![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
rose_in_winterCharacters: Fenris, Mage Female Hawke, Sebastian Vael (Fenris/f!Hawke/Sebastian)
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Canon-typical violence, explicit sex
Fic Wordcount: 117,000
Chapter Wordcount:
Notes: Canon-divergent, ignoring most of Act 3. A thousand thanks tosenmut's Discord server for cheering and brainstorming and reactions and encouragement.
Beta: breadedsinner and MikWrites_InSpace
Summary: After the duel with the Arishok, Ariane Hawke looks around at the wreckage of her life in Kirkwall and asks herself: what is left for me here? As tensions increase between the Circle and the Templars, she turns to helping Sebastian retake Starkhaven. Meanwhile, she is trying to figure out how to love Fenris when he hates mages, and also definitely not looking at Sebastian's gorgeous eyes. Definitely not. Neither is Fenris. Sebastian is not looking back.
Definitely.
Canon divergence in which almost all of act 3 goes in the bin, and three damaged people try to find a way to live with each other and themselves, and maybe heal a bit.
Chapter index here.
Hawke couldn't help the icy shudder that gripped her when she stepped over the grate in the cobblestones that allowed the Gallows portcullis to drop down and defend the fortress. The last time she'd crossed it, she'd been facedown over a horse's ass, kidnapped by templars. That she was here under her own power this time did not make the situation much better.
One of these days, Hawke thought, she was going to walk into the Gallows on some perfectly mundane and legitimate errand, and Meredith would not allow her to leave. She was aware of the eyes of the Circle mages and templars upon their little group as they made their way through the courtyard. Grace, in particular, had her eyes narrowed, but then, Grace blamed Hawke for all of her own choices. Hawke glanced sideways at Sebastian and wondered if he would welcome the former members of the Starkhaven Circle back to his lands when he was prince in truth as well as in name.
Carver met them at a side gate and let them into the massive stone fortress. He said nothing as he led them down a hallway and turned into a small side room that seemed to be used for storage, stacked high with boxes and barrels.
"This hallway is where the demons most often appear," Carver said.
"'Most often' implies there's enough of them to have a pattern," Varric said. "Just how bad of a demon infestation do you have, Junior?"
Carver made an irritated noise. "We've killed five here," he said, "but I found one in the hallway outside Meredith's office, and I thought that perhaps you might not want to go poking around there with...whatever it is....you're planning to do." He stomped to the door.
"Do we have to worry about stumbling across your partners in oppression while we're investigating?" Varric asked.
"I'll do my best," Carver said through gritted teeth, "to keep you from having to draw the Commander's unwanted attention, Sister." With that, he stomped out of the room and into the hall, his templar plate clacking all the way.
Hawke glanced at Varric, but said nothing. Aveline rubbed her forehead. Sebastian frowned, but chose not to scold her over fighting with the family she had left, even though she could practically hear the words anyway.
Since Carver hadn't been more specific than "this hallway," Hawke decided to start with the storage room. They searched for hidden passages or trap doors, but found nothing. Carver stood a ways down the hall, watching them distantly. She assumed he meant to head off any other templars who got too curious about this area. The hallway was equally devoid of interesting spots, but it did have a faint, acrid scent that Hawke knew too well: that of fear.
When she mentioned it to the others, Varric snorted. "I can't imagine what someone living in the Gallows could possibly fear," he said, "but I'm sure if we work hard enough, we'll think of something."
Hawke grinned, but she was distracted by a faint green shimmer lurking just at the edge of her vision. The Veil here was quite thin, as one might expect from a place that had housed mages for generations, but even accounting for that, it felt....stretched.
Rather like the prison beneath the Vimmark Mountains.
She cursed, very quietly, but with significant creativity that sent Sebastian's eyebrows skyward. Her face heated with a blush. "Didn't mean for you to hear that," she said. She knew perfectly well that he had heard, and likely said, worse in his wilder days, but it still seemed wrong.
His lips quirked into a smile. "I was just impressed at your vocabulary," he said lightly. "I assume that wasn't because you stubbed your toe."
