i'm not calling you a liar//
TITLE: Faith
AUTHOR: feilyn
FANDOM(S): Dragon Age II
CHARACTER(S): Lady!Hawke/Anders
PROMPT: Justice
RECIPIENT: Me!
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: Nothing not covered by the rating
SPOILERS?: For Anders' quest in Act III.
WORD COUNT: 1,773
PREVIEW/SUMMARY: It's the start of the fic! The rest is under the cut.
Hawke is tired.
It’s more than just the lack of sleep she’s been having lately; it infuses her bones after seven years of fighting and thinking she’s won, only to have it all slip out of her grasp. They call her the Champion of Kirkwall, now, but it’s a title that rings hollow when you tap it too hard. Something she does frequently, these days.
She drops smiles and witticisms as they leave the Chantry, carefully avoiding Anders gaze. She’s not stupid enough to think that either Varric or Isabela miss it, but for once they have enough tact to let sleeping dogs lie - or rather, Isabela does, and she elbows Varric in the face when he opens his mouth to say something.
“If you were taller, O Paragon of Manliness, this wouldn’t have been a problem,” the pirate points out when Varric starts to grumble. “Don’t think I’m complaining, though - you’re almost the perfect height for some other activities I might have in mind.” And then, never one to be shy, she keeps going. “Such as-”
“I’m going for a walk,” Hawke announces brightly, as if no person in Thedas has ever thought of going for a walk before. Normally, she finds their banter to be hilarious; normally, she doesn’t feel as hollow as that title she keeps picking at.
Next to her (but not too close), she hears Anders stir. “I think I might-”
“Alone,” she tells the space past his left eyebrow, with a little more forceful cheer than is entirely healthy. Or healthy at all. He stills, and she wonders if maybe he’s starting to realise what he’s truly done, here. She can’t bear to think that he really did go into this with a complete understanding.
She salutes them lazily, gives a sardonic little bow, and saunters away; they know her well enough by now not to follow, although maybe some part of herself (she hates that part, she really does), wants him to anyway. He won’t, though, and she absently considers just wandering about until she finds a fight. She’s the bloody Champion, after all; at this point, such things are like a daily tradition for her. She could use the exercise, if nothing else.
She doesn’t, though, recognising that the urge to hang herself out as bait just to crush a few skulls in order to make herself feel better is a little sick. Hawke sticks to the streets of Hightown instead, making enquiries with merchants and desperately trying to avoid yet another spoilt noble or shady character trying to make demands on her. She ends up to the Qunari collecting the swords of the fallen, handing over another she haggled off Hubert, and finds herself wishing this were three years ago and the talk on the streets was fear of invasion from the outside, not implosion from within. At least then, she had been more certain of where she stood.
“Qunari invasion; bad. Peace; good,” she finds herself muttering aloud, rolling her eyes at herself as the warrior next to her gives her a slow blind. She squints up at him, hands on her hips, and huffs. “For the people being invaded, you - oh, never mind, we both already know you’d never get it, and don’t care to.” Once, she had though to make them see things from a human perspective, make them understand the beauty of free will. Having confronted one of the various picky nuances involved in that today, she almost considers hitching a ride to Par Vollen and submitting to the Qun. It would be nice to have someone else make all the hard decisions, for once.
After that last comment, though, it becomes blatantly obvious that she’s not in the right frame of mind to be around anything with the slightest possibility of making her even more bitter than she already is this afternoon; in the interests of avoiding an international incident, she leaves the Qunari to his post, promising to bring back more swords if she happens to find them.
She decides to go home - time alone with her dog might be enough to counteract time alone with her thoughts, although in a house that seems to be getting steadily emptier over the years, she doubts it. Bodahn greets her the same as ever, and she manages to offer a smile to both him and Sandal before whistling to her dog and dragging her ass up the stairs and to her room.
Or at least, she had been planning on going into her room, but seeing Anders standing on the landing like he always does puts an abrupt hold on that - quite literally, she comes to a sudden stop and the mabari hound behind her accidentally head-butts the back off her knees. The look he’s giving her is hopeful, and heartbreakingly aware of how little right he has to be hopeful of anything right now.
