Chapter Text
The Chantry halls were as quiet as they always were at this late hour. This was the only time Alice could stomach being here, especially with what happened with Sister—ugh—Mother Petrice. The more people in these gilded halls, the more her skin itched.
There was one person she didn't mind seeing here, and awake, despite how much better it might be for him to be sound asleep just now.
Sebastian stood, as he usually did, at the feet of the statue of the Maker, up on the altar. He was without his bow and his crisp white armor, just a simple white linen shirt and pants, and still his boots, as if he intended to leave at some point. Or he'd recently gotten back.
"Evening," Alice said, and Sebastian jumped. Unable to suppress a laugh, Alice added, "Sorry. I shouldn't have startled you."
"Oh, Hawke." Sebastian pressed a hand to his chest and sighed. "No, of course. I was just…lost in thought."
"That sounds awful," Alice said, striding over to the podium that boasted about the Maker. She leaned on it, hooking one ankle around the other, and watched the flames flicker on the candles arranged around the floor.
If Sebastian took in her pose, she was sure she didn't notice. He looked up at the statue again, pondering. "Can't you sleep?"
"Not as often as I'd like," with my bed empty, but if she said that part out loud, in his beloved Chantry, she'd be in for a lecture of epic proportions. Besides, he wasn't even in on that joke. He didn't know about her and Fenris. He'd probably grasp his shirtfront again if she told him. "What about you?"
"Something keeps me awake," Sebastian admitted softly. "Something I can't ever give name to, and not for lack of trying."
"The tensions in Kirkwall? The lack of a viscount? The way Meredith is cracking down on everyone, not just mages?"
"What else is she supposed to do?" Sebastian retorted, turning to her. It could have been the candlelight, but she swore his face was pinker when he really took her in. "Let things fall into chaos? Though." He huffed out a breath, stirring the dark locks of hair that drifted over his forehead. "Am I really one to talk, avoiding duty as I am?"
"I didn't know you were Meredith's number one supporter, Vael."
"I am not. But I can understand her position, if nothing else."
"Her position?" Alice straightened and faced him fully. "That mages should be kept locked up and Templars should rule without question? Or does she have a gentler side that only you are privy to, somehow?"
He gave her a hard stare back. He was in a fighting mood tonight, it seemed. She liked when he did that. "She's trying to keep a lid on the boiling pot that is the current state of Kirkwall. Who else is stepping up to do so? You?"
"I do everything for this city. You know that." Alice turned away from him and stalked to one end of the altar before spinning on her heel to march back to him. He watched her the entire time, summer sky eyes following her movement with an interest she didn't quite know how to take. "What has the exiled prince done for his city recently, hmm?"
Instead of shooting back at her, Sebastian broke the sudden tension with a self-deprecating laugh and shook his head, rubbing his brow between his fingers. "I quite honestly don't know," he said. "The most accurate answer might be nothing. But I'm certain you know that."
She did. She'd pushed him to return to Starkhaven, and like every time before, he'd rebuffed that idea, claiming his duty was to the Chantry. She could fill spitoons with what she thought of the Chantry, but it was Sebastian's life. Much as she'd like to make him see where she was coming from.
"You can always go back," she said, for the thousandth time in the last year.
And like always, he shook his head in that same stubborn refusal. Maker, he could be infuriating.
"I can't leave now, not when things are in such a tense state of affairs," he said. "What would you do without me?"
If it had been anyone else, Alice might have laughed that off, because anyone else would have been joking. But somewhere in Sebastian's mind, he'd convinced himself that he was the only thing standing between her, or any of her friends, and oblivion. Even if she denied it, even if she met that assertion every time with a lewd joke. He held fast to it.
Stubborn.
"Indulge in more hedonistic affairs, for one," she said with a devious quirk of her lips.
"That isn't funny," Sebastian chided her. "You're a public figure, Hawke. The Champion of Kirkwall. Whether or not you asked to, you set an example to the people here."
"And why shouldn't I set the example that anyone can indulge their carnal desires?"
"You're not winning my favor just now, Hawke."
"Maybe it's not your favor I'm after."
They both stopped, shocked at what had just flown out of Alice's mouth. Where had that come from? And in that context? A fluke. Nothing more.
"Anyway," Alice went on, in far too high a voice. "I specifically didn't come here to be lectured."
"Why else grace this sacred place with your presence, then?" Sebastian asked, clearing his throat. "At such an hour?"
"I needed to get out of that mansion."
"Ah, yes. Spacious rooms and more books than can be found in the entirety of the city of Ostwick are a notorious drag."
He was being sassy. Oh, she could kick him.
"You been hanging out with Anders?" she asked, then laughed at the absurdity of that possibility. Anders couldn't stand Sebastian. Sebastian didn't know what to make of Anders. It was such fun, getting them together, listening to them argue.
"No," Sebastian said flatly. "Not since our last excursion together, at any rate."
"Remind me not to invite you along next time he's around, then." Alice rested her backside against the podium now and looked over the sanctuary.
Sebastian's eyebrow twitched at her apparent disrespect for the Maker, but he said nothing. "Did you really only come here because you were restless in your home? Wouldn't it have made more sense to go to the Hanged Man?"
"Maker's breath, Sebastian. I am a woman, alone, in this big, scary city, and you want me to walk all the way through Lowtown to the tavern in the dead of night?"
"Hawke, there is not a soul that would dare attack you, under cover of darkness or any other time." Sebastian folded his arms.
"You'd be surprised. No, wait, maybe you wouldn't." Alice shuffled slightly, reached behind herself with both hands and gripped the top of the podium backwards. She stretched until something popped and a gasp escaped against her will. "That's better. All right." She turned to him. "Why don't we go for a walk?"
"Wh—both of us? This late?"
Alice hitched one shoulder and let it drop. "What's the trouble? Neither of us was sleeping, anyway, and I could use the company."
"Does Fenris not live around the corner from you?"
Alice's chest constricted a bit, like it always did when Fenris was brought up or passed by or came out with them on their journeys. They were friends, yes, good friends. Too good of friends. Maybe not even friends at all. But he'd shut that door so tightly she hadn't dared knock on it in two years, and every time she thought of bringing it up, the words died in her throat, only to claw away at her from the inside ever after. If she invited Fenris out on a walk at this hour, alone, he might think it was so she could corner him about what had passed between them before and resist, push her away. She couldn't have that. She needed him in her life, even if it was at a distance, with far too much weight on the delicate chain that linked them still.
"He'll be asleep," Alice said, waving one hand. "Come on, it can't be good for you to stay stuffed up in this place day after day."
"Well…" Sebastian glanced toward a pair of Sisters, up on the third level, reciting the Chant in soft voices. Neither of them had looked around the entire time Alice had been here. If they noticed the Chantry Prince sneaking off in the night with Serah Hawke, they might gossip, but it wasn't as though anyone would really believe Sebastian Vael capable of a dalliance from his bride, the Maker.
"Come on," Alice said again, and then walked off without waiting to see if he followed.
He did. And he left his armor and bow behind, as well.
"I'm not defending you if we get in a scuffle," Alice warned him. "A Follower of She shows up and you're his."
Instead of a disapproving frown, Sebastian glanced at her with eyes that danced in the fire of the sconces. "Is that a promise?"
He was acting very strange tonight, indeed.
Out in Hightown, Alice made for the Market District. An Antivan bazaar was in town, and she knew a few of the shops to stay open late into the night. One of them sold the most delicious fried pastry she'd ever had. Anders disapproved of it, said it would kill her at her young age by blocking up her heart's channels, but she couldn't keep away. Nothing had successfully killed her yet, and plenty of things had tried.
"Did you bring any coin?" Alice asked as they approached the stand. Antivan minstrels played quietly across the courtyard, filling the air with the unbeatably romantic sound of guitars and brass flutes. It smelled like her pastries, and when the merchant peddling them saw her, he grinned, the gold one of his teeth glinting in the lantern light.
"Hawke, ma bella," he said.
"Giacomo," Alice replied with a smile of her own. She looked expectantly at Sebastian, and after registering her point, Giacomo did the same.
His brow creasing, Sebastian dug in his trouser pocket. "I didn't expect to be financially exploited this evening," he said, dropping two silvers into Giacomo's hand, which quickly flew into the inside of his vest.
"I'm just full of surprises," Alice said, accepting the two pastries with a wink of thanks for Giacomo. The merchant returned that with a lurid grin, but Alice pretended not to see.
Walking away, she passed one of the sweet-smelling treats to Sebastian, and he studied it for several long moments, as if he didn't trust it.
"It's not nearly as poisonous as people think," Alice said.
"Not nearly?"
Alice laughed and bit into her own, letting the pillowy, sugary texture melt on her tongue. "Ugh," she murmured in rapture. "Poison."
With a bemused sort of quirk of his mouth, Sebastian tasted his. His eyebrows shot up and he grunted softly, swiping a thumb over his lips. "It's rich," he said. "Like bread with too much honey."
"That's the idea." Alice ate the rest of hers slowly, and Sebastian picked at his. She took to licking the last of the stickiness off her fingers. "Want to go down to the docks?"
"At this hour? Why, so we can get stabbed in an alley?"
"Sure! Stabbed, poisoned. I'm spoiling you."
Sebastian arched a look at her that puzzled her. Out of nowhere, he reached out, and brushed some crumbs from the corner of her mouth with his thumb. "There," he said. "That was bothering me." And then he walked on, heading for the bridge to the docks.
Something was different tonight, that was for sure. When he'd touched her face, her stomach had lurched in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant, and when he'd taken his hand away, her cheek burned where his thumb had been. She wanted his touch back, wanted him to play with her hair, to lay his hand possessively on the back of her neck as they walked. These weren't new feelings, but them being directed at Sebastian of all people was frighteningly new.
She tried not to show how that simple touch had affected her. Honestly, he might not even realize. He was a repressed Chantry Brother, and had told her countless times her lascivious jokes towards just about everyone, which she believed he just didn't get, weren't funny in the slightest. He never found her funny. Except on rare comet-glimmer nights like tonight, where it seemed his high walls had limits after all.
Only why did she want to crest those walls? Why had his thumb against her face felt like such a big deal?
They reached the stairs at the end of the bridge and began to descend. The stars glittered on the distant chop of the Waking Sea, inky black and foreboding. At least the night was clear, and out of Hightown, the heavens weren't so hard to see against the glare of the lights.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Sebastian asked.
What was beautiful was the abandoned quality of Kirkwall tonight. There was not a soul around, and perhaps it was because while crime had been tapering in Hightown and the upper-class areas of Lowtown, under Meredith's iron fist, it was brutal and blind when it did strike. But Alice chose to believe it was because everyone was having a peaceful night in, leaving the city for her and Sebastian to explore at their leisure.
Of course, he was all wrapped up in the view.
And what a view it was. The sea, lapping at the walls of Kirkwall. Gulls flying over the wind, eager for their midnight snacks, looking like angled white specters against the deep blue of the sky. If only the giant, ugly block of darkness that was the Gallows didn't have to ruin it, reaching toward the stars as if to drag them down to drown them.
"I have a few changes I'd make," Alice said. "But no one's asking my opinion."
"Hawke, there isn't a Free Marcher that calls Kirkwall home that hasn't asked your opinion, the last few years."
She shut her jaw with a click, because he wasn't wrong. She was Champion. That meant every time she made this walk during the day, people stopped and stared. It was hardly ever admiration, though there was plenty of that in the ones that didn't stare. It was mostly apprehension, or outright fear, as if trouble followed in the Champion's wake, and would they be next to be affected by it?
But despite all this, or perhaps because of it, more people than ever came to Alice with their problems. Hawke, what should I name my baby, and will you approve of the demolition of this apartment building? Hawke, what are you doing about the killings in Darktown? Hawke, why haven't you endorsed my wagon-wheel-outfitting startup? Can you talk to the Templars? Can you talk to the mages? Hawke, can you solve all of our problems while we sit and wring our hands like a frightened sewing circle? Hawke? Hawke? Hawke?
"Hawke?"
Sebastian was speaking to her, and Alice shook her head to clear it.
"Yes, present," she said. She looked at him.
He watched her, almost as though he were studying her, or seeing her for the first time. "What is it that kept you up tonight? Why come to the Chantry?"
Alice blinked. Here on the steps down to the docks, soaked in moonlight and lulled by the sugary aftertaste of the pastry, it was like her usual mask was faltering. No jokes sprang to mind, no offhanded remark that could throw him off the scent made itself known. Alice could only stare at him, up at him, because though he stood on the same step she did, he had half a head on her. A fact that always bothered her.
Finally, her brain seemed to limp back into the race, and she said, "Where were you coming or going when I showed up?"
Sebastian's brow knit. "I'm sorry?"
"Your boots. They were already on when I arrived."
He glanced down, as if to verify what she said. "I…was going to…" He paused. "I'm not entirely sure." He gave a soft laugh. "Isn't that strange?"
"Go for a wander in Hightown alone?" Alice suggested.
"No, I think I thought to go somewhere, but I can't think of where. It isn't as though anyone would welcome me as a guest this late." He smirked at Alice. "Well, at least you didn't have that problem."
"'All are welcome to the Maker's feet at any time, day or night,'" Alice said. "Or something along those lines."
"I'm surprised you retained even that much. But the actual saying is, 'To any Maker's child's plight, his arms are open, day or night.'"