"No." Hawke paced ten strides down the hall one way, then back. It was subtle, but since she was looking for it, she could tell that the Veil was weaker as one headed deeper into the Gallows. The green glow that vanished if she looked at it head-on was brighter there. She rejoined her companions. "The Veil here is thin. Thinner than it should be." Maybe she should have brought Merrill and Anders after all.
Sebastian frowned. "Is that how demons are getting through?"
"They shouldn't be able to get through without being called," Hawke said, "but maybe it is thin enough here. But it's possible that they could be called unintentionally, maybe?"
The difference between Sebastian and Fenris was that both might find that idea equally unpalatable, but at least Sebastian looked at it as a problem with a specific mage, not with anyone who carried magic in her blood. He sighed quietly and looked around. "It's certainly not my area of expertise," he said, "but I remember learning that the Veil is thinner at night. Do we need to wait for sundown?"
Hawke could think of a lot of things she'd rather do at night than wait in the Gallows for demons to creep across the Veil, but it wasn't a bad plan. "It seems worse over there," she said, gesturing. "Maybe if we follow the weakness we can find the source without having to wait for sundown."
"What do we do when we find it?" Aveline asked.
"Oh, I thought we'd take it out for dinner, maybe give it some wine so it takes a nice nap," Hawke said, and flinched at Aveline's frown. "Okay, okay, bad joke. I don't know. I don't even know if it's possible to repair the Veil. Mostly I've just read about places you shouldn't go because it's weak, like the Brecilian Forest. But if we can find the problem, maybe someone else knows what to do about it, or at least where to set guards." She thought of Feynriel, wandering through the Fade in his dreams, and now safely spirited away to Tevinter. If she sought him in the Fade, would she find him again? Might he know someone? But those were questions to address when she knew what she was looking at.
"Well," Varric said, "I'm sure it's a perfectly excellent and safe idea to sneak through the Gallows and poke around."
Hawke grinned. "I didn't have any other plans for the afternoon," she said, and turned to lead the way.
It was one thing, she thought, to know that the Gallows was one of the most massive buildings in Kirkwall, and another to realize just how many mages--and templars--lived within its grey stone walls. When she'd first come to Kirkwall, there had been a regular rotation of mages in the Gallows courtyard under the watchful eyes of templars and statues alike. Over the last few years, that number had decreased, and those who did get to stand outside were watched by more templars per mage. The City of Chains was drawing tight around its inhabitants, and with the Viscount gone, Meredith and Orsino were going to scrabble over any scrap of power they could find.
Following the weakness in the Veil was not an exact science, but Hawke found that when she reached an intersection of hallways, she was usually better served by turning to the quieter directions. She could understand why people avoided these halls. The scent of fear and creeping sense of unease grew stronger as she went. She tried to keep a mental map of where she had been, because if this went as well as most of their other work she'd probably have to sprint away after fighting some ludicrously enormous monster in the depths of the fortress, and she did not want to find herself in a dead end. After a while, there weren't even torches on the wall to light their way; they resorted to a small belt lantern that Aveline carried as part of her guardsman's kit. It was designed to give just enough light not to break one's neck while limiting the ability of others to locate the bearer in a dark alley. Fortunately, even the back corridors of the Gallows contained fewer unidentified substances, dead bodies, and half-broken-down barrels than the alleys of Lowtown.
Varric picked the lock on a thick wooden door to let them deeper still into the fortress; they hadn't seen anyone else for over a quarter hour. The quiet was deeply eerie.
Hawke came to the top of a stone staircase blocked off by a metal gate and froze. The damp smell in the air was familiar. She thought she could hear the wash of distant waves under Varric's teasing conversation with Sebastian--something about misuse of abandoned corridors. Far down the corridor to her left, she could see a thin sliver of light under what she assumed was another door, and hear the rattle of plate as templars moved. She could hear indistinct voices.
She was sickeningly certain that this was where she'd been imprisoned.
"Hawke?" Sebastian asked, very quietly, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle the scream. "Sorry," he whispered.
She swallowed hard against the frantic hammering of her heart. "Ah, I didn't need those years of my life anyway," she said lightly.
