#tether fic

*

“Do you know Knight Captain Cullen?” asked Hawke between sips.

“No more than you do, I suspect. He came here from Ferelden some years back, a little after you did, after the Blight. He comes for services with the other templars, but I have never spoken to him on any intimate level. He takes confessions with Sister Clara, she has a motherly disposition he responds to, I think. He seems a melancholy fellow.”

“That’s an astute observation.”

“I don’t think he tries to hide it. And I hear the other templars whisper.”

“Did you ever consider becoming a templar yourself? Would that not count as Chantry service? You have the martial ability.”

*

The room is dusted with a fine green mist, hanging in the air, shimmering like strips of gauze. Thick enough to waft though, caressing Sebastian’s face as he walked into the antechamber.

Up the stairs, a woman moved across the hall. Sebastian recognized her immediately. Her long dark brown hair in an immaculate braid tucked into gold netting, not a strand out of place. A long frame and neck in a rich green gown with gold accessories, gliding effortlessly from place to place.

“Mother?” said Sebastian. His words leapt from his lips and splattered onto the floor; his voice unable to penetrate the mist. He watched her continue to move through the hall, smooth and seamless as a specter, but slow as well. Slow enough for Sebastian to run up the stairs, meet her in the hall, and face her.

“Oh, there you are,” she said, her voice sweet and serene, like the chirping of a birds in a forest glade. “How good it is to have you back home. Where you belong.”

Sebastian winced, unfamiliar that sound coming from that face. “You were… expecting me?”

“Why, of course, my darling!” her head tilted to the side, a pearly glob sliding down her cheek like a large teardrop. “We were just about to have dinner. There’s a seat just for you.”

Her rouge accentuated full but stern cheeks, but Sebastian quickly noticed a smear, one he knew his mother would never allow.

“Mother, are you … well?”

“Of course. I could not be happier, with you returned home.”

Loghain had discarded his Warden uniform, the silver plating with dark blue padding and the griffon emblazoned on the chest. In its stead, he wore rawhide, lined with fur. It was clearly old, frayed at the edges. It was very Ferelden, both in style and in its endurance.

With Wardens on the hunt for him, Hawke found her mind back in the Deep Roads, under the Vinmark Mountains. Though made wretched with the Blight, she didn’t think Larius could have been that old, fifty years, perhaps. His scalp was bare in places, the ragged remnants of a beard in disarray, but what patches of hair remained was still chestnut brown. He only had a mask of wrinkles of his eyes, framing foggy marbles of eyes.

She looked back at Loghain, silver threaded his raven hair, creases along eyes. She did not know how the Calling, real or fake, functioned. Did it have anything to do with age, or was it random? Anders never spoke of it and she did not ask. She could only guess.

Tagged by @ammoniteflesh, thank you!

*

Sebastian clasped his hands with Hawke’s, fingers tightly interlocked, squeezing the ends. “When last you fought Corypheus, it was all I could do to fire a few arrows. If what Varric says is true, I would be of more help sending support to the Inquisition, but I wish that did not include you.”

“I know,” said Hawke, squeezing back, “and I hate to leave you.”

*

Hawke’s mind wandered, imagining a small princeling running through the castle halls, a practice bow in hand, tugging at the ends of his grandfather’s shirt, desperate to show him his progress. He seemed kind, this grandfather, based on the softness of Sebastian’s voice when he spoke of him. She wondered what having grandparents was like.

Mother spoke often of her childhood in Kirkwall—which delighted Bethany, but only made her sad—but never her parents. That tomb was shut so tight for so long, that when she told Hawke she was apparently everything they could have ever wanted in an Amell grandchild, it meant nothing. The whispers of ghosts, their words like dust grazed against her face before being blown off the earth forever.

Father spoke of his mother only a few times. Hawke remembered him saying she looked just like her; tall, broad-shouldered, sharp profile, bushy dark hair. Except she was a mage, the most powerful mage he had ever known. The Circles taught him a few things, but the foundation, the mastery of that raw power, that was all her. She was bold, she was beautiful, and she was free. When she died, there was nothing left for him in his home, and so he roamed aimlessly for years, until the Templars finally caught him.

She suspected that her father’s father was an elf, though he never said outright and had no concrete proof. She and the twins looked perfectly human, their ears only a slight point on the very edge, not like Feynriel, who looked much more like his mother. But it was just a feeling, thinking of the way he spoke of Dalish passing through often, trading freely.

Her mind went back to Sebastian, like waves returning to the sea. She found herself wishing they could have known each other sooner, somehow. It was difficult to imagine a feasible reason why he might have come to backwater Ferelden. It was less difficult to imagine a world where magic mattered less, and her parents could have stayed in Kirkwall. If magic were just removed from the picture, then perhaps, somehow...

“I’m sorry,” said Sebastian, hiding his embarrassment with a choppy chuckle. “I must be boring you to tears.”

“Not at all,” said Hawke swiftly, her eyes locked with his and her hands reach for him. “I want to learn more about you. That was our agreement, wasn’t it?”

Tagged by @ammoniteflesh, thank you!

*

Cadash sighed, feeling the fatigue hovering over the campfire, as surely as the bloated clouds above. Everyone hunched in their seats, heads knocking, rubbing eyes. The towers of Caer Bronach could be seen in the moonlight, peaking from behind the hills. There was a long way yet to go.

“Lady Hawke,” Cadash said with a shrug. “I’ve been drilling you a lot since you came to Ferelden, about mages, and red lyrium, demons. Why don’t you tell me about something you’d actually like to talk about?”

Hawke lifted her weary head, brow raised, back straight. “Is there something you had in mind, Lady Cadash?”

Cadash’s lip curled, her black eyes flickered like onyx against the fire. “Tell me something that Varric’s book got wrong.”

“Oh, this should be interesting,” said Cassandra, her gaze never leaving Varric.

“Hey,” said an indignant Varric. “Tales of the Champion is perfectly approximately accurate.”

“You certainly captured the exciting parts, Varric,” said Hawke, smiling. “Though perhaps a few things in between were lost.”

“Like what?”

“Well, for one, you essentially skipped my time with the Red Iron.”

“What’s there to say? You worked under some boorish mercenary for a year.”

Hawke’s mouth tightened. “How easily you sum up the longest year of my life, Varric. You know, I had actually met Sebastian during that time.”

Varric shook his head, and it spread through his body, like he had to reset to absorb the new information. “What? You met him when you collected the bounty, that was after we had met.”

Hawke sighed. “I am certain I told you this. My life does not begin and end with you.”

“I didn’t…”

Tagged by @mxkelsifer and @gardensystemtv. Thank you very much!

*

“You did say you always wanted to be a knight,” Sebastian said as he pulled the ribbon taut, a white bow over her armored wrist. “Is this not a knightly thing, to take a favor into battle?”

“Yes, but…”

“As a show of my faith and support in you, of course.”

She laughed. “I am starting to worry you be may too quick to indulge me.”

“Perhaps I think you could stand to indulge yourself more. You need not take it, if you don’t wish.”

“Oh no, I am absolutely keeping it. I just…” Hawke brought her hand with the favor to Sebastian’s face. In a rattled breath she blurted out, “May I kiss you?”

He smiled and nodded. “You may.”

She brought his face to meet with hers. Her aim was sloppy, her lips smeared across his chin before re-aligning, and her fingers traveled from his cheeks to the back of his scalp, pushing him closer, urging him to sink into her. He followed her lead, hands looped over her shoulders. Despite the obstacle of armor, he anchored himself in the kiss, letting waves of heat and salt overtake him.

She tore herself away slowly. “That was… for luck.”