"Oh. Well, I was close."
"That was not close."
"It was, too!"
"Where did you get 'feet'?"
"The Chant talks about his feet. I don't know, I hardly paid attention to the services when I was a girl."
"That saying isn't even in the Chant of Light." Sebastian massaged his eyes between his fingers, as if she were sorely vexing him. "You are a wonder, Hawke."
"Thank you."
He lowered his arm and regarded her, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. "Perhaps it's time we turned around and went home."
"What? Why? Aren't you having fun?" Alice asked.
"It's late, and to deny one's body sleep is bad for the health."
"Now you sound like Anders again. I thought we were going to the docks."
"The docks will be there in the morning." Sebastian reached out a hand, and for a moment Alice thought he might take her by the shoulder, but he only gestured up the stairs they'd just climbed down to get this far. "We both could use some sleep."
The idea of going back to the Hightown mansion, alone, and facing those cavernous rooms, void of life with Bodahn, Sandal, and Orana all in bed, was just too much to bear.
"Can we at least walk Hightown for a bit longer?" Alice asked. "I won't sleep for some time after all that sugar, anyway."
Sebastian considered this, his blue eyes searching hers. As if he could sense her reluctance to return to her mansion, he finally nodded. "All right. I don't see the harm."
And so, they did. They made their way up one side of Hightown, and down the other. They avoided the Market District, because Sebastian insisted Giacomo did not have Alice's best interests at heart, with his pastries or his intentions, and then they made the loop again. Sebastian provided more of his rare sarcasm, and actually got Alice to laugh, and as the moon crossed the sky, she thought perhaps he wasn't so bad, when he wasn't lipping about the Maker or Andraste with every other breath. This evening had been a pleasant time, after all.
Sebastian steered Alice back toward the mansion, and as soon as it clicked that was where they were going, she stopped in her tracks. He looked back at her, his mouth twitching like there was something he wanted to say.
"Look, can't we…there's no reason we can't stay out until morning? It's almost dawn, anyway." Alice cleared her throat, shuffled her feet.
"Hawke, you must rest," Sebastian said, and stepped closer to take her by the shoulder.
That touch, the way his fingers gripped her flesh, turned out to be the last straw. She grabbed his face and kissed him, slowly, unthinkingly. She registered the taste of pastry on his lips before he set firm hands on her shoulders and pushed her back, face scarlet in the sparse light of the streetlamps.
"What are you doing?" he asked, rather hoarsely.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, her own face burning. "I don't know. I just…"
He kissed her this time, cutting her off. He still held her by the shoulders, his grip so deliciously painful, and pulled her body to his for the briefest of moments before breaking apart again, huffing slightly, his breath brushing her face, eyes searing into hers. Then he released her and lurched away, raking both hands through his hair. He didn't look at her.
"Maker, forgive your humble servant," he murmured quickly.
"Sebastian," Alice said. She made to touch his arm, but he moved out of her reach.
"I think it's time you went home, Hawke," he said quietly. He spared her a glance, then looked away just as abruptly, as if he couldn't bear the sight of her. "Please."
The echo of her footsteps, all those shut doors that never got opened, the cold fireplace in her too-big bedroom. Alice moved forward again, reached for him again. "What could it hurt?"
He shut his eyes, shook his head, his body stiff and angled away from her. "I am a dedicated Brother of the Chantry. To sin in this way…"
"So you don't want me?" Alice asked.
He turned to her at last and his hands flexed at his sides. He stared at her in a way that made her stomach twist around itself. She wished so badly to dig her fingers into his still-disheveled hair.
"I can't, Hawke," he said. "It's against my vows, against the wishes of the Maker."
"Would you stuff your vows for one moment and kiss me?" Alice asked, her voice cracking.
He did. He snatched her again, backed her against a nearby column, and kissed her so fiercely that she couldn't breathe. She tangled her fingers in his hair, opened her lips to his tongue, felt one of his hands exploring near the hem of her shirt. He was solid against her, keeping her upright with his chest pressing against hers. His knee slid between her own, his thigh brushing against her core in a way that brought a little involuntary noise out between her lips and into his mouth.
Then he ruined it.
His absence burned just as his closeness had, only made worse by the sting of the cold he left behind. He had his back to her now, his shoulders hunched, clutching at his head in full crisis.
"This can't be, Alice," he whispered. "This can't be something I want. I…you temptress." He whirled on her, stuck her with his piercing eyes. "You know how much my dedication to the Chantry means to me."
"I don't think you've given your body that information," Alice said. "I shouldn't have kissed you at first, not without asking, but I—I wanted it. I still want it. I want you."
"I can tell." Sebastian sighed raggedly and dragged his hands down over his face. "I-I want you, too, Hawke, but it's not so simple as it would have been when I was younger."
"You're still a man."
"I am…keenly aware." Sebastian turned his face away from her. "I was wrong to agree to this excursion. Temptation abounds between a man and a woman left alone, to their own devices. This was…a mistake."
That stung. Alice stuck out her chin. "I've been called many things, Sebastian Vael, but a mistake?"
"I wasn't saying you were a mistake. I didn't even say it was your mistake." Sebastian huffed, loudly. "Perhaps we should go our separate ways for the evening, pretend this never happened. I will repent, and pray for you, and we can move on."
"I don't understand, Sebastian. We both want it."
"It can't be." He gazed at her then, eyes wide and round and remorseful. "If things were different…"
This was scraping a little too close to the conversation she'd had with Fenris a few years ago, right down to the tortured look in Sebastian's eyes. Only Fenris—Fenris was a special case. Sebastian was good company, and hands, and a mouth, and something else that had become apparent when he pressed up against her. Didn't he feel this kind of need, too?
"I'm not trying to marry you, Sebastian," Alice said.
His eyebrows flew up, he was scandalized. "That makes it worse!"
"No! It makes it human. Aren't you curious? Aren't you lonely?"
That was the question that shut his mouth, and he held her gaze in silence for a long time. When he finally did speak, it was with the gravity of a man making a decision. "It can't be, Alice. I'm sorry. I urge you to quell these feelings, or to find someone else to express them with. I need to go cleanse my soul."
And with that, he left. Alice watched him make his way back toward the Chantry tower, and kept her eyes on his form until it vanished over the landing on the stairs.
Cold beneath any physical sensation, Alice walked the rest of the way to the mansion. She passed through the foyer, void of any shoes but her own, through the drawing room with its unlit fireplace, down an echoing hall, up the stairs to the second floor, and finally reached her room. Her bed was made, her washbin emptied and turned over, and the rug at the foot of her bed where Sam once slept as empty as ever.
She sat on the end of her bed and pulled off her clothes, tossing them aside to be picked up come morning. She turned out the lamps, climbed under her covers, and replayed the part of the evening in her head when Sebastian had grabbed her, so roughly. She hadn't felt thrill like that in a long time.
Even if it was wrong, even if he hadn't been entirely inaccurate when he called her a temptress, even if it brought him spiritual turmoil like nothing else could—Alice wanted Sebastian. That alone was mad enough to distract her from the ringing silence of her room. She wanted to rein it in, wanted to bury this desire like she did with all her other feelings and do as he'd said, pretend tonight never happened. But it was hard when in her mind, his hands were roving her bare waist, his lips were on her neck, his well-muscled thigh was back between hers.
Even if he could resist temptation when it came to facing her, she hoped he was dogged by the same fantasies tonight.
Chapter 2: Alone Together
Summary:
An excursion/potential rescue mission to the Deep Roads provides ample opportunity for Alice to sit with her own feelings in thorny silence.
Chapter Text
Nothing was different, when Alice next saw Sebastian. It was as though he truly had forgotten that night in Hightown had happened. He greeted her normally, then went on to chatting with Isabela, not a care in the world.
They were set to go search for yet another intrepid explorer in the Deep Roads, and Alice had enlisted Isabela and Aveline's help, because it tickled her like no other when they'd get into a spat. But Sebastian had shown up, asked to come along. He never asked to come along, he only reluctantly agreed when he was invited.
Anders had also injected himself into this mission, insisting they'd need a healer, since Alice's magic was of the bone-crushing variety and not bone-mending. He'd been a bit too proud of that one, Alice thought.
So they were a merry band of five, now, and that would have been fine with Alice if Isabela hadn't opened her mouth.
"We should invite Fenris, don't you think, Hawke?"
"Why?" she replied, too quickly.
Aveline shot her a glance, because she knew the entire story, but Isabela only knew the salacious bits she'd made up for herself based on the nuggets Alice had given her at the time.
"Just for fun, of course," Isabela said with a wink. "We can always use more manpower, that's what I say."
"That explains a disturbing amount," Aveline said dryly. "I think we have enough 'manpower' between us, Anders and Sebastian, don't you, Hawke?"
"Oooh, that phrasing is delicious," Isabela crowed. "Come on, it's just a quick jog back into Hightown to get him. I think it'd be fun!"
"Right, because the first person to pop into everyone's heads when they mention fun is the dour, unsmiling Tevinter ex-slave," Anders said.
Alice cast him a glare, which he primly ignored. Anders also knew bits and pieces of the story, but the details had been carefully hidden. No need to give him more fuel for his anti-Fenris fire. He had enough problem accepting that Alice had no romantic interest in him, and though he never pushed anything, he made it clear what he thought of Fenris, and how he felt about her.
Isabela absconded, which put a rock in Alice's chest when she remembered the last time she ran off without a word. It always hung in the air during their conversations, a memory of feelings cauterized by necessity, smoothed over by the mutual promise of transparency. But the fact remained, ugly as the Gallows tower, permeating the air.
And then there was Sebastian, who was expertly avoiding any and all eye contact with Alice while they waited for Isabela to return. She wondered if he'd ever mention it again. She wished he wasn't here, hadn't volunteered his aid, or else she wished it was just the two of them.
And more than anything, she wished she'd been able to stop Isabela getting Fenris. Maker, was there a soul in Kirkwall she didn't have things left unsaid with?
Aveline nudged her arm, and Alice looked at her. "You're making that face," she said flatly.
"Aveline, I am so, so sorry, but this happens to just be my face."
"The one that looks as though you've just smelled rotting cabbages."
"Oh, that face. It's awfully hot out, today, isn't it? Odd for the season. Maybe it's kicking up pollen, activating my allergies." Alice sniffed theatrically. "Or maybe it's the diced meat shop trying to shill their day-old stock as dog food, again."
Aveline grunted, wise enough not to press. "Do you ever think about getting another dog?"
"Or a cat?" Anders chimed in. "I'd like to think you'd take good care of one. They're a lot less work than a mabari."
Alice avoided both their gazes. She had thought about another dog, a time or two, but the idea of losing such a faithful and uncomplicated companion all over again made her stomach twist itself into pieces. Besides, Sam had been the family dog, once, with them from Lothering. That wasn't a friendship that got replaced.
"No," she said, lifting her head. "Though I've heard of some Orlesians, keeping massive glass tanks full of fish. I might look into those. Or lizards. Or a tortoise."
"I can't have new recruits get chased by a tortoise, Hawke," Aveline said with a shake of her head.
Alice grinned at the image. "Oh, you absolutely could. Imagine the terror!"
Isabela returned at that moment, Fenris behind her. Maker's sakes, he looked the same as he always did, and it tore away at Alice's lungs until it hurt to breathe.
"Hawke," he said, then, too quickly, "And Aveline. Sebastian. Abomination."
"If it isn't the most charming man in Thedas," Anders said dryly. "Rip out any internal organs with your bare hands lately?"
Isabela gleefully clapped her hands together and caught Alice's gaze. "See? Aren't we having fun already?"
Alice pasted an enormous smile across her face. "Such fun. All I need is a fire poker, fresh from the hearth, to drive into my eye!"
"You certainly know how to liven up an excursion."
"Are we to stand here bickering for the next two days, or shall we be off?" Aveline said.
"If we're going into the Deep Roads, should we not be better prepared?" Sebastian asked. "I only see a few packs, and no bedrolls."
"Most of the explorers we set out after don't make it past the first few chambers before they panic," Alice explained. "Which is also why I'm not worried about darkspawn."
"And that's a good enough reason not to make better preparations?"
Alice laughed coldly. "If that's your opinion, feel free to stay here and complain to Andraste about it."
His eyebrow twitched and he looked like he might be about to say something but Isabela rolled over them both.
"For once, I agree with Mistress Knucklehair," she said, earning herself an unamused glower from Aveline. "We spend enough time here, out-sniping one another, perhaps the poor saps we're setting out after will die to the elements."
Fenris didn't even wait for her to finish speaking, he just set off, and Aveline followed with a withering glance back at Alice, that probably meant she didn't approve of how out of control this party size had become. As if it were Alice's fault.
They left Kirkwall behind completely by late morning, and reached the Wounded Coast by early afternoon. Alice knew the path to the Deep Roads entrance now by heart, but she still pretended to be preoccupied with finding the best route on her map so she wouldn't have to pay any mind to Fenris' eyes on her sometimes, Sebastian's others, and Anders' the entire time. She'd be the first to admit instigation with Sebastian, maybe even Fenris, but was there really any call for her to be put in the middle this way?
At least Aveline was keeping them all moving, in between impatient remarks directed at Isabela, who seemed unable to keep even one of her dirty jokes to herself today.