“Your support means the world to me.” He breaks the silence while she’s still trying to find the right joke to crack, and she’s not sure if she wants to punch him because of that, or because of what he says to do it.
You don’t have my support. You have my co-operation. She wants to say it, wants to throw the words in his face the same way he tossed his accusations earlier that day. She doesn’t, though. She loves him; that doesn’t mean she has to behave like him.
It occurs to her that the silence between them has extended long past any natural pause, and that hopeful light is fast fading from his eyes. She shakes her head, whether to clear it or deny the situation entirely she couldn’t say, and walks past him, completing the trip to her room. He can follow or not as he wants, but she’s not having any conversation with him that the rest of the household can tune in on.
His footsteps after her are hesitant, but they exist. Hawke is grateful, and doesn’t want to be; she waits until the door shuts behind him before she speaks.
“How could you?” It’s a quiet question, and one she already knows the answer to.
“You know why.” There’s hurt in his voice, but no regret; it hurts him to have done this to her, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
“You used me.” She meets his eyes then, lets the pain and confusion and anger she has been feeling rise to the surface because he bloody well deserves to know. “I don’t know what for, but you used me, and you used the fact that I, for reasons unknown to me in this moment, am completely in love with you - like an idiot, I might add - to do it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment; her words hit him hard, and she takes some vindictive pleasure from that even as she - like an idiot - feels guilty for it.
“I told you this would happen,” is what he comes up with eventually, and the rage sparks hot in her gut, flares upwards.
“That’s not an excuse,” she bites out, because he’s right, it’s not like she wasn’t warned. “You don’t have free rein to stomp all over someone’s heart simply because you told them it was a possibility three years in the past.”
He steps closer, and she doesn’t tell him to stop. “This - it wasn’t about you, love. You know that.” And she does, and that’s the problem. She doesn’t figure into his equations anymore. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I swear, I just - I needed to say something to galvanise you into action, make you remember what I know you already believe.” He sighs, shaking his head. “You’re more open-minded than most, but you can’t - you could never understand-”
“What it is a mage suffers?” Her tone is cold, hard enough that she can hardly recognise it. “Wake up, Anders! You are not the only person the world who wants to save mages, and you are certainly not the only person who has had to deal with the injustice of the templars and they Chantry! My father was an apostate, I took my sister into the bloody Deep Roads to protect her from the Circle in Kirkwall, the man-” She pauses for a breath, fists clenching and unclenching. “-The man that I have been in love with for near on four, five years now is fused with an immortal spirit for the sole purpose of saving them, so don’t you dare tell me I could never understand. I have been living this my entire life, Anders, so don’t you dare tell me that I could never understand.”
“Then why can’t you trust that I’m doing the right thing?” Whatever it is that he’s done, he believes he was right to do it; she can see that in his eyes clear as day. He reaches for her, then, hand touching her elbow to slid down her forearm, loosely grasping her fingers.
“Why can’t you trust me enough to tell me what the ‘right thing’ is?” she asks softly, and there’s no venom in her words now, only sadness as she steps closer, leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes. She should warn Elthina, tell her that something dangerous may have occurred, but she can’t bring herself to doubt Anders that far. She needs to hold onto her faith that he is not that far gone, that what they have between them has finally become yet another expendable in what has become a long, long line.
His arms wrap around her, and she feels the ghost of a kiss on her cheek. “It’s necessary. Just - believe me when I say that it’s necessary. Please. I love you.”
The words hit her the same way they did three years ago when he first said them; with the intensity of two people sparring who suddenly decide to kill each other.
“I love you.” She stays in the circle of his arms, hands resting lightly on his should as she steps back to look up at him. “And I will forgive you for what you did today. But I will never forgive myself.” Because she is the bloody Champion of Kirkwall and meant to be stoic and brave and not fall to the dubious charm and desperation of a man who is more ideals now than love for her, who she can’t quite bear to let go. And that, she knows, is a blow far more painful to him than any other she could have dealt.
It’s a cold comfort.
