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Hawke has had this dream before. Kirkwall is a familiar old hurt, the tender spot of a recently pulled tooth. She’s grown used to the gap of it and she revisits the pain often, an unconscious habit, running her tongue over the fresh cut and swallowing the sharp hurt each time. In the years after fleeing Marian has dreamt of Kirkwall often—the shining alabaster of the mansions, the endless chatter at the docks, the smell of Lowtown, Gamlen’s particular mid-morning shuffle, Varric’s rasping laugh. It all plays on a repeat in the back of her mind, all the things she could have done differently, all the things she knows she wouldn’t change.
So, it’s a dream. It has to be. They’ve come in all manner ever since the first sleep she had here, in this endless place, somewhere cutting and depth-less, somewhere that spirals. The Nightmare is a relentless thing and with only her left behind in the Fade, she’s become the focus of all of its efforts. It feeds her dreams and nightmares alike, disorienting things that make her head spin, palimpsests that have started to gnaw at her own memories. All of the worst parts of her life pulled apart and replayed, over and over, worse and worse each time.
It should’ve stuck out then, how normal this one was turning out to be. She blinks the sun out of her eyes and the first thing she knows is the ache in her back, the damp of the air. The rock of water against stone is loud and constant, alongside the wheeling calls of seabirds high above. Hawke knows it all immediately and when she opens her eyes to find the chains and high walls of Kirkwall’s docks around her, she’s not surprised.
What does surprise her is Carver, sitting up against the wall to her right. He’s looking away from her and so she doesn’t worry about the open way she stares, breath tight in her chest. This isn’t the brother she left behind in the Marches, or in the Gallows, or in the Deep Roads, sick and dying and afraid. This is Carver younger than she’s thought of him in so long, gaunt and high-strung, eyes red-rimmed and hollow. If she looks, she knows she’ll find blood on his clothes, stained dark and rigid. They hadn’t had time to wash it off before the boats and then—Carver hadn’t said anything about it, after. It’s not like they had much in the way of luggage when they left, anyway.
She whips her head around then, heart thudding, searching, searching—
Mother is asleep still, tucked at her back, against the wall, the way they always slept while on the road. Insulated by Marian and Carver both, as protected as they could be in the space they could find. The spot between them where Bethany should be is a chasm, a perfectly shaped cutout that they haven’t yet learned how to fill. It shouldn’t hurt this badly, this reminder of her sister, but it does. It’s been years but in this moment it’s only been weeks, days, the loss so fresh it burns her like it’s new again.
Her strength leaves her all at once and she lays there, curled on her side, memorizing the unmarred vision of her mother. She doesn’t want to forget it when she wakes. Hawke sleeps and she dreams, and she dreams, and she dreams.
-
It might not be just a dream, though. She sleeps and she wakes and she walks through the same path, day by day, that they did all those years ago. She watches, feeling outside of herself, as every event unfolds just the way she remembers. Nothing sinister, nothing twisted. She keeps waiting for it to appear; the Nightmare, the wrench in her respite.
Whatever it is—a dream, a trick, a travel back through time—she takes each moment as it is. She never realized how easy these days were, how good. They work all night and work more all day, scrambling for money and knowledge and a foot in whatever door they can get into but she’s doing it all with Carver back at her side, with their mother waiting at home. Even seeing Gamlen again makes her feel lighter, the rare moments where all four of them are together for a meal some of the highlights of her days.
It’s hard for her to sleep, in this dream that is not a dream. Every night she’s afraid that she’ll close her eyes and wake up again in that void, alone and alone and alone. She’s afraid that she’ll forget all of this, the faces of her family, the sound of their laughter. Like by reliving the better parts of her memory she’s giving it all up, like the Nightmare is just waiting, eating its way through her past so it can leave only the horrific things behind.
When she does sleep, she doesn’t dream. That’s saved only for her waking hours, it seems.
-
The day they see Varric in Hightown, she sobs and sobs and sobs. Carver shushes her and gets them both home and he asks, bewildered, what's wrong, but she doesn't even know what to say. All she can think about is the friend she left behind in Adamant, Varric who she will never see again, who she never got to say goodbye to. Varric who will blame himself; who already didn’t want her there in the first place.
She finds him again later and it is almost impossible to talk to him, to introduce herself like they’ve never known each other. But they haven’t and he isn’t who he was, not yet, and she isn’t who she was then, either. They’ll never be those same people again.
It is a thousand little agonies, bittersweet and awful, seeing all of her friends again. Each reunion is another quiet moment of mourning. She looks at Anders and all she can see is the twist of his mouth when he’d asked if she’d kill him, if she’d stick a knife in his back and at least let Justice live free. She lays awake at night and she remembers all of the things that have haunted her, have haunted her friends. If this is not a dream, if she has truly ended up back here—how can she live through it again? How can she do anything but?
Sometimes, she wonders which would be better. If this were real or if it were all a hallucination, if she’s dead already or dying, if she’s more alive than she’d ever been before. She wonders if this is all a punishment from the Maker, if she’s cursed to live in this loop over and over again, if she’ll get to Adamant Fortress again one day and fall into the Fade and wake up in Kirkwall, at the docks, like the last ten years never even happened.
She wonders if she should tell anyone. If she’ll be able to pretend for as long as this lasts. If anyone will believe her, or if they’ll only confirm what she fears deep down, that this is nothing more than a fever pitch born out of her own mind, her last ditch attempt at comfort as she rots away in the Fade. She wonders if it even matters.
Hawke sleeps.