What.
19.10.2011
Prompt/title: What.
Rating: M
Word count: 581
Characters: F!Hawk, Anders.
Lyriana Hawk muttered under her breath, watching the mage struggle through several failed attempts at mixing his “potion”. She sat perched on one of the rafters of the clinic alternating between chuckling at Anders expletives when he burned his fingers for the tenth time, and wanting to slap him upside his pretty blonde head.
He really had no idea...
She deserved to know what her best friend was doing, and she damned well had a right, no responsibility, to be involved in his revolution.
She was the champion of Kirkwall, yet who had she really been champion to?
Feynriel? The countless mages who had been murdered because the Templars were trying to meet a quota? The lives destroyed by lyrium smuglers? The dozens that had been made tranquil before the “Tranquil Solution” had been quashed? The tens of thousands like Anders who had been beaten, abused, tortured and broken? The countless children who had been stolen from their families because a religious leader enforced their interpretation of the wife of a god? Father who was murdered... mother who was dismembered and defiled because the institution was too busy chasing power to do it's damned job? Bethany who's only crime was being born a healer?
Or how about the Templars who had suffered, had she championed them? Thrask? Wilmod? Keiran? Maker even Cullen, who was sentenced to live in this sewer of a city because he dared to feel compassion?
Face after face flashed across the back of her eyelids, taunting her. The lives that were destroyed because of senseless fear, the lives she had taken playing Merrideth's games... So much blood on her hands, and for what?
Even the rulers were slaves in this city. Bound as tightly by piety and fear as the giant bronze slaves at the gates were bound by their chains.
No more. It was time to BE a champion, and if that meant being hated and hunted, so be it.
***********
Anders let out a squeak as he felt the magic he was trying to infuse into the powder backlash on his fingers for the dozenth. His hand was midway to his mouth when he heard a soft chuckle and a gentle thud behind him.
The mage grabbed his staff and did a quick patrol of the clinic. When he turned back to his work bench he let out another not at all manly squeak.
“Hawk!? Where, um, what, err... that is, it's not what it looks like.”
Hawk finished her final measurement on the now finished black powder batch, and gently funneled it into a container she had prepared while sitting in the rafters.
“What.” She raised an eyebrow as she watched Anders' mouth open and close like a fresh caught fish.
“I'm a rogue, did you really think I didn't know what refined “Drakestone” and “Selapetrae” are used for?”
Anders continued to stammer as Hawke started mixing the next batch of powder.
“Oh I took the liberty of adding a couple of extra ingredients to my version. I'm guessing a modified lightning spell to set the spark? Trust me this will have a bit extra kick.”
“Um Hawk... I... um...”
“And Anders...”
“Um, what?”
“You are a brother to me, but if you EVER lie to me like that again, I'll kill you myself. Now, close your mouth and give me a hand. We don't have much time.”