"No! I've got it," she said, a big old grin across her face. "Three strapping men meet three lovely maidens in the Deep Roads—"
"I'm not entirely sure I dislike where this is going," Anders said with a broad smile.
Isabela winked at him, and opened her mouth to continue the joke.
"Isabela, the Waking Sea is right there," Alice muttered.
That only encouraged her. "Skinny dipping? During daylight? I can't say I don't like the way you think."
Perhaps this entire mission was a mistake. It certainly was a disaster, and they weren't even to the Deep Roads entrance yet. They wouldn't be, until morning. Perhaps Sebastian had had a point, complaining about the lack of bedrolls, but Alice had slept on enough rocky ground in her life not to mind one or two nights in the cold. The real challenge would be keeping her head from completely exploding.
She drifted close to Aveline, the safest person to be around, both in general and at the moment.
"Rethinking some decisions just now, Hawke?" Aveline asked.
"Every single decision I've ever made, my entire life," Alice replied quietly. She ran a hand over her face and her eyes fell on Fenris' back as he walked, astride of everyone because he was annoyed with the chatter. Sebastian had also pulled ahead, and was pausing every so often to look out over the coast. Isabela and Anders were somewhere off to one side, Alice could hear Isabela's voice and Anders' laugh. There was just enough privacy to confide some things in Aveline, but the words were lodged in Alice's throat.
"I may be going mad," was all she could get out. "Just a tiny bit, mind. Just enough that I can feel it."
Aveline cast her a hard glance, tinged with concern. "Don't lose it on me now, Hawke. You're one of the only things holding Kirkwall together. We need you."
Alice closed her eyes and hunched her shoulders, breathing raggedly. "I-I know. I won't."
Aveline clapped her shoulder, and her eyes were kinder this time. Such unrelenting faith, Aveline had in her. Such a firm belief in all she'd done. Unwavering. Unmalleable. Iron. Just as Aveline saw her. Like the image in Aveline's mind of Alice was just like the statues in the courtyard of the Gallows, immense, unyielding. "You always manage, Hawke. You will again."
Great. Now there were things she couldn't say to Aveline, either.
That night over the Wounded Coast was starless, drizzly, and unfortunate. Watching her companions huddle into whatever coats they had brought along would be funny if Alice's neck and face didn't burn from shame. Then again, she had only invited Isabela and Aveline to begin with. And it wasn't like she'd told them not to bring bedrolls or personal tents.
At least they'd found a cave. Shallow, but enough out of the wind that it wasn't so unbearably cold. And Alice had gotten a fire going that stayed lit, so now everyone was forced to be in a rather tight circle so no one's toes froze off.
Situated between Anders and Isabela, Alice was warm enough. Though it was hard not to think about the way heat radiated off Fenris, how nice it would be to sit close to him. Feel his hand in hers. She hadn't brought a very thick coat, herself. Just the old layered canvas one Mother had patched for her, once upon a time.
Thinking of Mother and of Fenris made Alice's chest yawn open, much like this cave. There could even be a cold wind blowing at the mouth of her heart, whistling in all the cracks along the edges of the stones. Was there anything she wasn't destined to lose?
So across the flames, she stared at Fenris, content that he couldn't see her doing so. Maybe he felt her gaze, though, because once, his eyes caught hers, and she couldn't look away fast enough.
He didn't want her. Or else, he couldn't allow himself to want her. Maker, what a common sentiment that was becoming. But he wanted to stay in her life, and she was certain she'd die if he didn't. But there was no breaching the distance he created between them. So when she was sure he wasn't looking at her, she returned her eyes to him.
Someone else's gaze strayed to Alice as often as hers did to Fenris. It was impossible not to notice just how close Anders sat to her, just far enough away that it wasn't intrusive, but near enough that when he shifted, his feathered pauldrons brushed her shoulder. She could certainly move away, but then she'd be crowding Isabela. Whether or not Anders knew he was crowding her was up for debate. Alice tried not to mind. He was her friend, a stalwart champion of mage rights, and a gifted healer, as well as the man responsible for helping save her brother's life. She was honored to know him, even if he mistook that for reciprocating his feelings.
There was no denying she wanted companionship. It'd be terribly easy to find it in Anders, but it would be fair to neither of them. He would be more convinced than ever she could be swayed into falling for him, even if for her it was merely physical. Cruelty. That's what it would be. Not to mention using him, just because she couldn't have the man she wanted.
And Anders had made quite clear what he thought of both Fenris and her feelings for him. That was an aspect of their friendship Alice certainly didn't appreciate. It would make matters even worse to sleep with Anders in that regard. How could she condemn the awful things he said to and about the man she loved while in bed with the one saying them?
In any event, the point was moot. In years past, prior to what transpired between her and Fenris, she had tested the waters with Anders a time or two, only for him to claim he wasn't someone she wanted to get mixed up with. She'd taken that advice, but he'd internalized her advances. So in the end, it really was her fault he felt the way he did. She never explicitly told him to back off, except in the context of him tearing Fenris down to build her up. She probably should, just to put aground this notion of his that some part of her might want him. But who was to say if she did that he wouldn't get offended, act as if she were the one who made her feelings obvious all this time, after he'd told her she wouldn't want anything with someone like him?
What a mess. If things with Fenris weren't what they currently were, she might have some sense of navigating it. But she couldn't think of any way to do that, so she was left with the mess.
Then there was Sebastian. Pious, dedicated Brother of the Chantry Sebastian, who took his celibacy vows painfully seriously. As if he hadn't kissed her back that night in Hightown. As if he hadn't moved like he knew what he was doing. Like he liked it.
It had been a week and a half, and Alice still replayed that scene in her head. The way the cold marble column dug into her back while Sebastian's chest dug into her front, his fingers raising goosebumps along her stomach where they strayed under her shirt. Her heart pounding so hard she was certain he could feel it, the taste of his lips. Did he think of it, too, or had his confession to the Revered Mother cleansed his mind as well as his soul? Had she condemned Alice before him, absolved Sebastian of all wrongdoing because of Alice's seduction? Did that mean, to his mind, it never happened?
Was it stupid of her to wish it might happen again? No one had stirred that level of feeling in her body since her night with Fenris, and while that remained one of the greatest and worst nights of her entire life, what harm could there be in seeking something physical with someone else? As an outlet for them both?
Even if it complicated things further? Even if it was a sin in the eyes of the Maker? Even if feelings weren't entirely off the table?
Sebastian had said he couldn't want her, not that he didn't. Was she mad to believe that meant he did, and was fighting those desires? Would it be wrong of her to scratch that door again, see what it let out? It was thrilling to think of. And if she couldn't have Fenris, what harm was there in seeking companionship in the arms of someone who made her body do the things Sebastian did? But how did she convince him? How far did she push this before he told her outright to get away from him? And worse yet, what if they threw themselves into these desires and when they came out the other side, Sebastian told her he didn't want her, either?
The cavern in her chest grew, and Alice tucked her knees to her chest. The fire flickered in front of her, only just warm enough that she wasn't shivering.
"You're awfully quiet," Isabela broke into her thoughts. "It's weird, I'm not a fan."
"I'm…thinking," Alice said, and her damned pulse sped up when Sebastian threw a glance her way.
"Ooh, about someone? Do we have details?" Isabela asked.
"About. Sam. I miss him. If he were here, he'd be laying on my lap, and I'd be so toasty warm," Alice said.
The teasing went out of Isabela's expression. "I miss him, too. You raised a fine dog, Hawke."
"Indeed," Fenris intoned from across the fire. "A sturdy, loyal friend. He was taken too soon."
Well, now Alice's eyes stung, and she really was missing Sam. He'd been there, through all of it, and if he were here now, she'd confess the maelstrom of feelings in her head to his smiling doggy face and bury her nose in his silver-gray fur and receive his wet, stinky kisses.
"Shit," Alice muttered, brushing some hair from her face. "I think I'm a bit too tired for this tonight."
Wisely, her companions dropped the subject. They passed the rest of the evening largely in silence, for which Alice was grateful. No more hard questions, no more unearthing memories made painful by loss. Just a harrowing, uneasy quiet, while each of the six of them huddled in their coats and jackets and tried to coax better warmth from the fire.
Chapter 3: Less Alone?
Summary:
Our heroes reach the Deep Roads, and it doesn't take them long to discover what sent them down there in the first place.
Chapter Text
As ever, the Deep Roads smelled of lime, dank and wet earth, and lots and lots of death.
Alice stood with her sleeve over her nose and caught Aveline's smug little eyebrow twitch. She would stick out her tongue, but she didn't want to taste the Deep Roads as well.
"Waiting on you, our fearless leader," Isabela said, gesturing to the entrance with one of her daggers.
They all had their weapons drawn, because giant spiders and darkspawn and raiders were always a possibility. Alice tried to avoid her earth-shaking spells underground, because she liked having limbs and a skull that were all three-dimensional. But if the giant spiders showed up, she might sacrifice such luxuries, purely for the greater good.
"Onward," Alice mumbled from behind her arm, and struck into the Deep Roads entrance.
The conceit was this intrepid explorer, Poppy, and her crew had only ventured into the preliminary caves. Ever since the dwarf's sons years back, Alice had ensured the caverns and dwarven tunnels were largely sealed, both to keep treasure-hunters out and darkspawn in. If the Wardens had issue with it, they could damn well bring her brother back and tell her to her face.
And if anyone—namely, Alice—needed deeper, the cogs and levers still worked. It just took an especially skilled mage—or a golem control rod—to get them open or shut.
Silence hung heavy over the group as Alice led them into the precursor caverns. Their path lit by torches fueled by an ever-burning oil, they kept on. No signs of their explorers, not for the better part of an hour. They passed the carved stone and vaulted ceilings, inert golems, old bones. At one point, Alice paused, listening.
"I sense no darkspawn," Anders supplied.
Well, that was helpful for the darkspawn. Not giant spiders.
Aveline sucked in a breath, and then Alice heard it, too: skittering. The tunnel magnified the sound, but experience told Alice these beasts were large enough to make dust shake from overhead crossbeams anyway.
"Fuck me in the ass," Alice muttered, and Isabela burst out laughing.
Enormous, hairy, segmented legs came into the torchlight from a shadowed edge of the tunnel, and Alice readied a spell right as the first set of dripping mandibles appeared.
Aveline drove in, shield out and ready, sword hefted at an angle over her head. The first spider reared up, swinging four legs at once, and hissed when Aveline lopped one off at the first joint.
Two more spiders ignored Aveline, and Isabela, cloaked in obscuring smoke as she was, and made for Alice. They always ganged up on her. Probably they could sense she hated them the most.
Hissing sent goosebumps along her skin as she flung a low-powered arcane bolt at the nearest arachnid, burning a frothing hole in its carapace, while the other bared venom-oozing fangs and bent its back four legs to lunge. Alice smacked it with another arcane bolt just as it froze, forelegs raised, sparkling like an ice sculpture.
Anders lowered his own staff and shot her a self-satisfied smile. Alice whirled back on the remaining spider as it, too, lifted onto its back legs to strike at her with its front. She dodged, and Fenris lurched in, severing the front part of its head and two of its legs with one swing of his broadsword.
Nearby, Sebastian had felled two spiders with arrows in their eyes, and Isabela was a shadow of a figure, leaving twin dagger stabs in every thorax she encountered, spider bites of her own.
Aveline had carved a path through the creatures, leaving hairy limbs and curled-up corpses all along the tunnel floor. Almost a dozen, each the size of a mabari, had scuttled from a crevice in the wall of the tunnel. Alice would almost be curious what else was in there, if it weren't choked with oily-looking threads of spider silk.
Anders caused one more spider to explode from within, sending well-cooked spider guts across Alice's boots, for which she gave him a scowl. And then the fight was over.
Alice approached the crevice the spiders had crawled out of, Aveline joining her. With the glowing end of her staff, Alice lit the darkness, and it revealed massive shed spider skins and webs on webs. The light caught the sides of a cluster of bulbous, white things, suspended in the air by a meticulously crafted web, and Aveline suppressed a gag.
"We should burn this," she suggested around her hand.
Alice drew back, releasing her hold on the Fade. "For all we know, that would cause those sacs to hatch early. Then we'd all be some little silk-gremlin spiderling's first meal, wouldn't that be just charming?"
"Can we seal this?" Sebastian asked, gesturing with his bow to the crevice itself.
Alice shook her head and avoided his eye, but even as her lips formed the answer, Fenris spoke.
"It would only encourage the beasts to find other routes," he said.
Alice felt a fist close around her throat and she managed an awkward bob of her head. "What he said. Come on, we're wasting time."
They headed on. A short fight was good for morale, in any event. Knowing her team could handle any challenge. That they could fight with all they had, even against foes as easily vanquished as a bunch of spiders. Maybe it was good that the men were here. Not only just because Alice was sure Fenris was walking less than a stone's throw from her, and possibly even on purpose.
More exploring only revealed more crevices through which spiders may appear, though none did. At one point, a sound echoed through the Roads that brought to mind ogres, but Anders said he sensed nothing still, and nothing came bursting from any walls to attack them.
Near the end of their second day on this journey, they hadn't found sign or sense of Poppy, and Alice realized they hadn't packed much by way of food.
The rancid air in the Roads was humid enough for them all to shed their coats, and sit on fallen columns or ridges carved into the walls without the need for a fire.
