Chapter Text
The city was a pyre.
To have said the Qunari fought like the Black City unleashed would have given too much credit to demons. They were ruthlessly brutal, but strategic, calculating, and absolutely singular in purpose.
Greatswords cleaving men in two, arrows finding the slenderest gaps in armor, grey skin painted with streaks as red as the blood they were spilling; their chained, blinded Saarebas, lips sewn shut, silently casting spells that wiped out men by the dozen.
The city guard and the Templars were overwhelmed in numbers, as well as by the sheer size, breadth, and strength of these invaders from the north. With the Qunari dwarfing the largest of the human warriors by at least half a head, it was easy to feel as though they would drown in wave after wave of the relentless assault. Everywhere the sounds of metal clashing, ringing against each other, vibrated through the combatants. War cries, taunts, and screams rose in a grim chorus as flames licked up walls and through rooftops.
The small army, which had been in Kirkwall under at least the pretense of diplomacy, had cut a swath through the city and of course, she and Carver had been caught in the crossfire.
Though she would never admit it, she had tried to reason with Arishok. Unfortunately, though her connection with Sten had made the Qunari leader at least hear her out, there was nothing that could be done once it had been discovered that the Tome of Koslun was close at hand.
Damnit, Isabela.
They were working to make their way out of the city – they had tarried too long as it was, and their own work became more urgent by the moment. Carver’s jaw was set.
“Well, it can never be simple, can it? A drink, a visit, a bit of Wicked Grace…” she offered, her tone lighter than she felt.
He cast a sidelong look at her, his jaw still tight as they made their way toward the docks.
She took a breath, pulling a hand through her hair, mussing her curls.
“I’m sorry, Carver,” she said with a sigh.
“It’s not your fault,” he replied as she unmoored a skiff and he boarded, taking the oars.
“I could do that, you know,” she noted as she hopped on.
“Of course you could, and it would take us three times as long,” he said matter-of-factly. She scowled at him, and he looked back at her patiently. She rolled her eyes and sat.
Once they were moving on the water, she watched him as he rowed.
“Hawke will be fine,” she told him. “I’ve never seen such a wily Wicked Grace player. Well, besides Isabela. And the dwarf. I mean really, I’m lucky to have kept my armor.”
He nodded grimly.
“Really,” she said earnestly.
He looked at her then, shaking his head and releasing a sigh.
“I know,” he said. “I know. I just wish…”
She was quiet, then, just watching. Listening.
“I just wish things had been different,” he said, looking past her at the burning city.
After turning to following his gaze, she looked back at him and put a hand over her heart to say,
“Don’t tell me you’re regretting the glamor and glory of a lifetime of fighting monsters underground!”
He didn’t smile.
“Not that,” he said. “I just… it doesn’t feel right to leave.”
She nodded.
“I know,” she said. “But if anyone can navigate this mess, it’s Hawke; flames, knowing you lot, Hawke will end up with a barony out of this!”
“They don’t have baronies in the Free Marches. And the Amells are already titled.”
“Oh, who can keep track of all your human hierarchies,” she said, waving her hand dismissively with a half-grin.
He leveled a narrow look at her, though the corners of his mouth were twitching.
“That’s racist, you know,” he told her.
“Hardly,” she scoffed. “I’m but a humble girl from the alienage, how am I to know such things?”
“Psht, I’ve seen your robe collection. The Circle was no alienage.”
She huffed, her nose in the air.
“Either way, I suspect Hawke is performing heroics as we speak and setting the whole city back to rights.”
Carver’s gaze turned back to the burning silhouette of the docks; he nodded.
“Right.”
There was silence, then; only the sound of him rowing, and the waves gently rocking the boat. After a few moments, he spoke.
“The Knight-Captain warned you about this,” he said. “Told you to get out of the city.”
“He did,” she nodded, looking out over the water.
“Not only because of the Qunari,” he spoke again, looking at her meaningfully.
“No,” she said. “Not only because of the Qunari.”
“He warned you about the Templars; how mages were being treated in the city,” he pushed. She cast him a sidelong glance, her face still turned toward the water.
“Are you going to continue your summary of a conversation I was present for, or are you going to ask what you’re going to ask?”
“You said he was a Templar at the Circle in Ferelden while you were there,” he replied. “Was it more than that?”
She looked at him then, eyes wide, then batted her lashes.
“More than what? Do you mean did he also help in the kitchens, or the stables? I assume not, but I’m sure I don’t know,” she replied.
Carver gave her a deadpan look, and she huffed a sigh as they moved further away from the city.
“Does the Knight-Captain seem to you the sort to carry on an illicit affair with one of his charges?” she asked, looking toward the city again.
“No,” he said slowly. “But he did seem like the type who might have been carrying a torch for one.”
She cast him another sidelong look.
“Who can say what lives in the hearts of men?” she replied. “Especially ones wearing plate. Tough to get through, that.”
He squinted at her.
She huffed another sigh.
“We were both very, very young and very, very green. I still had eye teeth when I entered the Circle; I was sixteen and he was eighteen when he arrived at Kinloch Hold. The worst of the world had yet to touch either of us, and we were unguarded.