AUTHOR: feilyn
FANDOM(S): Dragon Age II
CHARACTER(S): Lady!Hawke/Anders
PROMPT: Justice
RECIPIENT: Me!
RATING: PG-13
WARNINGS: Nothing not covered by the rating
SPOILERS?: For Anders' quest in Act III.
WORD COUNT: 1,773
PREVIEW/SUMMARY: It's the start of the fic! The rest is under the cut.
Hawke is tired.
It’s more than just the lack of sleep she’s been having lately; it infuses her bones after seven years of fighting and thinking she’s won, only to have it all slip out of her grasp. They call her the Champion of Kirkwall, now, but it’s a title that rings hollow when you tap it too hard. Something she does frequently, these days.
She drops smiles and witticisms as they leave the Chantry, carefully avoiding Anders gaze. She’s not stupid enough to think that either Varric or Isabela miss it, but for once they have enough tact to let sleeping dogs lie - or rather, Isabela does, and she elbows Varric in the face when he opens his mouth to say something.
“If you were taller, O Paragon of Manliness, this wouldn’t have been a problem,” the pirate points out when Varric starts to grumble. “Don’t think I’m complaining, though - you’re almost the perfect height for some other activities I might have in mind.” And then, never one to be shy, she keeps going. “Such as-”
“I’m going for a walk,” Hawke announces brightly, as if no person in Thedas has ever thought of going for a walk before. Normally, she finds their banter to be hilarious; normally, she doesn’t feel as hollow as that title she keeps picking at.
Next to her (but not too close), she hears Anders stir. “I think I might-”
“Alone,” she tells the space past his left eyebrow, with a little more forceful cheer than is entirely healthy. Or healthy at all. He stills, and she wonders if maybe he’s starting to realise what he’s truly done, here. She can’t bear to think that he really did go into this with a complete understanding.
She salutes them lazily, gives a sardonic little bow, and saunters away; they know her well enough by now not to follow, although maybe some part of herself (she hates that part, she really does), wants him to anyway. He won’t, though, and she absently considers just wandering about until she finds a fight. She’s the bloody Champion, after all; at this point, such things are like a daily tradition for her. She could use the exercise, if nothing else.
She doesn’t, though, recognising that the urge to hang herself out as bait just to crush a few skulls in order to make herself feel better is a little sick. Hawke sticks to the streets of Hightown instead, making enquiries with merchants and desperately trying to avoid yet another spoilt noble or shady character trying to make demands on her. She ends up to the Qunari collecting the swords of the fallen, handing over another she haggled off Hubert, and finds herself wishing this were three years ago and the talk on the streets was fear of invasion from the outside, not implosion from within. At least then, she had been more certain of where she stood.
“Qunari invasion; bad. Peace; good,” she finds herself muttering aloud, rolling her eyes at herself as the warrior next to her gives her a slow blind. She squints up at him, hands on her hips, and huffs. “For the people being invaded, you - oh, never mind, we both already know you’d never get it, and don’t care to.” Once, she had though to make them see things from a human perspective, make them understand the beauty of free will. Having confronted one of the various picky nuances involved in that today, she almost considers hitching a ride to Par Vollen and submitting to the Qun. It would be nice to have someone else make all the hard decisions, for once.
After that last comment, though, it becomes blatantly obvious that she’s not in the right frame of mind to be around anything with the slightest possibility of making her even more bitter than she already is this afternoon; in the interests of avoiding an international incident, she leaves the Qunari to his post, promising to bring back more swords if she happens to find them.
She decides to go home - time alone with her dog might be enough to counteract time alone with her thoughts, although in a house that seems to be getting steadily emptier over the years, she doubts it. Bodahn greets her the same as ever, and she manages to offer a smile to both him and Sandal before whistling to her dog and dragging her ass up the stairs and to her room.
Or at least, she had been planning on going into her room, but seeing Anders standing on the landing like he always does puts an abrupt hold on that - quite literally, she comes to a sudden stop and the mabari hound behind her accidentally head-butts the back off her knees. The look he’s giving her is hopeful, and heartbreakingly aware of how little right he has to be hopeful of anything right now.