Alice hunched on one such column, perfectly square, four feet thick so she had to mantle on top of it. If the tunnel flooded to three feet, she'd stay dry. Though the idea of the tunnel flooding was far-fetched.
Last night they were all huddled together, while tonight they were spread out. Sebastian kept watch to one end of their little camp, while Aveline did the same on the other. Sandwiched between those two, Alice thought maybe she'd get a few more winks of sleep tonight. Even if the scents down here clogged her nostrils something terrible.
"Damn it all, I am starving," Isabela said. "Creepy crawlies whet my appetite like no other."
Alice leveled an incredulous look at her. "You didn't pack your own food?"
Isabela flung her arms out to either side. "If I'd known this would be a whole ordeal, obviously I would have prepared. Like the coats, last night. Maker, my toes went numb! I think one might have fallen off."
Alice scoffed a little. "And whose fault is that?"
"Yours."
She shook her head. "No, ser, I never told you to pack nothing by way of food, and I certainly would have advocated for extra socks."
Isabela planted her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at Alice. "Did you bring extra socks?"
Alice struck out her chin. "It was warmer yesterday."
"So we admit we weren't well-prepared?" Sebastian asked over his shoulder, spinning an arrow between his hands.
"What's this 'we' business? I didn't invite you along."
"Still hungry," Isabela said, and then pushed out her lower lip, appealing to everyone in turn. "Oh, won't anybody have pity on poor, hungry Isabela?"
"I would, but I think you ate the lunch I packed," Anders said. "If anyone should be pitied, it's me."
The only silent ones were Fenris, which wasn't unusual, and Aveline, who wore a disapproving scowl at all the clamor they were raising.
"If it will shut you up," she said testily, and turned and flung her pack to Alice, who caught it. Isabela was on her in an instant, Anders just beside her.
"Worse than stray cats," Alice muttered, rooting through the pack for Aveline's store of food. Of course she'd packed more than necessary, it was just like her. Alice distributed packets of buns and sleeves of cheese, then slid off the beam on which she sat to deliver some to Fenris, who shook his head and turned back to cleaning spider blood from his armor. Pushing down the absurd sense of rejection that clawed at her ribs from within, Alice took some food to Aveline.
"Thank you for sharing," she said quietly when Aveline's hand closed around the bread and cheese. "I think I might be stupid, blundering down here without enough food."
Aveline chuckled dryly and took her pack back. "I packed extra, in case we got held up down here. Good thing, too, because we ended up with far more mouths than we should have."
"You really think of everything."
"Oh, don't get it twisted, Hawke. If we're down here more than another day or so, and that wench starts up complaining again, I swear to Andraste, I'm eating her first."
"Don't let her hear you say that, she'll take it wrong," Alice warned.
Aveline rolled her eyes. She broke her bun in half and passed one side to Alice, despite the bun and cheese in her other hand. With another fleeting smile, Alice took the offering.
"If we're lucky, we'll all get to find out what giant spider meat tastes like," Alice said, loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Gamey," Anders replied, and offered no further explanation.
Alice crossed the makeshift camp to Sebastian, hesitating only a moment when she drew close. He looked up, spearing her with his eyes, and suddenly she was back in Hightown in the dim light of streetlamps, realizing just how much she needed someone with broad shoulders and hands to hold her up in case her legs failed her.
She all but shoved the food into those startled, broad hands of his and stalked back to her beam to nibble on her own, avoiding eye contact with everyone. If anyone noticed her behavior, aside from Sebastian, they had the good grace to say nothing. She could only imagine the mortification that would choke her out if Fenris had been watching, but thankfully, he was engrossed in his armor polishing, and wouldn't look her way.
Sebastian, however, seemed to have a staring problem, which Alice primly ignored. Her cheeks burned, however. Ferociously.
Maker, she was in it now.
"At what point do we run shouting down the tunnels that we're searching for Poppy of Ansburg?" Anders asked idly, his voice bouncing off the dwarven ceilings high above.
"Around the same time we decide death by giant spider or deepstalker sounds like a fun afternoon," Alice replied.
That earned her a snicker, but then even Anders fell silent. They were heading deeper into the Deep Roads than Alice initially intended to go, and it was probably clear to everyone that she was a few more hours from calling it. Some Champion.
Anders paused, a hand on her shoulder so she also stopped, and Alice stuck out her own hand to halt the others.
"Darkspawn?" she asked.
He nodded. "Not many, but—"
"I prefer none."
"I thought the same."
They only had one direction to go, and that was forward. If that was the direction Anders sensed the darkspawn in, they needed a new path. A brief look around revealed what had at first been disguised by the curve of the tunnel. Alice gestured with her staff to an opening opposite them. A crevice worn by time, and potentially deepstalkers, not an official doorway carved by the ancient dwarves.
"Into the mysterious hole," Alice ordered, and then took the plunge first.
The crevice went on far longer than Alice thought, and wound in a distinctly downward manner.
"Oh, I love a mysterious hole," Isabela remarked from somewhere behind Alice.
This section of the Roads was unlit, so Alice ignited her staff and did her best to lead the way through, picking carefully around stalactites and stalagmites and iffy-looking webs. The space was narrow. Aveline, with her broad pauldrons, would have trouble walking facing front, and probably as of now was inching her way along, turned sideways. She'd also likely be cursing Alice for years to come.
"Sense anything?" Alice asked Anders.
"Just dank underground and deepstalker waste," he replied huffily. "Any particular reason you opted for the mysterious hole?"
Alice shrugged. "It was there."
"Remind me, if we get out of here, not to follow you around anymore."
"Aw, but who would get on my nerves if not you?" Alice pushed on, walking by the light of her glowing staff.
At one point, Sebastian wove his way up behind Alice. His bow knocked against a stalactite and he gasped softly. When she turned to him, brows drawn furiously together in question, he gave her a wide-eyed look.
"I thought I heard something up ahead," he said softly.
"Good job warning us!" Anders grumped.
"This is me warning you." Sebastian muscled past Alice, and Maker's breath, she desperately hoped he didn't feel the way her heart sped up at his proximity when their chests were briefly pressed together. He drew his bow, and Alice fumbled after him, attempting to rein in her wild thoughts.
"What'd you hear?" she asked around the pounding of her pulse.
"A woman's voice."
"Isn't that just like a pledged member of the clergy, to get excited at the thought of a woman?" Anders said.
"As if you're much better," came Fenris' muttered retort, and Alice hid the half-hysterical giggle that bubbled up in response.
Sebastian led them through the tunnel now, only barely hesitating when crosspaths presented themselves. The air grew heavier, and every now and again Alice glanced back at Anders, silently asking if they were heading right into a thick horde or an ogre. He shook his head each time.
They did pass a few odds and ends. A pile of bones, large enough to be human or darkspawn, but picked clean. Deepstalkers, perhaps, or some of the unusually large other creatures that lived down here. Rats. Or darkspawn themselves, though Alice had never experienced a hurlock that needed to eat, much less its own brethren.
"Don't you find it even a little odd you were the only one of us to hear this voice?" Alice asked Sebastian after another hour of stumbling along in the tunnels. The formations running from floor to ceiling were even thicker here, and in her exhaustion and creeping hunger, Alice let the glow of her staff dim.
He shot her a befuddled glance. "You don't hear it? Someone is singing."
"By the Maker, he's lost it at last," Anders muttered, only to yelp in displeasure when Alice swatted him lightly in the chest.
When they were all gathered, or as best as they could be, Alice shushed everyone and listened with every bit of her body. Sebastian wasn't prone to flights of fancy, unless one counted his hastily murmured prayers before fights. He'd never given her reason to distrust his instincts before—their brief moment in Hightown notwithstanding.
"Just there," Sebastian murmured, and Alice waved her hand at him for silence.
She heard it, too. A lullaby, from the sounds of it. And under that…an odd sort of whimpering.
Anders wore a mighty frown. "She brought an infant down here?"
"Maker's breath, what is this woman running from?" Isabela asked from back near Fenris.
Resolve hardened to find this Poppy, Alice drove past Sebastian, her chest constricting with a sense of dread she couldn't give mind to, lest she lose sight of their objective. The gentle song and the sound of the baby's muted cries gave her hope, but Isabela's question rang in her ears.
Going into this, Alice had little information. She hardly ever asked questions when it was people she was sent after. A habit, or impulse, that Aveline had dragged her for again and again. She couldn't help it; if there was a chance someone was in danger, or at least needed help, Alice tended to forget all periphery for the sake of getting to that person. She suspected her enemies knew something of this, because sometimes they lured her into traps by staging a kidnapping. Or performing one.
This report on Poppy, which hadn't mentioned a child, had come from a series of missives on Aveline's desk that Alice had been granted free reign to tackle. Not because Aveline needed the help, but because Alice offered it. If there was one soul in Kirkwall Alice never tired of helping, it was the only person she had left of her Ferelden life.
The report had focused on the fact that this woman's name was Poppy, she was originally of Ansburg, and left for undisclosed reasons. The report had suggested she went to seek her fortune in the Wounded Coast entrance of the Deep Roads, after hearing stories of the Champion, and had implied she may have allies with her.
Clearly, someone misunderstood the situation, or else outright lied. If Poppy had fled something, or someone, it would explain why she was in the Deep Roads, and why she had a baby.
The singing grew louder, to the point Alice could make out individual words. Something about cradles, fires, and crumbling walls. It repeated, went on and on, and it sounded like…nonsense.
Alice exchanged a concerned glance with Sebastian.
"Andraste guide us," he muttered.
Their boots crunched over more bones, some with rotting meat, long-since dried out, clinging to the knobbed ends of the pearly sticks.
They pushed on further until the tunnel at last opened into a sort of amphitheater, overgrown with deep mushrooms and cut through with veins of obsidian ore. The dizzying height of the curved ceiling echoed the woman's lullaby, casting her haunting voice around the space while she hunched in the center of the floor in the dim light of only a few lit sconces.
Alice looked at Isabela, Fenris, and Aveline. "Keep back here," she whispered. "In case something sneaks out of this tunnel behind us." She glanced at Anders. "Follow me, in case she or the baby is hurt. Sebastian, watch my back."
Orders given, and she was sure they'd be followed, Alice made for the center of the room. She didn't bother to disguise her steps or conceal herself, not while every movement bounced a hundredfold off the walls and benches of this place.
Even as she approached, the woman-shaped bundle of rags below didn't move. Not even when Alice was nearly on top of her.
Alice tucked her staff back into the strap around her shoulder and knelt beside the woman, trying to peer at the whimpering child in her arms. Gently, Alice said, "Poppy?"
The woman turned and scrambled backwards so frantically that she nearly dropped the bundle she carried. A shrill wail went up from within it, a startled infant.
Poppy stared at Alice, shaking and clutching the child to her, rocking it soothingly even while she inched backward. The wail devolved into a series of strangely throaty grunts.
Alice held out her hands to show she meant no harm. This woman was obviously much older than the missive had led her to believe. Gray hair fell in stringy ringlets around her dirt-smeared face, which boasted of her years. She wore clothes encrusted in dust and waste, so that it was impossible to tell if they had been fine once, or if they were patched together from scraps. Lost in the Deep Roads or not, this was not the countenance of a woman who was well.
Alice heard the footsteps of Anders and Sebastian behind her, and motioned for them to wait. Something was terribly off, here.
"My name is Alice," she said. "I'm here to help you."
"Alice," the woman repeated in a whisper, eyes round.
Alice lowered her hands. "That's right. You're Poppy, are you not?"
"Was," the woman said. "Once."
"Excuse me," Anders said, stepping forward. "Are you or your baby hurt?"
Poppy turned her saucer-like eyes to him and held her baby ever tighter. She shook her head. "Don't," she warned. "Don't come near him. You won't take him! You won't!"
Alice opened her mouth to protest, to put this poor, tormented woman's mind at ease, but it was as she coiled vice-like arms around the child that the wrappings slipped off its head. Two fuzzy pink ears fell out first, followed by a wriggling snout.
The piglet snorted and grunted, sniffing the air.
Slowly, Alice closed her mouth, cast Anders a glance. He looked just as lost.
"Andraste have mercy upon this woman's soul," Sebastian said, coming to stand at Alice's other side. "Hawke, she's…"
She saw perfectly well what she was, and he was wise not to say it out loud. Alice stepped toward Poppy. "Do you know where you are?"
"Margravine's palace," Poppy replied. "I'm allowed to be here. My sister's head maid. I'm visiting her. Wanted her to meet Jaspie." She stroked a loving thumb over the piglet's cheek and it squirmed and grunted. "He's getting antsy, so I sang him an old lullaby our mam taught us."
By now, Aveline, Fenris, and Isabela had drifted down the aisles of seats and stood a ways off, observing. Alice wished Aveline would come closer, instruct her on what to do, but she kept her distance.
"Poppy," Alice said, keeping her voice steady. "Who is Margravine of Ansburg?"
"Good lady Aurum," Poppy replied stoutly, nodding to herself. "Friend of the family, she is."
"Thalia Aurum hasn't been Margravine of Ansburg since her retirement seven years ago," Sebastian whispered.
"Something tells me this woman doesn't keep up to date on the seats of power in her home city anymore," Anders remarked, and Alice swatted him again.
