ogre.  It was stupid, cut off from the rest of the darkspawn.  It wasn’t supposed to be that far from the horde at all.  But when Carver raised his sword, it veered left instead of right.  It struck him down.  And it was so stupid, you see, I was just so struck by the unfairness.  The suddenness.  It only took one mistake.  And that ogre had a real good day, up until Bethany and I killed it.  Just like that bastard in the alley nearly did.”

She finished drying his back, then stood up and collected a few ragged blankets from the cupboard.  She laid them down tidily over Varric, pulling them up to his chin.  The way he was laying, turned away from her, she could just see the curve of his cheek and one closed eye.  His color was good; his cheeks were ruddy again.  She sat down on the cot across from him, simply watching.

“I don’t know if you’re all right, Varric.  You have letters you don’t want me to see, that make you upset; you left Bianca on a fool’s errand, just to bring me back a knife when you knew I’d be back tomorrow.  Maybe you don’t want to be at home either, these days.  I don’t know.”  She pulled up her feet on the cot, stretching out onto her side.  It might feel good just to lay down for a bit.  It’d been such a long day.

“Do you ever think we ought to run away together, you and me?” she said softly.  “Far away from mages and templars and letters and knives?”  She closed her eyes, laying her head against a thin, threadbare pillow.  “I’d run away on my own, but honestly, I don’t want to think of my life without you in it.”

“Flatterer,” said Varric faintly.  

She cracked open one eye to see him on his side facing her, the blankets surrounding him like a cocoon, his hair a rumpled mess, his eyes deeply shadowed.  It took her a minute to realize he was winking.

“Honestly,” said Hawke, “you are terrible.”

“Guilty.”  He yawned, blinking sleepily at her.  “Though it’s rude to insult the gravely injured.”

“It’s rude to get gravely injured in the first place,” she said.  “Oh, no, awful.  Now you’re making me yawn.”  She reflected for a moment.  “Did you hear all that nonsense I was saying?”

Varric smiled a little.  “Some of it.  You just keep unfolding like a flower, Hawke.”

“Oh, shove it.”  Impulsively Hawke reached out, patting Varric’s arm under its blanket fortifications.  “Glad you’re all right.”  She pulled her hand back, tucking it under her head as she burrowed into her sparse bedding, and she yawned again.  “Drinks tonight?  On me.”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

#hawke x varric #varric x hawke #dragon age 2 #da2 #hawke x anders #varric tethras #blood tw