"What is it?" Aveline asked.
Hawke fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve in the dark, taking comfort in the texture of fabric, in its solidity and reality. "I have a guess as to where the demons might be coming from," she choked out.
She heard the sharply indrawn breath when Sebastian and Varric figured it out, and the quiet sigh from Aveline.
"We're a long way from where Junior said the demons appear," Varric said, "and I know they can do tricky things, but I didn't think floating through doors was one of them." He sounded like she felt: very determined to convince himself they didn't have to go down into the dungeon.
Unfortunately.
Hawke squared her shoulders. "Varric, that's like saying you expect me to draw to an inside straight when someone else is dealing."
He chuckled. "If Daisy could cheat, she'd deal you the winning hand."
Hawke smiled, though they couldn't see it, and pushed the gate lightly, then tugged it. It didn't budge either way. The corridor below was pitch-black. She really, really didn't want to go down there. "You told me when we met you could open doors," she said.
Varric sighed, but she heard the clink of his tools as he came forward and began to fiddle with the lock. Aveline had offered him the lantern the first two times, but he said that he didn't need light for this. Whether that was a dwarf thing or a sex joke, Hawke wasn't sure and preferred not to ask at the moment, though she made no promises about later.
The lock sprang open and Hawke opened the gate. Aveline put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go first," she said. Hawke's throat burned. She nodded and gripped Aveline's forearm instead of speaking.
Aveline led the way with the lantern. The stairs were slippery with slime and unevenly cut. The smells of human waste, sweat, and blood were a miasma that grew thicker as they descended. Hawke breathed as slowly and evenly as she could, grateful for the warmth of Sebastian's hand on her shoulder. She'd thank him later. What did you buy a priest--or for that matter, a prince? She couldn't quite deliver Starkhaven to him wrapped for Satinalia.
The Veil was much the same when they reached the bottom of the stairs, but Hawke heard a quiet sobbing ahead. She couldn't remember how many cells were in this hallway, but she would be surprised if only one was occupied, given everything. Maybe there were more corridors holding other prisoners. Maybe Meredith just imprisoned most mages in their rooms--she dimly remembered Anders saying something about that.
She'd never wanted to be here again.
For a moment, she didn't realize that someone was speaking to her; the voice was so hoarse and rasping that she had difficulty identifying the sounds. She followed it to one of the cell doors and Varric went to work while she tried to understand what was being said. She could only catch about one word in three--something about being good and understanding her crimes.
Her stomach roiled.
Varric finished opening the door and Aveline gestured them back as she opened it, just in case. Hawke peered over Aveline's shoulder and then had to clamp both hands over her mouth and swallow hard. What was in that cell....Her mind refused to process all of it. She had healed some genuinely gruesome injuries for her companions--and occasionally when she worked in Anders' clinic--but those had, primarily, been accidents or combat errors. They had not been calculated cruelty. She made herself step forward, sink down next to what had once been a mage. "It's all right," she murmured. It wasn't all right. She was a strong healer, but the best she or Anders would be able to do was mercy. She found a patch of hair that wasn't blood-soaked and rested her hand gently on it. "Tell me."
She knew without looking that Sebastian was praying; she hoped it did some good.
"Ser Alrik," the mage rasped.
Maker's breath, had this poor bastard been down here for the weeks since she'd killed Alrik?
"What about Ser Alrik?" She kept her voice low, and focused all of her attention on the injuries, using a trick Anders had taught her to numb the worst of it. It wouldn't last, but it didn't need to.
Through tears and a mostly-destroyed voice, the mage, who said his name was Aron, recounted indignities that would have made Hawke scream if she let herself think about them, so she didn't. Other templars had come down here since she'd killed Alrik, which was both good and bad; good that he'd not been starved entirely, and bad in that they were just as bad as Alrik. And he had been punished this way, she eventually learned, because he had gone to the courtyard without permission to speak with his daughter--not even left the Gallows or the Circle, but gone outside.