Poppy frowned from him to her and then Sebastian for good measure. She held her piglet close, and it grunted. "You don't look like house staff," she said, as if noticing their weapons for the first time. "Who are you? Who are any of you?! Why are you here?!"
"To help you," Alice said quickly. "You aren't safe here."
Wrong thing to say. Poppy became very agitated indeed and backed even further away from the three of them. She held the bundle in her arms ever tighter. "Why do you say that?" she asked testily. "Only danger I see here is you lot."
Alice glanced helplessly at Anders. "Can you…help her?"
"Like I did with Bartrand? Hawke, that only worked because his madness was linked to the lyrium idol," Anders said. "She's…well, she's proper mad. Built up over years, mad."
"Try!"
With a roll of his eyes, Anders lifted his hands and Fade energy drifted up in wisps from his fingers, reaching for Poppy, who yelped and lurched away. The piglet took to squealing again, and wriggled its way from her arms. It dropped to the floor with a painful-sounding thump. The squealing turned to shrieks of hysteria, and Poppy lent her voice to that.
"Jaspie! Oh, my darling, mam's so sorry!" She moved to scoop the piglet back up, but the little thing recovered enough to run for the benches.
"Sebastian," Alice began, but he was already reaching for it. It scrambled around the other side of the nearest bench, out of his reach, trailing filthy rags as it wrestled its way out of the swaddling Poppy had had it in.
"Don't touch him!" Poppy cried. "Don't you put a hand on him!"
"Please, calm yourself," Sebastian entreated her over his shoulder.
Isabela added herself to the pig chase, and Fenris moved to block the tunnel entrance. There was a tense several moments where both Isabela and Sebastian rounded benches, trying to corner the poor, panicked piglet, while Poppy shook hysterically in front of Alice, seemingly beyond comfort or reason. The theater echoed with the piglet's shrill protests.
The squealing abruptly cut off, and Aveline stalked toward the center of the room, the piglet clutched like a sack of grain in the crook of her arm. Its face was buried between her bicep and armor, muffling its grunts of indignation.
"You brutes," Poppy hissed, and flew towards Aveline. For one terrifying instant, Alice thought she might attack, but she only wrenched the piglet from Aveline's arms and held it to her face, nuzzling the squirming creature and murmuring to it. "Mam's here, love. Mammie's got you."
Alice caught Aveline's eye, and her red brows were drawn together in frank concern. No one seemed to know how to navigate this, how to calm this poor, confused woman to the point they could guide her to Kirkwall. If they ran into more giant spiders, she might become too frightened to calm, or run off. And Maker help them if anything happened to that piglet.
Leaving Poppy to her own devices on one end of the room, Alice motioned for everyone else to join her and Fenris at the entrance of the tunnel. As far as she could tell, it was the only path from the theater, so she needn't worry about Poppy giving them the slip.
Huddled in a small circle, Alice spoke as quietly as she could. "We need an exit plan."
"Take the pig from her, use it to lead her from the Deep Roads," Isabela said. "Like fishing, only…for a person. And with a pig."
"You'd send her into a frenzy," Anders said. "She'd become apoplectic."
"It's a better solution than your nothing," Isabela fired back.
Sebastian regarded Alice, who was far too distracted at the moment for a blood rush, for which she was almost grateful. "Can you tunnel us out of here so we don't have to navigate her through those warrens?" he asked, nodding to the crevice through which they'd arrived.
"Sure! Do we have three months for me to successfully do that?" Alice retorted. She massaged her face with one hand, partially so she wouldn't have to see the hurt look in his big blue eyes. "Sorry. I didn't sleep well."
"None of us did," Isabela pointed out. "This poor woman hasn't been down here much longer than us, but I bet sleeping on these stone floors hasn't improved her mental state."
Aveline cast a glance at Poppy, who was attempting to re-swaddle the piglet while it squealed and grunted and tried to get away from her. "What has she been feeding it?"
Alice thought back on the bones scattered along their path to get here and shuddered. "I have an idea, but I don't want to say it."
"Don't say it," Fenris muttered.
Anders glanced toward Poppy as well. "I could try clearing her mind again, but…I think I have another method of getting her out of here." He looked at Aveline. "You won't like it."
"I haven't liked any of this," she replied.
"In that case, I can use a sleeping spell to make it so we can carry her out," Anders said.
Alice shushed him frantically and checked to see if Poppy heard him. "We're nearly two days from the surface. Is that safe?"
"Is it any less safe than leaving her in here to raise a piglet as her son? Feeding him bones and singing him nonsense lullabies until she dies?"
"She isn't going to die down here," Isabela said.
"I agree. We can't simply leave her because she's confused," Sebastian added.
Alice gave them both an exasperated look. "As if I'd suggest leaving her."
"And I suppose you need me to carry her?" Aveline asked sourly. "Wonderful. I can feel the backache already."
"Not up to the task?" Isabela teased, with a wry little smile, just for Aveline. "Now we know how Donnic feels."
"That's enough out of you, whore."
Alice took to massaging her forehead again. She caught Fenris' eye, and unless she was mistaken, he was giving her a sympathetic look, which helped nothing.
"All right, everyone…stop. Immediately. I'll talk to Poppy, Anders, with me. Aveline, be ready to…haul her out of here, I guess." Alice went back to the middle of the floor.
Poppy glanced up defensively and glared at Alice with open mistrust. "What do you want with me? What are you doing here?"
Alice crouched beside her and Poppy shifted away, hiding her piglet from Alice's view while giving her a look that could curdle milk. Alice said, "I've come to take you to Kirkwall. Margravine Aurum is…not feeling well. Hasn't been for a few days, so she's asked your sister to take up some extra hours."
Poppy frowned, her eyes drifting from Alice to a point just past her head. "Oh," she said softly. "I suppose I could call again another day."
"Yes," Alice said, as Anders came around from behind her. "That'd be best."
Before Poppy could really react to him, Anders had pressed his hand to her head, knocking her into unconsciousness with a dim flash of magic, and then moved to catch her so she didn't slump over. The piglet escaped her limp arms but Alice was ready for it and snatched it up. The wrappings fell away again, and the little creature squealed its displeasure, but the noise had no effect on the slumbering Poppy.
Aveline joined them, hoisting Poppy in her arms like a sleeping child, and huffed. "Sebastian and I will swap out," she said. "Even if I wanted to, I don't think I could carry this woman all the way out of here."
"Whatever works," Alice said, straightening.
Coddled in Aveline's grasp as she was, Poppy looked so small. Some of her own patchy clothes slipped away, revealing bird-like limbs and papery skin. Her face, relaxed in rest, instead of creased by worried or bewildered frowns, appeared…not younger, but less affected by whatever life she'd fielded that led her here.
Isabela came to Alice's side and tilted her head at the sleeping woman, an unusually ponderous look on her face. "Poor bitty," she murmured. "She must be all alone."
One thing Alice was preferring not to focus on was that this woman, left to her own even in her condition, had confused a piglet for her son. It brought to mind the question what had happened to the real Jaspie, and Maker, did Alice not wish to know under any circumstances.
"Are we bringing this sad fool to the sanitarium?" Aveline asked wearily, leaning backward to account for Poppy's added weight. Then, primarily to herself: "I don't see what good could come of it. Not that we have many options."
"I don't know." Alice didn't like the sanitarium. Hated the way the screaming of the inmates echoed along those stone halls. Madness driven madder by isolation. If she had a better solution for Bartrand, she would have suggested it to Varric, but at the time, it had seemed the best way to keep him from hurting others. Looking back now, Alice wasn't sure she'd make the same choice.
Only that glimmer of sanity, granted by Anders, had allowed Varric to see his brother as he was supposed to be. Lucid, penitent, scared. Rather than the raving lunatic they discovered in that wretched mansion, one who had done awful things that couldn't be undone.
Poppy didn't seem dangerous, just hopelessly lost, and irrevocably sad. Alice used her free hand to brush silver locks from the woman's peaceful expression. Could this, one day, have been Mother? Had time allowed, or life been kinder? Was this a better fate than the one she'd met?
"Anyway, onward," Alice said, hiding the huskiness in her voice with a quick cough. She stroked the piglet's fuzzy little head and it snuffled at her. "Onward."
Chapter 4: All Alone
Summary:
In which our heroes really wish to go home
Chapter Text
Alice had determined to reach the surface before sunset the second day after finding Poppy, but they were still hours from the Deep Roads entrance, and Aveline had had enough. Turned out even the strongest of the six of them was still a mere mortal, and she only stopped because Anders insisted she was exerting herself. The Aveline of a few years ago would have brushed that off with a roll of her eyes and a stoic "I'm fine", but between Alice needling her not to strain herself and Donnic advocating for her to rest more often than not, she had been whittled down to a person with a reasonable grasp of her own limits, and relented.
Alice watched over Poppy while Isabela fashioned a charming little coat for their piglet friend. It was to be as much a harness as a fashion statement, and Isabela didn't seem terribly upset about sacrificing her raggedy jacket for it. As it stood, Fenris had cleverly constructed a small pen out of stones, enough to hold the piglet inside until they left in the morning.
Now Aveline slept. Or at least, she was sitting. Propped against the carved tunnel wall, her arms crossed as disapprovingly as her brow was creased, she had her eyes shut but she was breathing too rapidly to truly be asleep.
Sebastian kept watch again, and Alice considered telling him to take a rest as well. He'd be needed, come morning, to carry Poppy the rest of the way to Kirkwall. She wondered if he realized.
Tearing her eyes from Sebastian meant Alice watched Fenris, instead. He fed scraps to the piglet and kept it company. Something about his presence seemed to calm the little thing, a sentiment to which Alice could relate. Seeing the gentleness with which he cared for the piglet had her chest constricting, not in an entirely unpleasant way. He had such softness to him. He'd die before he ever admitted it, she knew.
Anders also kept watch, which meant he leaned up against a dwarven statue and picked dirt and grime from the hem of his rebel coat. He seemed perfectly at ease, which told Alice there were no darkspawn lurking back the way they came. He could fool about as he liked, so long as he kept his eyes open.
Alice had arranged hers and Sebastian's coats as a makeshift cot for Poppy, so she wouldn't wake up with sorer joints than she might already have. The floor was so dirty, and Sebastian's light coat was already covered in dust and stained with spider blood, but it must still hurt to see such a fine piece of outerwear be ruined so thoroughly.
She could always buy him a new one, as thanks. After all, it turned out to be a good thing so many of them came down here. Without Fenris, they might have been overwhelmed in that first spider attack, and never made it out. Without Anders, they never would have crossed into the warrens of the natural caves, and without Sebastian, they might never have found Poppy at all.
Sebastian shifted his stance, and Alice pretended not to notice.
"See something you like over there?" Isabela asked quietly, drawing her needle through the remains of her jacket another time.
Blushing, Alice faced her again. "See something I like over here, actually," she said lightly.
Isabela scoffed and glanced over her shoulder, to where Fenris was befriending the piglet. She turned back to Alice with a smirk. "Nice try, Hawke, but I know your cute little tricks."
"You think I'm cute?"
"You're adorable. I could eat you up." Isabela winked. "I did, however, mean in terms of…the opposite sex."
Alice leaned back on her hands and feinted disinterest. "You mean men? Ugh."
"Ugh is right, but you still don't fool me. If you had any interest in women, I think we'd be unstoppable together, but you, my dear, are hung up on a very specific man. Unless I'm mistaken."
This was not a conversation Alice wanted to have, not when they could be so easily overheard by Fenris or Sebastian, so she plastered a grin on her face and did what she did best. Deflected.
"I'm not entirely closed to the idea of us conquering Kirkwall as a power couple," Alice said. "Think of the gossip."
"Give it a rest, Hawke. You really aren't my type, anyway. You've got 'mates for life' written all over you."
Well, that sort of stung. And Alice couldn't really rebuff it in a believable way, so she kept quiet. Wetting the edge of her tunic from her cask, Alice took to wiping smears of dried dirt from Poppy's face.
Isabela observed this silently, her brow drawing closer together as Alice worked.
"Feel a kinship to this woman, do you?" she asked idly. "I don't think she'd thank you for pitying her, just so you know."
Alice shook her head. "It isn't pity. She lived an entire life, and she can't even tell us about it. She wouldn't know who sent that missive to find her, or if there's someone out there waiting anxiously for her to come home. She either had a child once, and lost them, or else she spent her lucid years wishing for one, to such a degree that her addled mind invented one. I suppose I just…want her to know kindness, in case she's suffered at hands she doesn't remember."
"Even when she won't remember your kindness?" Isabela asked in a low voice.
Alice smoothed the sleeping woman's hair back, and found she had no answer. She got up, shaking life back into her tingling feet, and went to check on Aveline. She was sleeping soundly now, her chin resting on her chest, and Alice drew her coat up around her shoulders, bowing the middle so she could breathe. She didn't stir.
Behind Fenris, Alice hesitated. If he sensed her standing there, he didn't show it. He watched the piglet as it snorted quietly in its sleep, letting out high-pitched grunts of contentedness or distress. Apparently its dreams were as chaotic as its waking hours, and that, Alice did pity. At least her dreams were mostly of nicer things. When she could sleep, at any rate.
Finally, Alice drifted toward Sebastian. She didn't quite know why; somehow he was easier to face than Fenris was. Or at least, easier to potentially speak to. There wasn't so much she wished to say to Sebastian, just things she wished to do.