“Your support means the world to me.” He breaks the silence while she’s still trying to find the right joke to crack, and she’s not sure if she wants to punch him because of that, or because of what he says to do it.
You don’t have my support. You have my co-operation. She wants to say it, wants to throw the words in his face the same way he tossed his accusations earlier that day. She doesn’t, though. She loves him; that doesn’t mean she has to behave like him.
It occurs to her that the silence between them has extended long past any natural pause, and that hopeful light is fast fading from his eyes. She shakes her head, whether to clear it or deny the situation entirely she couldn’t say, and walks past him, completing the trip to her room. He can follow or not as he wants, but she’s not having any conversation with him that the rest of the household can tune in on.
His footsteps after her are hesitant, but they exist. Hawke is grateful, and doesn’t want to be; she waits until the door shuts behind him before she speaks.
“How could you?” It’s a quiet question, and one she already knows the answer to.
“You know why.” There’s hurt in his voice, but no regret; it hurts him to have done this to her, and he’d do it again in a heartbeat.
“You used me.” She meets his eyes then, lets the pain and confusion and anger she has been feeling rise to the surface because he bloody well deserves to know. “I don’t know what for, but you used me, and you used the fact that I, for reasons unknown to me in this moment, am completely in love with you - like an idiot, I might add - to do it.”
He doesn’t say anything for a moment; her words hit him hard, and she takes some vindictive pleasure from that even as she - like an idiot - feels guilty for it.
“I told you this would happen,” is what he comes up with eventually, and the rage sparks hot in her gut, flares upwards.
“That’s not an excuse,” she bites out, because he’s right, it’s not like she wasn’t warned. “You don’t have free rein to stomp all over someone’s heart simply because you told them it was a possibility three years in the past.”
He steps closer, and she doesn’t tell him to stop. “This - it wasn’t about you, love. You know that.” And she does, and that’s the problem. She doesn’t figure into his equations anymore. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I swear, I just - I needed to say something to galvanise you into action, make you remember what I know you already believe.” He sighs, shaking his head. “You’re more open-minded than most, but you can’t - you could never understand-”
“What it is a mage suffers?” Her tone is cold, hard enough that she can hardly recognise it. “Wake up, Anders! You are not the only person the world who wants to save mages, and you are certainly not the only person who has had to deal with the injustice of the templars and they Chantry! My father was an apostate, I took my sister into the bloody Deep Roads to protect her from the Circle in Kirkwall, the man-” She pauses for a breath, fists clenching and unclenching. “-The man that I have been in love with for near on four, five years now is fused with an immortal spirit for the sole purpose of saving them, so don’t you dare tell me I could never understand. I have been living this my entire life, Anders, so don’t you dare tell me that I could never understand.”
“Then why can’t you trust that I’m doing the right thing?” Whatever it is that he’s done, he believes he was right to do it; she can see that in his eyes clear as day. He reaches for her, then, hand touching her elbow to slid down her forearm, loosely grasping her fingers.
“Why can’t you trust me enough to tell me what the ‘right thing’ is?” she asks softly, and there’s no venom in her words now, only sadness as she steps closer, leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes. She should warn Elthina, tell her that something dangerous may have occurred, but she can’t bring herself to doubt Anders that far. She needs to hold onto her faith that he is not that far gone, that what they have between them has finally become yet another expendable in what has become a long, long line.
His arms wrap around her, and she feels the ghost of a kiss on her cheek. “It’s necessary. Just - believe me when I say that it’s necessary. Please. I love you.”
The words hit her the same way they did three years ago when he first said them; with the intensity of two people sparring who suddenly decide to kill each other.
“I love you.” She stays in the circle of his arms, hands resting lightly on his should as she steps back to look up at him. “And I will forgive you for what you did today. But I will never forgive myself.” Because she is the bloody Champion of Kirkwall and meant to be stoic and brave and not fall to the dubious charm and desperation of a man who is more ideals now than love for her, who she can’t quite bear to let go. And that, she knows, is a blow far more painful to him than any other she could have dealt.
It’s a cold comfort.