The templars had taunted him, and tortured him, and told him that they knew he'd summoned demons though he had never even considered it, until they said that if he admitted it, they'd give him mercy. Then they made him prove he could multiple times, and told him his sentence was imprisonment.
Fury twisted into a cold, hard knot in her stomach. She didn't acknowledge it. She couldn't. If she did she'd tear this whole place down stone by stone, with her bare hands.
"What is your daughter's name?" she asked.
"Elin," he whispered.
Hawke hesitated.
"I know," he said, and tears stung her eyes. "Please tell her I wish I could have seen her baby."
She had to swallow four times before the words could be forced out of her throat. "I will."
Sebastian came near and knelt in the muck to pray with Aron, the rites of Andraste a soothing wash of sound as Hawke concentrated on breathing, on not thinking, on the sound but not the words. At last Aron sighed. "I'm ready."
Hawke was as gentle as she knew how to be; she forced sleep on him with magic and numbed his body, and used her knife. She wiped his blood off her hands on the tattered remnants of his robe, and then vomited repeatedly in the corner of the cell, shaking and crying. Sebastian tried to comfort her; she had to brush his hand away. She didn't want comfort. She wanted to show every templar up to and including Meredith exactly what a mage could do with proper incentive, and it took everything she had to fight that impulse down, to remind herself that she had promised her father she would never be that kind of mage. She couldn't allow herself the luxury of Sebastian's comfort when she had to build hard walls. She did squeeze his hand so he would know she appreciated it, and then she walked past him, Aveline, and Varric to the top of the stairs, and silently made her grim way back to where Carver stood guard.
"The order you joined," she said with quiet, lethal precision, "tortured a man for speaking to his daughter in the Gallows courtyard. They accused him of summoning demons, then told him he'd have mercy if he confessed. The reason you have demons in your halls is because of templars, Carver, templars who tortured a man into proving his confession and then left him to rot. Ser Alrik wasn't the only poison apple in your barrel."
"Sister--" Carver began.
"No," Hawke said. "There is nothing you can possibly say." She tilted her chin up. Carver was never going to see her cry again; she could not afford it. "Get us out of here."
Chapter Eleven
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Canon-typical violence, explicit sex
Fic Wordcount: 117,000
Chapter Wordcount:
Notes: Canon-divergent, ignoring most of Act 3. A thousand thanks to
senmut's Discord server for cheering and brainstorming and reactions and encouragement.Beta: breadedsinner and MikWrites_InSpace
Summary: After the duel with the Arishok, Ariane Hawke looks around at the wreckage of her life in Kirkwall and asks herself: what is left for me here? As tensions increase between the Circle and the Templars, she turns to helping Sebastian retake Starkhaven. Meanwhile, she is trying to figure out how to love Fenris when he hates mages, and also definitely not looking at Sebastian's gorgeous eyes. Definitely not. Neither is Fenris. Sebastian is not looking back.
Definitely.
Canon divergence in which almost all of act 3 goes in the bin, and three damaged people try to find a way to live with each other and themselves, and maybe heal a bit.
Chapter index here.
Hawke couldn't help the icy shudder that gripped her when she stepped over the grate in the cobblestones that allowed the Gallows portcullis to drop down and defend the fortress. The last time she'd crossed it, she'd been facedown over a horse's ass, kidnapped by templars. That she was here under her own power this time did not make the situation much better.
One of these days, Hawke thought, she was going to walk into the Gallows on some perfectly mundane and legitimate errand, and Meredith would not allow her to leave. She was aware of the eyes of the Circle mages and templars upon their little group as they made their way through the courtyard. Grace, in particular, had her eyes narrowed, but then, Grace blamed Hawke for all of her own choices. Hawke glanced sideways at Sebastian and wondered if he would welcome the former members of the Starkhaven Circle back to his lands when he was prince in truth as well as in name.
Carver met them at a side gate and let them into the massive stone fortress. He said nothing as he led them down a hallway and turned into a small side room that seemed to be used for storage, stacked high with boxes and barrels.
"This hallway is where the demons most often appear," Carver said.
"'Most often' implies there's enough of them to have a pattern," Varric said. "Just how bad of a demon infestation do you have, Junior?"