She stood beside him for a moment, staring into the hazy Roads before them. They had miles to go, but she was certain they could breach the surface and make good time back to Kirkwall, if they were lucky.
If only Alice had ever been lucky.
"How is Poppy sleeping?" Sebastian asked, without looking at Alice. His arms were folded, shoulders squared, eyes in the distance.
"A magic spell," Alice replied offhandedly.
A smirk twitched the corner of his downturned mouth, but he didn't let it take over. "I mean, is she breathing all right? How much do you know about magically-induced rest, anyway?"
"A lot more than you, I guarantee it."
"So it is safe?"
Alice peered over her shoulder to the other side of camp, where Anders had taken to pacing the floor between the immense walls. His head turned her way, and she turned back around.
"I trust Anders' judgment," Alice said, and found it true. Moody and fanatical as he could be, he knew healing, and he'd proven himself over and over again as someone who put lives above convenience. It was his entire thing, really. Something they had in common, if Alice were honest. "He wouldn't recommend something that might cause more harm than good."
Sebastian merely grunted. "You should rest as well, Hawke. We need to be prepared for whatever tomorrow brings."
"Is that another crack about my bringing two meals on a five-day trip into the Deep Roads?"
Now he looked at her, his eyes wide. "You only brought two meals along?"
Alice shut her jaw with a snap and avoided his gaze. She scratched her head. Maker, he was still staring at her. She shrugged, finally, admitting defeat. "I thought it'd take two days."
"Andraste preserve you."
"Well, I couldn't have known we'd need so many extra bodies, and I couldn't have known the poor woman we came down here after would get so hopelessly lost, and I certainly couldn't have known you'd prove yourself so useful."
His surprise melted into an eyebrow arch of mild annoyance. "So my usefulness was unexpected?"
Alice regarded him with affected coolness. She ran her fingers along her lips and leaned back, as though she were studying him. "Yes," she said finally. "You've got a lot under that surface, don't you, Vael?"
That made him noticeably blush and he made a big deal of clearing his throat. "You need rest."
"You do, too. One of us is carrying a woman out of the Deep Roads tomorrow and it's not me." Alice turned and flounced back over to Isabela and Poppy's supine form. She didn't meet Isabela's eye and hoped against hope no one heard her exchange with Sebastian. There was no telling with Fenris, but she'd been quiet. Or tried to be.
"Bela, in a few hours, will you relieve Sebastian?" Alice asked after enough time had passed that it'd be awkward for Isabela to ask questions.
She was answered with a prolonged groan and Isabela rolled her head back on her shoulders. "Why me?"
"Because you love me, of course."
"That's a bit presumptuous."
Alice pushed out her lower lip and made her eyes really big. She held this face, directed at Isabela, until she grunted irritably and waved her hand.
"Sweet Maker, you're a pain in my ass," Isabela muttered. "Go to sleep, you great bother."
"Thank you, Bela."
"Don't thank me. I have daggers."
With a grin, Alice settled on the hard floor a few feet from Poppy, using her hand as her pillow. The cold stone sapped the heat from her body, but Alice shut all that noise out and tried her best to actually sleep.
Tomorrow, they'd all be back in Kirkwall, and Alice would be missing the sounds of her friends around her, the arguments and griping and jokes that filled the empty Deep Roads with more warmth than the mansion in Hightown offered.
After what felt like a week rather than barely four days, Alice led her group past several dwarven constructs that she at long last recognized. They were less than an hour from the surface, now, and just in time. Sebastian was beginning to flag under Poppy's dead weight. Apparently, he needed to carry more people out of disasters, or else train with Aveline. Not that Alice ever considered him not to be in great shape.
"I suppose she'll have to be watched over at the Keep until we track down whoever sent the missive about her," Aveline mused as they walked, keeping pace with Sebastian in case he needed help or it seemed like he might drop Poppy.
Alice watched the sleeping woman's face for a moment. "Is that the best we can offer? Will your guards be equipped to handle her until we find someone who can properly care for her? She'll be infinitely more confused when we wake her up."
Aveline sighed. "I'm not well-versed in elder care, Hawke. I don't know too many people who are, and what makes it all the worse is her condition. If she were only senile, she might be a bit easier to bring around on things like the pig not being her child or the Deep Roads not being the palace of a Margravine who retired thirty-odd years ago. As it stands, she's properly unwell, nearly to the point of being institutionalized."
Sebastian huffed softly. "That should be a last resort."
"I actually agree," Anders added from behind them. "No one should ever be locked up against their will."
Aveline ran a long-suffering hand over her brow. "I know. Maker. Which is why I'm going to provide her with…something, in the Keep. Something temporary, at the very least." She jabbed a finger at Alice. "You'll look into this sister."
Instead of the saucy retort Alice had lined up, she merely nodded. "Of course."
"I only hope I can spare the guards to keep an eye on her," Aveline muttered, likely moreso to herself than anybody else. "And Maker help us all if Meredith finds out I'm using the Keep as a care home."
Sebastian made a noise in the back of his throat and looked from Alice to Aveline. "The Chantry!"
Alice frowned behind his back at Aveline, who looked just as lost.
"We can board her in the Chantry. It's perfect. There are rooms for initiate clergy in the upper halls, and plenty of Sisters about to keep her from wandering off or getting herself hurt." Sebastian smiled. "I can keep an eye on her as well, make sure she eats."
Aveline snorted softly. "And the piglet?"
"I'm sure there's a butcher in the Lowtown Markets who isn't too picky," Anders offered loftily.
"You fiend!" came Isabela's indignant cry, followed immediately by Fenris saying: "Come near this pig, mage, and it's your nose."
Alice grinned and glanced over her shoulder at Anders. "Shouldn't have said that in front of the official Jaspie fan club."
Muttering under his breath, Anders didn't look at her.
Alice returned her attention to Sebastian. "We'll re-home the piglet," she said. "Thank you, Vael, that's a generous offer."
"What else does the Chantry stand for, if not helping the Maker's less fortunate children?" he replied with a return smile that Alice found hard to face.
The obvious answers sprang to her mind: Oppression, revisionist history, nitpicky involvement in things that had nothing to do with them, and yet utter silence on matters such as the indiscriminate injustice faced by mages in Circles throughout Thedas. Boring outfits.
None of these things were really topics she felt like bickering about just now, so she inclined her head. "All right. You set Poppy up in the Chantry and I'll look into her sister. Aveline will figure out who sent the missive. Perhaps that will prove to be the sister."
"And she'll have answers about Poppy," Isabela suggested.
"And we can figure out a way to help her from there," Alice finished, clapping her hands together once. "A plan! I love when that happens."
Rocks tumbling to the floor up ahead caused them all to stop as one. Alice drew her staff, Aveline her sword and shield. The silence was broken only by the soft snuffling grunts of the piglet, being led along by Isabela, and she crouched to quiet it.
Alice crept forward, eyes on the ceiling. There was an archway blocking her view of whatever dislodged the stones, and Aveline hissed a warning as Alice began to cross under it, counting tiles in the ceiling until she passed below the arch.
She shouldn't have gone looking.
The immense segmented body, too many legs, thick as young trees around. A hairy, hoary set of dripping mandibles. A low-pitched rattling, the clicking of such a gargantuan creature, took up and rattled ancient dust from the arch and the high stone walls around them. It vibrated in Alice's ribs.
The spider queen hunched on the ceiling, all eight eyes glittering in the torchlight, as venom slipped to the stone tiles before Alice in smoking puddles of sickly green. She was so quiet; stalking. Alice knew from the raised position of her thorax. She'd been listening to them approach for some time.
There'd be no leaving the Deep Roads if she pounced.
After a tense few seconds while Alice tried to determine if she should cause a seismic shift to attempt to crush the queen, the queen answered for her. Suspending herself on a length of silk as thick as Alice's arm, the spider descended, and Alice bolted back for the others, reaching for the Fade as she did so.
Ground-shaking spells would kill them all, but Alice's heart pounded too loudly in her ears for her to remember many others just now. Firestorm? No, the flaming hair on the queen's body could catch any one of them if she struck out with her limbs. Infernal lightning? That was no good, either. This beast was too big to be as fast as she was, but Alice knew from experience the moment she had all eight legs on the floor of the Roads—
Anders was swift with a defensive shield that had the spurt of venom spat towards all of them splashing off its translucent white barrier.
"Sebastian, back up!" Alice cried. They weren't going to lose him or Poppy to this monster, not if she had anything to say about it.
The piglet squealed, and with a face twisted in anguish, Isabela freed it from the harness and it scurried back the way they'd come, its cries echoing. She drew her daggers.
Somehow, having one immense target was always an easier fight to manage than a dozen foes one tenth the size. Recovering from her brief spell-paralysis panic, Alice barked out more orders: "Anders, keep to the sides and keep up the shield! Aveline, go for the back legs! Do not let her hit you with the barbs on her limbs! Isabela—"
Isabela had already vanished in a cloud of smoke from one of her vials, so Alice moved on.
"Fenris, try and get on top of her!"
He threw Alice an exasperated scowl but didn't question her. Sword drawn, he followed Aveline toward the queen, dodging her flailing front legs as she hissed, a sound that raised every hair on Alice's body. She didn't check to see if Sebastian had taken Poppy somewhere safer; there was no time to do anything but strategize and trust.
Alice continued to draw on the Fade, closing her eyes as its power rippled under her skin. No earth-shaking, no fire, and lightning would be too much of a risk with all three of her melee-wielders in such close proximity—
Snapping open her eyes, Alice flung a wave of oppressing wind towards the queen. It buffeted her, sent her skidding a half a foot while she crouched, braced against it. Those eyes found Alice, black and burning with malicious retribution. The next bout of venom sailed just past Alice's head. The potency of it sent tingles along her cheek and ear before it splattered across the floor behind her.
The queen moved.
Scuttling forward, she shook off Aveline, who had been about to swing for her back left leg, and Alice heard Isabela cry out sharply as another pawed foot caught her somehow, and then the queen was nearly on top of Alice. Impossibly huge, she loomed over her, forelegs raised, clicking from within her arachnid body—
Alice hit her with another wind spell, this one blowing the queen off balance entirely. Up on four legs, the queen's massive abdomen swung down, narrowly missing Fenris as the queen flattened her front half to the cavern floor. The ground shook and pain shot up Alice's leg as she took one knee, catching herself on her staff. She had enough time to register a sweeping foreleg before the room pitched upside-down. Startling colors exploded in her head and the cold, hard floor was a much closer friend than before when she shook them clear again.
Someone called her name, but honestly, it could have been anyone.
The queen, clearly the vengeful sort, bore down on Alice. She'd been tossed to one side of this wide section of the Deep Roads. Adrenaline convinced her that she wasn't too badly hurt, so she scrambled to her feet in time to leap out of the queen's path as her legs came for Alice again.
Arrows sprouted from the spider's face and it shrieked. Alice spun to see Sebastian nocking another half dozen or so as he side-stepped away from a cluster of crumbled pillars. Poppy was nowhere to be seen.
"Sebasti—" Something slammed Alice to the ground, reigniting the colors. Pressure dug into her back with the weight of a mountain, and pinned as she was, Alice could only make out the filth-covered Deep Roads stone floor before her face. Her staff was quite simply gone, lost the first time she was thrown against the wall. Even so, she scrambled for the Fade, for some buried self-defense spell she might use.
Venom like acid burned a hole in the leather of her pauldron and pain seared through her flesh as it ate into that, as well. She bit down on her scream and ignored the tears in her eyes and prepared once more to blast this bitch of a beast into the Deep Roads ceiling hard enough to flatten her for good.
The pressure vanished, and hot blue spider blood spattered across Alice and the floor.
The queen let out a piercing hiss and Alice clapped her hands over her ears, the agony from her venom burns forgotten in the wake of her skull nearly splitting in two.
Fenris swung his sword again, aiming for the queen's other foreleg, but she kicked at him at the same time and sent him tumbling. Aveline hacked at her bulbous thorax, knocking aside her thrashing, kicking back legs with her shield and keeping herself squarely in the queen's blind spot.
Alice managed to get to her feet and ran—or limped, rather—to check on Fenris. He'd been flung toward a pile of rubble, but he was already back on his feet, brushing dust from his armor. He caught her eye and she swore he checked her over before latching onto his sword with both hands and running right back into the fray.
Isabela had maneuvered on top of the queen and stabbed her daggers into the thick armor of her carapace while the queen flung herself in tight circles, like a dog shaking water from its coat. Isabela held on, head tucked, shoulders tensed.
Sebastian adorned the queen's head with arrows, but his quiver was steadily growing emptier, and the queen showed no signs of flagging.
Miraculously, Alice's staff was unbroken. She snatched it up and summoned an ice spell, forming a broad, frozen puddle under the spider's compromised right side. Her paws scrambled on the slick ice, but she managed to stay upright. She flung a leg at Aveline, who caught the blow with her shield, and unbalanced the queen enough that she thudded to the floor, half-propped up on her left side. The ground shuddered with the impact. Isabela drove her daggers, one after the other, as deep as they could go into the hairy arachnid shoulder onto which she clung. Fenris brought his sword up to drive it through the beast's head at last, but a spurt of venom caught him in the ribs and he stumbled back with a cry of pain.