Shaking her head, she smiled wryly, looking down at her hands thoughtfully. Under her gloves, she knew there were small scars, now -- her nails short and unadorned, though neat, clean, and well-maintained.
“I imagine I was an exotic departure from the norm for him, though he was sweet, and kind, and respectful to all of us. He seemed to look at us all as people, rather than walking barrels of magical oil waiting to be ignited.”
Carver nodded. “So what happened?”
“Nothing,” she replied, looking out on the water toward the ship. “There were tentative smiles, looks as we passed each other. He would accompany me to gather herbs in the garden sometimes, and from time to time we would talk a bit. But he was very conscious of his duties and crossing lines, and I was far too awkward and self-conscious and inexperienced with boys to make any overtures to him.”
“You?” he asked incredulously. “Self-conscious? Awkward?”
She laughed. “An absolute git; me, a girl from the alienage who’d never even held hands with a boy, with a crush on a shem, and a literal knight in shining armor, to boot? I was a mess.”
Carver couldn’t help but smile at that. “I can see it.”
She shrugged, her smile turning wry. “It was moot regardless, I suppose. The same day I was promoted from apprentice to a full-fledged enchanter, I made a severe error in judgment. Sometimes I think the only reason I was spared tranquility was because Duncan recruited me to the Wardens. So I was whisked away from the tower and off to war.”
“And you never saw him again?” he asked.
“Oh, I saw him again,” she said, inhaling deeply and expelling the breath slowly. “When I went back to ask Irving for the Circle’s help with another mission we were working on, the tower had been overtaken by abominations, and Cullen was one of the survivors. He’d been tortured by demons for… honestly, I don’t even know how long.”
“Oh, shit,” he uttered. “And he didn’t break?”
“Oh, they broke him, alright,” she said. “But he never capitulated. We were able to retake the tower before they were able to get what they wanted or kill him as punishment. But he was… changed.”
Carver was silent for a time.
“That must have been hard,” he said.
“I’m sure it was. One of the things he said was that…” she took a breath. “It was a desire demon. So it… used his deepest, most shameful yearnings and fantasies against him.”
Warden Hawke arched a brow.
“And did those include a certain elven mage previously under his care?”
She pressed her lips together and shrugged , watching Kirkwall’s skyline get smaller, the glow of the fires lighting it from below, as though it were being swallowed by an underground inferno. Memories of Cullen’s face, the desperation in his eyes, the intensity of the longing and hatred combined there.
Suppressing a shudder, she said, “Having entered the Fade myself to confront the demon causing it all, I can tell you that whatever it put him through, the fact that he never wavered and gave it what it wanted says quite a lot about his character.”
“Hmm,” Carver replied, nodding. Then, after a pause, “so does the fact that he ended up working for someone who hates mages as much as Meredith and rising through the ranks so quickly.”
Her gaze still on the burning city, she replied evenly. “I suppose it does.”
“But,” Carver continued, “when I said it must have been hard, I wasn’t talking about the Knight-Captain. He wasn’t the only wide-eyed young would-be sweetheart in this story.”
She turned to look at him then, a smirk on her lips, her eyes slightly narrow.
“When have you ever known me to be wide-eyed, Master Hawke?” she asked.
“Never, aside from when we discover tomes or scrolls or magical rarities, or see halla anywhere, or nugs, or high dragons, or rainbows, of course –”
She laughed then and smacked his mail-encased arm. “Shut up, Hawke. Is that the respect you show your commander?”
“No disrespect intended, ser,” he said, hiding a smirk of his own. “Only trying to answer your question honestly.”
She huffed.
“The Cullen Rutherford I knew an age ago was a good man who went through something unimaginable, and the only reason he survived it was his commitment to his duty. As to any change in attitude toward mages on his part, that commitment, from what I can see, has remained. He never owed me anything, nor I him. It was a long time ago.”
“So why did he go out of his way to find you and warn you all this time later?” Carver asked.
She wet her lips, pressing them together, looking contemplatively out over the water.
“I don’t know,” she said softly. “Most likely, out of regard for that wide-eyed boy and girl we used to be.”
She seemed to shake herself out of whatever reverie she’d been in, then, and turned to him with a broad smile as they moved closer to the ship carrying them off.
“Anyway, we have our own heroics to get to, you know,” she pointed out. That had him looking back at her with a heavy exhale; she could almost see it grounding him, focusing him.
“Right,” he said, this time with more conviction. She put a hand on his arm and squeezed.
“Good,” she said, giving him a smile. “Because you know I’m shit without you there to keep those bloody Alphas off me.”
“Please,” he snorted. “I’m surprised you haven’t managed to charm any of them into simply giving up so far.”
“Well, if they spoke Common, I probably could; unfortunately, I’m not quite fluent enough in grunts and shrieks yet.”
“Well, in the meantime, I’m relatively certain your Storm of the Century will do the trick.”
“There is that,” she told him with a grin.
“You know, sometimes I think you’re worse than Hawke,” he replied drily. To that, she gave him a brilliant grin.
“I will take that as the highest compliment,” she said with a little bow.
“You would.”