Carver made an irritated noise. "We've killed five here," he said, "but I found one in the hallway outside Meredith's office, and I thought that perhaps you might not want to go poking around there with...whatever it is....you're planning to do." He stomped to the door.
"Do we have to worry about stumbling across your partners in oppression while we're investigating?" Varric asked.
"I'll do my best," Carver said through gritted teeth, "to keep you from having to draw the Commander's unwanted attention, Sister." With that, he stomped out of the room and into the hall, his templar plate clacking all the way.
Hawke glanced at Varric, but said nothing. Aveline rubbed her forehead. Sebastian frowned, but chose not to scold her over fighting with the family she had left, even though she could practically hear the words anyway.
Since Carver hadn't been more specific than "this hallway," Hawke decided to start with the storage room. They searched for hidden passages or trap doors, but found nothing. Carver stood a ways down the hall, watching them distantly. She assumed he meant to head off any other templars who got too curious about this area. The hallway was equally devoid of interesting spots, but it did have a faint, acrid scent that Hawke knew too well: that of fear.
When she mentioned it to the others, Varric snorted. "I can't imagine what someone living in the Gallows could possibly fear," he said, "but I'm sure if we work hard enough, we'll think of something."
Hawke grinned, but she was distracted by a faint green shimmer lurking just at the edge of her vision. The Veil here was quite thin, as one might expect from a place that had housed mages for generations, but even accounting for that, it felt....stretched.
Rather like the prison beneath the Vimmark Mountains.
She cursed, very quietly, but with significant creativity that sent Sebastian's eyebrows skyward. Her face heated with a blush. "Didn't mean for you to hear that," she said. She knew perfectly well that he had heard, and likely said, worse in his wilder days, but it still seemed wrong.
His lips quirked into a smile. "I was just impressed at your vocabulary," he said lightly. "I assume that wasn't because you stubbed your toe."
"No." Hawke paced ten strides down the hall one way, then back. It was subtle, but since she was looking for it, she could tell that the Veil was weaker as one headed deeper into the Gallows. The green glow that vanished if she looked at it head-on was brighter there. She rejoined her companions. "The Veil here is thin. Thinner than it should be." Maybe she should have brought Merrill and Anders after all.
Sebastian frowned. "Is that how demons are getting through?"
"They shouldn't be able to get through without being called," Hawke said, "but maybe it is thin enough here. But it's possible that they could be called unintentionally, maybe?"
The difference between Sebastian and Fenris was that both might find that idea equally unpalatable, but at least Sebastian looked at it as a problem with a specific mage, not with anyone who carried magic in her blood. He sighed quietly and looked around. "It's certainly not my area of expertise," he said, "but I remember learning that the Veil is thinner at night. Do we need to wait for sundown?"
Hawke could think of a lot of things she'd rather do at night than wait in the Gallows for demons to creep across the Veil, but it wasn't a bad plan. "It seems worse over there," she said, gesturing. "Maybe if we follow the weakness we can find the source without having to wait for sundown."
"What do we do when we find it?" Aveline asked.
"Oh, I thought we'd take it out for dinner, maybe give it some wine so it takes a nice nap," Hawke said, and flinched at Aveline's frown. "Okay, okay, bad joke. I don't know. I don't even know if it's possible to repair the Veil. Mostly I've just read about places you shouldn't go because it's weak, like the Brecilian Forest. But if we can find the problem, maybe someone else knows what to do about it, or at least where to set guards." She thought of Feynriel, wandering through the Fade in his dreams, and now safely spirited away to Tevinter. If she sought him in the Fade, would she find him again? Might he know someone? But those were questions to address when she knew what she was looking at.
"Well," Varric said, "I'm sure it's a perfectly excellent and safe idea to sneak through the Gallows and poke around."
Hawke grinned. "I didn't have any other plans for the afternoon," she said, and turned to lead the way.