Isabela sprang off the queen's back and rolled to a stop on the tunnel floor, out of the beast's range. Aveline raised her own sword, to carve into the bulk of the queen's body and be done with this, but she never got the chance.
Heavily but deliberately, the queen levered her legs underneath her once more, and heaved herself upright. She clicked a staccato rhythm that sounded like mocking laughter, and what remained of her gleaming eyes fixed on Fenris, who clutched his burned ribs and scowled fearsomely at the beast.
Before anyone could move, a scream, undeniably human, split the air.
All eyes turned toward the pile of crumbled pillars, just behind which stood Poppy, hands clapped over her mouth so tightly that her flesh was white. She stared at the queen like a woman made of stone. The queen bunched her remaining legs underneath her.
Time seemed to stretch. The frantic voices of Alice's friends sounded distorted, the enchantment she murmured under her breath as she prepared to send a seismic tremor through the high ceiling had too many syllables. Poppy never moved.
The queen pounced just as the first quakes from Alice's spell knocked loose stones from above.
With bedlam like the end of the world, undercut by a chorus of shouting and outcries, the Deep Roads where they stood collapsed in a dust cloud of ancient stone.
All Alice knew for a terrifying amount of time was choking whiteness. She coughed, straining lungs already sore from the effects of the venom burns on her shoulder. Everything hurt. Everything was still attached.
Fenris. He'd been in the queen's path when she leapt. Had he dodged in time? And what of the others?
Alice, what have you done?
Pushing herself onto trembling hands and knees, Alice took to coughing again, until foamy debris, tinged with pink, worked its way from her throat and onto the stone before her face. Wiping her stinging eyes, Alice blinked at the dim scene.
Much of the ceiling had come down, rearranging this entire section of the tunnel. Cracks zigzagged out in branching patterns, along what remained of the ceiling and down the near wall. Scattered across the floor were enormous hunks of dwarf-carved stone, splintering the tile. The arch had collapsed, leaving a wall of rubble taller than Alice stood.
Split over the broad body of the queen, half-crushed underneath it, was the largest segment of the ceiling. The dust that still hung heavy in the air obscured most of that end of the tunnel, but it was quite clear their foe was dead. Dark blue blood seeped out from under the carapace.
"Sound off!" came Aveline's wobbling order.
A series of groans answered her.
Alice got one foot underneath her when hands clamped onto her from behind and levered her upright.
"Hawke, thank Andraste," Anders rasped. Tingling magic skittered along her nerves, warming her almost to discomfort as Anders healed the venom burns in her shoulder, and then the hair-thin cuts along her arms, chest, and face from the spider's leg. He tilted her chin up to meet his gaze, scowling in concentration.
"Poppy," Alice croaked, and coughed again.
He took her meaning and his face crumpled with guilt. "I couldn't hold the sleeping spell and protect everyone at the same time," he said, hanging his head. "I let you down."
Alice stumbled away from him, toward the front of their fallen foe. Maybe the queen hadn't reached her. Maybe she'd been able to move out of the way and wasn't hurt. Maybe—
The spider queen's lifeless eyes gazed damningly up at Alice as she took in the way the fangs, still glistening with that horrid venom, had sunk so far into poor Poppy's chest that she was twisted, suspended partway off the floor, impaled like prey on a javelin. Her listless curls brushed the stone beneath her head, her arms outstretched to either side as though waiting to receive a hug that would never come.
With a shaking hand, Alice brushed her eyelids closed.
"Oh, Maker preserve her soul."
The voice was Sebastian's. He approached Alice's side but stopped, staring down at the dead woman at an awkward distance, his features bent up in grief. He clasped his hands together and bowed his head. "Andraste, receive into your arms the gentle spirit of his child…"
Alice tuned out the rest of the rites. Her stomach turned and her half-healed wounds demanded a soothing balm. Her heartsick chest lurched at the realization she hadn't seen Fenris yet, and she spun—only to nearly smack directly into him. He caught her, barely, and then moved back a half-step.
"Are you all right?" she asked. She knew of one healing spell, elementary at best, but she had no idea if he'd even accept healing magic. Least of all from her.
Fenris rolled his shoulders and winced, his hand going to his ribs again. "I'll recover," he said stonily. He glanced past her at Poppy's body, the hard set of his jaw softening. "What a waste."
The others drifted close as well, all solemnly looking on as Sebastian wrapped up his prayers. He glanced uncertainly at the rest of them.
"We should find a way to commend her body to the Maker, as well," he said.
"We light a pyre down here, we send an invitation to any and every darkspawn crawling the depths of this place," Anders said.
"Can we at least set the poor thing free from those horrible fangs?" Isabela asked. "Push her off, or…something?"
Aveline strode forward, sword ready, and with one decisive swing, severed the fangs from the queen's face. She delicately picked Poppy's body up, careful not to catch herself on the protruding fangs.
"Get those out," she said raggedly, nodding to the fangs.
As one mind, Alice, Fenris, Isabela, and Anders delicately removed the fangs from Poppy's chest. Sebastian quickly threw his soiled coat over her, covering the ghastly sight of the gaping punctures that claimed her life. Aveline laid her on a flat part of a nearby column, tucking the coat around her.
"What now?" Isabela asked limply. "We're returning to Kirkwall empty-handed."
"What do we tell her sister, if she comes asking?" Anders wondered quietly. "The truth?"
Alice leaned on her knuckles on the column beside Poppy's body, staring at nothing, until a firm hand on her shoulder pulled her back and she was looking at Aveline's tired face.
"We did all we could for her," she said. "You know that."
Alice sniffed and swiped one filthy sleeve under her eyes. They watered from all the dust. "Sebastian," she said hoarsely, and he stepped forward. She couldn't bear the sympathy in his eyes, so she focused on the spider queen's corpse, instead. "Would you carry Poppy out of here? We can hold a…sending-off for her on the Wounded Coast."
"Of course," Sebastian murmured.
Alice focused on Anders. "Get everyone healed," she said. She shot a stern look at Fenris, as much for him as for Anders himself. "I do mean everyone. And then we'll clear out of here, once and for all."
Isabela sat heavily beside Alice while they waited for Anders to heal the others. As she expected, Fenris refused at first, but after Aveline wearily threatened to sit on him until he complied, he relented. The sour look Fenris threw Aveline was difficult to miss, but at least his acid-eaten ribs wouldn't get infected.
"You made out all right," Isabela remarked.
"I was the first to be healed," Alice replied huskily. "That's all."
In fact, Isabela seemed to have dodged even a severe scrape. The thing that seemed to weigh on her most, aside from losing the very person they came here to rescue, was the absence of the little pig.
"He was too cute," Isabela lamented with a sigh. She shook her head. "Cute things never last long enough, do they?"
But even as she spoke, her voice trailed off, and everyone fell quiet. Alice made out the sound of exerted grunting and curious snuffling, and Isabela was on her feet in an instant.
"No way!" she cried in glee, and dashed away, deeper into the tunnel. After a moment, something let out a squeal, and Isabela said, "Got you!" before reappearing beyond the rubble, the squirming piglet in her arms once more. She was beaming.
"Saved someone, at least," Aveline mumbled in subdued relief.
Fenris moved forward to scratch the piglet behind the ears. His shoulders relaxed, expression open, wounds healed up. As though he was at peace, or something like it.
Watching him, Alice's nerves settled, just the slightest bit.
Chapter 5: Left Alone
Summary:
In which Alice grapples with guilt and then we miss several weeks.
Chapter Text
An icy wind blew the waves of the distant horizon, cutting Alice to the bone while she watched the moon play on the inky depths. Even the frigid reality of the Wounded Coast didn't drive away the cloying melancholy she steeped in.
It was just no good. Maker, she'd set out to save someone, potentially more than one someone, and now she was returning to Kirkwall with nothing to show for this half-cocked mission of hers. No wonder Sebastian and Anders volunteered, and Isabela thought Fenris necessary. Under Alice's leadership, she'd probably have killed herself, Isabela, and Aveline in one fell swoop.
If she'd just tried the first spell she thought of when discovering the spider queen, none of this would have happened. Sure, she had no idea at the time whether or not it would collapse the entire tunnel, but using it as a last resort cost them Poppy. And Fenris got hurt.
Anders had lugged his guilt with him all the way out of the Roads. There was no mistaking the inward curve of his shoulders, his downcast eyes. Alice hadn't had the words to convince him he was blaming the wrong person.
The pyre blew embers into the air. She watched them drift over the path, the grass, to the sandy beach, winking out before they got any farther. Sometimes they returned, fizzling out against the material of Alice's trousers or the grass by her boots. She held out her hand to catch some but they drifted over her palm like snowflakes.
"You should come sit by the fire."
Fenris' voice. She'd tuned out the faint attempts at idle conversation and the quiet sounds of Jaspie, snorting and huffing while wandering around at the end of Isabela's makeshift harness. Alice hadn't been listening to much at all, save for the crash of waves, hadn't heard him approach. Not that he made all that much noise as he moved, anyway.
He stood there, etched in moonlight like a dream, and she couldn't bear the sight.
"I prefer the cold," she said.
Fenris' sigh seemed to reach for her. "No, you don't."
No, she didn't. But she preferred to stew in her poisonous thoughts where no one could see her, and his standing nearby impeded that.
The grass swished softly when he took up a position next to her. He didn't sit, didn't make any attempt to touch her. She wondered how she'd react if he did. Even a hand on her shoulder just now would feel like a vice closing on her flesh.
"You're trying to undo it," he said after a long stretch of silence. "To think a different outcome into being."
Heat squeezed Alice's throat and she tucked her face behind her crossed arms while they rested on her knees, blocking out the entire Wounded Coast, the entire world.
His voice cut through her defenses, though. It always did.
"You think there must be a reason for what happened today. Can't you simply allow a tragedy to be exactly what it is?"
"I screwed up—"
"In what way?"
Was he just not listening? Alice didn't have the energy for this.
"She was in my care, Fenris. And she was killed." Alice got her feet underneath her and stood. She must need to wander farther away. That was it.
He still made no move to touch her, but he did meet her eyes. "Are we not all to blame, then?"
Once, Alice might have folded herself into his arms. Borne the shame of his unearned touch if it meant having her heartbeat sync to his once again. But it would change nothing, and she couldn't bring herself to ask him to hold her. Not if he didn't offer.
"Come, sit by the fire," he said softly, inclining his head toward the others, visible as rippling shadows against the glow of the bonfire, a short walk further down the path. "Punish yourself another time."
The urge to eat up this distance between them or else add to it by leagues tore at Alice's guts, even after she followed Fenris back to the tiny camp. Seated beside him, close but not close enough, was as good as she'd be able to hope for.
Hightown parties weren't something Alice sought out. It was the nobles of Kirkwall that the Arishok and the Qunari targeted during the occupation, and Alice didn't particularly count herself among them, because while his methods were questionable, the Arishok's point was sound: the rich had no idea how good they had it here in Kirkwall.
That didn't stop her from receiving forty invitations every two weeks to different banquets, soirees, and galas, most of which she tossed in the fire.
But tonight, Aveline had specifically requested she accompany her. Donnic, apparently, had come down with some stomach bug, and Aveline refused to go alone. She also said that herself not showing up would appear weak.
Alice argued that Aveline would be hard-pressed to appear weaker than the dandies throwing the banquet, but Aveline had only set her jaw and given Alice her most intense stare.
"Eight o'clock, Hawke. Don't be late." And then she was gone.
So now Alice was picking out her least-attention-getting outfit. A white ruffled blouse that Isabela had compared to "pirates from stories, minus the swashbuckling" and simple scarlet trousers. She could wear her staff as an accessory, but sometimes that put people on edge. And if anyone affiliated closely with Meredith were there, they'd report back to her that her least favorite apostate in the Free Marches was strutting about, showing off her mage status and playing in the Knight-Commander's face.
In lieu of her staff and as an extra layer of personal security, Alice applied her most bloodred lipstick. With her eyes done in heavy dark red as well, she looked almost sultry. Too bad there'd be no one there with the right tastes to appreciate these lengths. Even so, Alice slipped her lipstick into the bag at her hip.
She walked up the elaborate staircase to the Dulius manor at quarter past eight, and saw Aveline waiting with a handful of other Hightown residents, a stony look on her face. She wore a fine crushed velvet suit Alice had never had the pleasure of seeing before. Deep emerald, which set off her red hair quite nicely. She turned that look of thunder on Alice, and Alice returned it with an easy grin.
"Looking sharp, guard-captain," she said.
"I could punch you flat out right now, Hawke," Aveline growled. "Where have you been?"
"Will you relax? Fashionably late, darling."
"Don't ever call me that again."
Alice made a show of rolling her eyes. "You could have gone in without me. I am your guest, after all."
Aveline scoffed. "As if everyone in these doors isn't waiting for you. I know for a fact you were invited, even before I was. Perks of being the Champion."
"Are you jealous? I wouldn't even be here tonight if not for you."
All at once, Aveline deflated. She ran her hand over her forehead and tugged at the hem of her blazer. "No, you wouldn't, would you? I'm sorry, Hawke. I'm no good at these things. Even worse in itchy, stiff suits like this."
"You wear the hell out of it anyway," Alice told her, and stuck out her arm for Aveline to take. "Come on. Let's make an entrance."
With a low chuckle, Aveline hooked her arm through Alice's, and then with the smattering of other guests milling about watching, they both swept into the Dulius mansion.
The foyer was packed with Hightown's elite. They all turned and gasped at the sight of the Champion, arm-in-arm with the captain of the city guard, and Alice heard a new wave of murmurs starting up amongst the already-chattery crowd.
"The rumor mills are going to have a field day with this, Hawke," Aveline warned her sotto voce.
Alice flashed her a winning smile. "Isn't it delicious?"
"You've been spending too much time around Isabela."
"Oh, it's not Isabela I'm on a date with tonight, is it?"
"Perhaps I should have punched you."
"Easy, darling! Don't have too much fun too early."
They took to greeting the other guests, fielded questioning glances, exchanged bows with the hosts—Serahs Dulius, who could have been married or twins and Alice couldn't tell the difference—and then went to mingle properly.
One or two Templars were easy to pick out among the rest of the hubbub, and though they watched Alice from behind those imposing helmets, they made no move to harangue her. They did stick close to a couple of College of Magi mages, not as though they were assigned to escort them, but with the suspicion of strangers observing Circle-free mages in the wild. The Duliuses certainly weren't afraid of stirring that particular pot.
Alice made for the food table, abandoning her date, and sought out some imported stuffed parsnips. Aveline caught up with her a while later, when the parsnip tray was conspicuously half as full as it had been, and she gave Alice a heavy-lidded look.
"Ready to leave already?" Alice asked, swiping wild sage from her lip.
"It'd be unforgivably tacky to leave after thirty minutes," Aveline grumbled. "Not that I care, but I doubt your reputation can afford to suffer."
Alice bared her teeth. "Anything?"
Aveline frowned and pointed to her front left incisor. "Lipstick."
"Ah." Alice rubbed it off. "Better?"
"Much. We can continue with our lives now."
"No we can't. We're at a party!" Alice took up a glass of wine and raised it in toast, but Aveline had no wine, and a man appeared out of nowhere to accost—er, speak with them.
"Pardon me, Messere Hawke," he said with a slight bow. "Perhaps you don't remember me. We met in Orlais some time ago, Wintersend."
Wintersend had been before Mother, before the Arishok fight. Alice couldn't place this man's face, with his white-streaked and neatly trimmed beard and his small, sparkling brown eyes.
"I am Senior Enchanter Moro, of the College of Magi?"
"Oh! Yes, Senior Enchanter, ser. How lovely to see you again." Alice clapped her hand in his. "What are you doing at a small-time banquet in Hightown, if you don't mind my asking?"
"The Duliuses are old friends. Juncart's father donated generously to my 'History of Shapeshifting' program." He smiled. "Have you given any further thought to speaking at a summit sometime? I know of an entire class who would die to have you as a guest speaker."
Alice laughed, perhaps too loudly. "I should hate for that to be the reaction upon seeing me, good ser!"
Moro joined in her laughing, and several people looked over. Aveline picked up a glass of wine of her own.
"My apologies, Senior Enchanter," Alice said. "My days are just too full here in Kirkwall to make special trips at the moment."
"Of course, of course," Moro said quickly. "It's only an idea. Should you ever change your mind, however, you can send a letter here." He handed her a card, and she took it. "Now, please do excuse me. I see one of my former students over there, I want to spook him."
Alice grinned genuinely and watched the well-rounded man sneak away, stalking up on a young man in elaborate mage's robes. Moro pounced, the young man shrieked, and the room erupted into laughter.
Aveline had vanished. Alice spun to look for her but knocked directly into someone. The wine was cold as it soaked through her white shirt, staining the ruffles just as if she'd been stabbed in the chest.
"Fuck," she muttered, and raised her eyes to the poor sod she'd ran into.
"Hawke?"
What in the Maker's name was Sebastian doing at a Hightown banquet?
He looked a bit panicked. "I am so sorry." He took up a linen cloth from the refreshments table, as if he was going to dab the stain from her blouse then and there.
Alice waved a hand. "My fault. Clumsy idiot, that's me." She looked for Serah Fina Dulius, a very tall, blonde woman who should be easy enough to spot in the crowd. Spying her, Alice wove her way over. People moved aside for her, but only just enough, and murmured greetings as she passed. Sebastian followed her, the linen still uselessly in his hand.
Serah Dulius gazed down at Alice with all the majesty of the Queen of Ferelden. "Yes—oh, my stars, Messere Hawke. What happened?"
"Wine," Alice said simply. "May I borrow a powder room? It's very sticky. The wine, not your powder room. Not that I'd know, I've never been in your house before. It's lovely, by the way. The kind of house that might have a powder room?"
Blinking slowly, as if she were trying to process all this, Serah Dulius gestured to one of the servants. "Fetty, show Messeres Hawke and Vael to the Rose Room, if you please?"
"Oh, he doesn't need to—"
"Please, Hawke, let me rectify this," Sebastian said.
Heat crept up Alice's neck and she ignored it. It would be fine. There were far too many people here to think two of them stepping down the hall for a moment would be that noticeable.
The servant Serah Dulius waved over was a matriarchal elven woman with a disapproving frown on her face. She said nothing, but flicked a hand at the two of them, indicating they should follow her. They did.
Once more, the crowd parted to allow Alice past. She looked for Aveline as she went, but couldn't see her. What had become of her? What would become of Alice?
If it were any other night, she might just leave the stained blouse as it was, a statement piece, as it were. If she were at the Hanged Man, she and Varric could cook up a joint story of the ghost of a pirate queen, her heart cut out but her spirit haunting the taverns of her youth in search of her betraying love. But she was here with Aveline, and she didn't want to embarrass Aveline, and now she was embarrassed. And heading to something called the Rose Room, alone, with Sebastian.
It was too much to hope that Fetty would stay back and help the clumsy Champion sort herself out. She shut the door firmly behind her before Alice or Sebastian could even ask for a cask of water to clean her shirt in.
The Rose Room was simply that: a room full of roses. The wallpaper was shades of red, the carpet that stretched from wall to wall, red. There was a set of vases, as tall as Varric, on either side of a rose-embroidered tapestry. The vases? Shaped like roses. And the room smelled highly of a garden. Of roses.
"One must admire the dedication to the aesthetic," Alice muttered, eying the set of armchairs in deep crimson to one side of the room. On a table between them, on legs carved to imitate roses, was a ceramic bowl. It was white, which stood out quite starkly, but inside the basin was a painted rose. Alice wandered away from this table and faced the chest-high vases, unbuttoning her blouse. At least the wine matched her lipstick.
Water sloshed lightly. Sebastian wet the linen in his hand in the basin and then turned to her. He saw her half-undone blouse and paused, his face going as scarlet as the braziers on the wall behind him.
"I—I apologize," he said, looking away awkwardly. He approached her slowly and extended the linen to her.
When she took it, her hand brushed his, and they both froze. Alice eased the linen from his grip and started to blot the front of her shirt. He moved away, standing stock-still, not looking at her. It was hard not to notice the way his vest outlined his chest, his archer's back muscles. The shirt he wore underneath, a muted shade of tan, must have been just a bit too small, because the sleeves were taut around his upper arms. Sleeves he had pushed back to wet the cloth and exposed his wrists.
It was bubbling up again. That desire from a few months ago; that memory of his body against hers. Even though they were both silent, Alice's question from that night rang in her ears: Aren't you lonely?
They'd successfully avoided being alone together ever since, even though for a while Alice wouldn't have minded. Fenris was still so distant. Alice still hated the mansion's echoing halls. When she'd finally, finally come to terms with the notion that she would have neither Fenris nor Sebastian, was the same week in which Aveline received the invitation to this banquet.
"Why are you here?" Alice blurted out. "At—here. The banquet."
Sebastian laughed once, hollowly. "I was invited."
"Why?" Alice bit her tongue. She sounded almost petulant, when that was not how she was feeling at all. "I just mean, I didn't think you'd want to come to a party full of nobles. Seems like the kind of place someone who still had it out for your family might show up."
"I can't hide forever, Hawke, and I can't deny the Maker's call for us to give freely of ourselves. Be it money, or our time. This banquet is for a good cause, the Duliuses are good people."
A fund for education for peasantry in the Free Marches. It certainly was a noble cause, but it had been attempted countless times before, by even more influential names than the Duliuses.
Alice gave up on blotting her blouse while it was still on her and unbuttoned it the rest of the way, intending to soak it in the rose basin. She understood now that was rose water, to scent the room without perfumes. Or real roses. It might lift the stain, and then perhaps Orana could get it clean again.
Sebastian glanced at her when she moved, and gasped lightly in scandal. "Hawke—"
"Oh, relax. I've got a chemise on."
"Still, it's—it's lady's underthings. This isn't appropriate."
"Aww, you called me a lady." Alice dumped her blouse in the bowl and turned to him, noting the redness of his face as he looked away again. "Do you ever get tired of keeping tally on what's appropriate?"
"Never." Sebastian cleared his throat. "You have things well in hand in here, I think. Forgive me for spilling the wine on you." He fled to the door, opened it slightly.
Alice strode across the room and put one hand on the door, pushing it up but not shut, and faced him. He held her gaze. It could have been her imagination, but he appeared to have labored breathing. His hand clenched around the door handle.
They were far closer than was appropriate. Alice didn't close the door, but she didn't let him open it any farther. Not unless he was really serious.
"It keeps me awake sometimes," Alice said finally, quietly. She hadn't intended to confess, but there couldn't be a better place for it than this intimate little room. Even if it stank of roses. "That night in Hightown."
His eyes darkened and he drew back, just slightly. Now it seemed he was gripping the door handle for support, or to keep from grabbing her, perhaps?
"I never meant to make you sin, I hope you know that," Alice said. "I just…" She trailed her free hand down the collar of her chemise and looked away. She flicked her eyes back to him and lowered her hand from the door. "I shouldn't keep you from the party."
Sebastian shut the door sharply.
Then he was on her, just like in the street, his lips on hers, his hands grabbing at her like she couldn't be close enough. He tugged her chemise from where it was tucked into her trousers and one hand shot up underneath, sending electricity all along her skin. He crowded her in the corner, pinning her against the wall. She caught his vest in both hands and yanked, flinging a button. Then she did the same with his shirt, until her fingers brushed hot skin.
His teeth grazed her lips, her tongue, his breath was hard and fast against her face. She sucked in a breath of her own; the room disappeared and she didn't even have her eyes open. The hand under her chemise cupped a breast, squeezed, and she whimpered against his lips.
Then he spun her, pressed her front to the wall and himself against her back, his lips rough on the flesh of her neck, catching her hair as he panted. One hand pinned her by the wrist above her head, and the other snaked round the front of her hip, nails digging into her flesh through her trousers.
"Tell me to stop," he gasped in her ear. "Or I may not."
"Don't," Alice breathed. "Please, don't stop."
He bit her neck, jerking her ass back against his hips as he ground into her. Her knees were molten, her body crying out for his. When his fingers found the buttons of her trousers, she nearly shouted for joy.
A knocking at the door caused them both to go still as statues.
"Messere Hawke? Are you still in there?"
Sebastian removed himself from Alice slowly, and just like before, his absence burned cold as a steel knife. He swept his hair back, did his best to fix his shirt and vest and wipe the lipstick that smeared his face, and then went and cracked the door.
"Oh!" came Serah Dulius' voice. "Messere Vael, or—Your Highness?—I had no idea you were still in there. Is everything all right?"
"Yes." Sebastian's voice was husky, and he cleared his throat, keeping his hand over his mouth. "Yes, all is well. Ser Hawke is tending to her blouse, and I'm standing by to see if she needs powders or anything to help lift the stain. Have you any?"
"Of course!" Footsteps receded, Sebastian shut the door, and Alice moved forward to continue where they'd left off, but Sebastian turned away from her.
"Sebastian—"
"I've done it again. I am a poor example of a Brother of the Chantry," he muttered. He held out his hands, looked at them as if they were alien to him. "What in Andraste's sacred name is wrong with me?"
Alice strode over to him and grasped his shoulder, made him face her. He gazed at her with such shame on his face that she took a step back. Her eyes burned, though she couldn't figure out why.
"What is so wrong with this?" she asked. "With me? Why can't we just have each other like this?"
"It's a sin—"
"It's better to pretend I don't dream about you? To lie to myself that I haven't—haven't imagined things like this with you?"
Sebastian gave her a look of torment. "Have you any idea how hard it is to deny you, Hawke? You're—" He breathed in deeply, his eyes traveling over her, and then he met her gaze again. "But I've sworn such things off. I am a new man. Perhaps if we'd met when I was young, and wild…"
"Come to my mansion tonight," Alice whispered. Was she honestly begging? Who cares. Yes, she was. She couldn't deny him, either, even though he wasn't the one chasing this. "After the party, after I see Aveline home."
"You don't understand."
"No, I don't. I don't want to. We aren't solitary creatures, Sebastian. And I nee—I need you."
He lifted his gleaming eyes and stared at her. "You don't know what you're asking."
"I want to find out," Alice said fiercely.
A feral look crept into his gaze but was gone just as quickly. For a moment, he seemed poised to tell her for the final time, no, but he dipped his head. "Very well," he said in a low voice that sent a ripple of thrill through Alice's body. "I will come."
Alice tried not to give into dizziness, and nodded back.
Now she'd have a hell of a time waiting out the rest of this banquet.