It was one thing, she thought, to know that the Gallows was one of the most massive buildings in Kirkwall, and another to realize just how many mages--and templars--lived within its grey stone walls. When she'd first come to Kirkwall, there had been a regular rotation of mages in the Gallows courtyard under the watchful eyes of templars and statues alike. Over the last few years, that number had decreased, and those who did get to stand outside were watched by more templars per mage. The City of Chains was drawing tight around its inhabitants, and with the Viscount gone, Meredith and Orsino were going to scrabble over any scrap of power they could find.
Following the weakness in the Veil was not an exact science, but Hawke found that when she reached an intersection of hallways, she was usually better served by turning to the quieter directions. She could understand why people avoided these halls. The scent of fear and creeping sense of unease grew stronger as she went. She tried to keep a mental map of where she had been, because if this went as well as most of their other work she'd probably have to sprint away after fighting some ludicrously enormous monster in the depths of the fortress, and she did not want to find herself in a dead end. After a while, there weren't even torches on the wall to light their way; they resorted to a small belt lantern that Aveline carried as part of her guardsman's kit. It was designed to give just enough light not to break one's neck while limiting the ability of others to locate the bearer in a dark alley. Fortunately, even the back corridors of the Gallows contained fewer unidentified substances, dead bodies, and half-broken-down barrels than the alleys of Lowtown.
Varric picked the lock on a thick wooden door to let them deeper still into the fortress; they hadn't seen anyone else for over a quarter hour. The quiet was deeply eerie.
Hawke came to the top of a stone staircase blocked off by a metal gate and froze. The damp smell in the air was familiar. She thought she could hear the wash of distant waves under Varric's teasing conversation with Sebastian--something about misuse of abandoned corridors. Far down the corridor to her left, she could see a thin sliver of light under what she assumed was another door, and hear the rattle of plate as templars moved. She could hear indistinct voices.
She was sickeningly certain that this was where she'd been imprisoned.
"Hawke?" Sebastian asked, very quietly, and she clamped a hand over her mouth to muffle the scream. "Sorry," he whispered.
She swallowed hard against the frantic hammering of her heart. "Ah, I didn't need those years of my life anyway," she said lightly.
"What is it?" Aveline asked.
Hawke fidgeted with the edge of her sleeve in the dark, taking comfort in the texture of fabric, in its solidity and reality. "I have a guess as to where the demons might be coming from," she choked out.
She heard the sharply indrawn breath when Sebastian and Varric figured it out, and the quiet sigh from Aveline.
"We're a long way from where Junior said the demons appear," Varric said, "and I know they can do tricky things, but I didn't think floating through doors was one of them." He sounded like she felt: very determined to convince himself they didn't have to go down into the dungeon.
Unfortunately.
Hawke squared her shoulders. "Varric, that's like saying you expect me to draw to an inside straight when someone else is dealing."
He chuckled. "If Daisy could cheat, she'd deal you the winning hand."
Hawke smiled, though they couldn't see it, and pushed the gate lightly, then tugged it. It didn't budge either way. The corridor below was pitch-black. She really, really didn't want to go down there. "You told me when we met you could open doors," she said.
Varric sighed, but she heard the clink of his tools as he came forward and began to fiddle with the lock. Aveline had offered him the lantern the first two times, but he said that he didn't need light for this. Whether that was a dwarf thing or a sex joke, Hawke wasn't sure and preferred not to ask at the moment, though she made no promises about later.
The lock sprang open and Hawke opened the gate. Aveline put a hand on her shoulder. "I'll go first," she said. Hawke's throat burned. She nodded and gripped Aveline's forearm instead of speaking.
Aveline led the way with the lantern. The stairs were slippery with slime and unevenly cut. The smells of human waste, sweat, and blood were a miasma that grew thicker as they descended. Hawke breathed as slowly and evenly as she could, grateful for the warmth of Sebastian's hand on her shoulder. She'd thank him later. What did you buy a priest--or for that matter, a prince? She couldn't quite deliver Starkhaven to him wrapped for Satinalia.
The Veil was much the same when they reached the bottom of the stairs, but Hawke heard a quiet sobbing ahead. She couldn't remember how many cells were in this hallway, but she would be surprised if only one was occupied, given everything. Maybe there were more corridors holding other prisoners. Maybe Meredith just imprisoned most mages in their rooms--she dimly remembered Anders saying something about that.
She'd never wanted to be here again.
For a moment, she didn't realize that someone was speaking to her; the voice was so hoarse and rasping that she had difficulty identifying the sounds. She followed it to one of the cell doors and Varric went to work while she tried to understand what was being said. She could only catch about one word in three--something about being good and understanding her crimes.
Her stomach roiled.
Varric finished opening the door and Aveline gestured them back as she opened it, just in case. Hawke peered over Aveline's shoulder and then had to clamp both hands over her mouth and swallow hard. What was in that cell....Her mind refused to process all of it. She had healed some genuinely gruesome injuries for her companions--and occasionally when she worked in Anders' clinic--but those had, primarily, been accidents or combat errors. They had not been calculated cruelty. She made herself step forward, sink down next to what had once been a mage. "It's all right," she murmured. It wasn't all right. She was a strong healer, but the best she or Anders would be able to do was mercy. She found a patch of hair that wasn't blood-soaked and rested her hand gently on it. "Tell me."
She knew without looking that Sebastian was praying; she hoped it did some good.
"Ser Alrik," the mage rasped.
Maker's breath, had this poor bastard been down here for the weeks since she'd killed Alrik?
"What about Ser Alrik?" She kept her voice low, and focused all of her attention on the injuries, using a trick Anders had taught her to numb the worst of it. It wouldn't last, but it didn't need to.
Through tears and a mostly-destroyed voice, the mage, who said his name was Aron, recounted indignities that would have made Hawke scream if she let herself think about them, so she didn't. Other templars had come down here since she'd killed Alrik, which was both good and bad; good that he'd not been starved entirely, and bad in that they were just as bad as Alrik. And he had been punished this way, she eventually learned, because he had gone to the courtyard without permission to speak with his daughter--not even left the Gallows or the Circle, but gone outside.
The templars had taunted him, and tortured him, and told him that they knew he'd summoned demons though he had never even considered it, until they said that if he admitted it, they'd give him mercy. Then they made him prove he could multiple times, and told him his sentence was imprisonment.
Fury twisted into a cold, hard knot in her stomach. She didn't acknowledge it. She couldn't. If she did she'd tear this whole place down stone by stone, with her bare hands.
"What is your daughter's name?" she asked.
"Elin," he whispered.
Hawke hesitated.
"I know," he said, and tears stung her eyes. "Please tell her I wish I could have seen her baby."
She had to swallow four times before the words could be forced out of her throat. "I will."
Sebastian came near and knelt in the muck to pray with Aron, the rites of Andraste a soothing wash of sound as Hawke concentrated on breathing, on not thinking, on the sound but not the words. At last Aron sighed. "I'm ready."
Hawke was as gentle as she knew how to be; she forced sleep on him with magic and numbed his body, and used her knife. She wiped his blood off her hands on the tattered remnants of his robe, and then vomited repeatedly in the corner of the cell, shaking and crying. Sebastian tried to comfort her; she had to brush his hand away. She didn't want comfort. She wanted to show every templar up to and including Meredith exactly what a mage could do with proper incentive, and it took everything she had to fight that impulse down, to remind herself that she had promised her father she would never be that kind of mage. She couldn't allow herself the luxury of Sebastian's comfort when she had to build hard walls. She did squeeze his hand so he would know she appreciated it, and then she walked past him, Aveline, and Varric to the top of the stairs, and silently made her grim way back to where Carver stood guard.
"The order you joined," she said with quiet, lethal precision, "tortured a man for speaking to his daughter in the Gallows courtyard. They accused him of summoning demons, then told him he'd have mercy if he confessed. The reason you have demons in your halls is because of templars, Carver, templars who tortured a man into proving his confession and then left him to rot. Ser Alrik wasn't the only poison apple in your barrel."
"Sister--" Carver began.
"No," Hawke said. "There is nothing you can possibly say." She tilted her chin up. Carver was never going to see her cry again; she could not afford it. "Get us out of here."
Chapter Eleven