Jazz Age: Chapter Forty-Four
Title Jazz Age
Rating M
Warnings Violence.
Spoilers For pretty much everything, eventually.
Pairings Hawke/Jethann, Hawke/Isabela, Hawke/Fenris
Summary Hawke and his family fled the war in Ferelden on a liner, dogged by Darkspawn U-Boats. Two years later the war is over and Hawke is a private detective in Kirkwall, a city awash with jazz, bootleg liquor and a lot of trouble.
Master List Here.
We watched in complete silence as DuPuis knelt on the floor of my office and cloaked himself in a mist of blood. Some of the faces in the audience were disapproving, but no one wanted to be the one to say the price was too high, not when it could be Ma’s life hanging in the balance. I didn’t want to think about it. Quentin had to be stopped and even if Ma were to walk in the door at that moment and ask us what we were doing, that fact wouldn’t change.
She didn’t walk in the door.
“He’s close,” DuPuis said. “Lowtown close.” He stood up, cupping an ounce or so of blood in his right hand. “I can lead you.”
“We’ll go in Merrill’s car,” I decided. “You come with us, Anders. We might need your expertise.”
“The rest of us will follow in Emeric’s motor,” Aveline, decided.
“I’m going with Trip,” Fenris said, speaking for the first time since he’d thanked me for his share of lunch. “I’ll stand on the running-board.”
No one argued.
“I’ll, err… look after the house then,” Gamlen said as we gathered hats and coats and checked weapons. Gamlen looked genuinely worried, and stood in the doorway watching us pile into the two motors. He shouted ‘good luck’ as we pulled away.
DuPuis sat up the front next to Merrill, and gave directions. They weren’t always helpful; he was tracking as the crow flies, and Merrill sent us tearing down side streets and occasionally into dead end alleyways and we had to back up as she tried to follow instructions.
We were halfway across Lowtown when I realised where we were going.
“The Foundry District,” I said. “Where we found the bodies the first time.”
“You think he returned to the scene of the crime?” Fenris asked, holding his hat on with one hand and hanging on to the car with the other.
“I’m not sure he ever left. Merrill, take us there, and DuPuis can tell us if I’m right.”
“You got it,” Merrill swung the car around and I grabbed Fenris’s coat to make sure he didn’t get thrown off. When we arrived at the Foundry district, DuPuis hadn’t told us we’d gone off-course.
“Here?” Aveline said when we halted in front of the old factory and disembarked. “Just great.”
“Come on.” This was the last place I wanted to revisit, but I had no choice.
“He’s around here somewhere,” DuPuis said, finally shaking the drops of blood off his fingers.
“Good enough.” I put my foot to the front door, but since last time someone had replaced the lock and all I did was hurt my toes. “Maker’s Breath! Get this damn thing open!”
“Hang on, Hero.” Varric came to my rescue. “It’ll only take a minute.” A minute was a minute too long for me, so I tapped my feet and scowled while we waited in silence for the dwarf to do this thing.
He got the door open and we all cautiously edged inside, those with guns reaching for them. Merrill drew her parasol cane. The shop floor had been gone over; there was a lot less rubbish, although dust and cobwebs now covered everything again. We spread out, on-edge for another attack like we’d experienced before.
Nothing stirred in the broken machinery but a couple of rats.
Aveline slowly lowered her gun. “Nothing.”
I looked at DuPuis and he shrugged. “I can still feel him,” he waved his hands, “somewhere close.”
“Horse! Find Ma.” Horse circled the room with his nose to the floor and we then started opening doors for him, letting him into back rooms and storage areas.
We hit pay dirt eventually. In the corner of what had once been a supply room, Horse found a trapdoor under some rubbish and pawed at it, whining.
“How did they miss this?” Aveline asked as we gathered around it.
“He might have hidden it with magic,” Anders said.
“They should have brought a Templar along,” Emeric said. “We would have found it, even so.”
“It doesn’t matter now, help me get it open.” Fenris and I pulled up the heavy wooden trapdoor. From the darkness below I could smell smoke and something sweeter and more horrible behind it.
“I wonder how many more women we’re going to find down here,” Emeric commented soberly.
We wasted no time finding out. I climbed down the metal rungs set into the stone wall beneath the trapdoor. There was just enough light coming from a nearby room to see where I was putting my feet.
“What is this place?” I wondered softly.
“Smuggler’s den,” Isabela said. “Legitimate goods in the foundry up top, and slaves or liquor down here. It’s probably as old as the foundry itself, or older.”
Kirkwall had a long and chequered past, and you could find evidence of it everywhere.
There were too many of us to be completely silent, but we did our best. We followed the glow and found ourselves in a large, book-strewn room, with a fireplace and a couple of armchairs arranged around it. The smell was stronger here.
“I bet a lot of these books belong to the Gallows library,” Emeric said.
The back of my neck prickled.
“Look out!”
This time, we were ready. The shades and demons melted out of the shadows, and the fireplace roared with burning hate. I heard Merrill give a cry of battle in her own language, and the air was thick with bullets and magic. Even DuPuis joined the fight, frowning and murmuring about missing his staff. Horse must have dragged him off without it.
My ears were ringing by the time the battle was over, and it was over fast. The mages were keyed up and dangerous, and those less powerfully equipped were reloading and snapping their weapons back together and the room reeked of gunsmoke.
Something on a cot in the corner caught my eye, and I hurried over, bile rising in my throat not just at the stench but at the familiar ladylike dress of the doll-like corpse I’d discovered. I pulled on a stiff, cold shoulder, and sagged as an unfamiliar face turned towards me, the eyes gouged out and dried blood stiffening the greying hair that framed it.
“It’s not Ma,” I said over my shoulder.
Emeric joined me and looked very sad. “We should have prevented this.”
“She’ll be the last,” Aveline said with quiet determination.
“Hey, Hero, come and have a look at this,” Varric said, gazing up at the wall above the fireplace.
“Do we really have time?” Anders asked.
Varric was looking at a portrait, an old one, of a middle-aged man and woman who were presumably husband and wife. They were smiling.
“That’s him,” DuPuis said, nodding at the picture. “That’s Quentin.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, “but who’s the dame?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Ma with an old-fashioned hairstyle and darker eyes.
“That’s his wife. Well, was his wife. She died of tuberculosis a few years ago,” DuPuis explained.
“We have to find him,” I said. “We have to find him fast.”
After the noise we’d made, Quentin had to know someone had found his sanctum. We practically ran down a flight of stairs and along the corridor beyond it, Horse bounding along ahead of us. Aveline and Emeric had both thought to bring torches, and their lights jumped and shuddered as they ran, our shadows dancing ahead of us.
There was a door at the end of the hallway and I flung some magic at it and it burst open as we tumbled through.
“Quentin!” I snarled, coming to a halt. Upstairs was the study, downstairs was the lab; but to my relief I didn’t see body parts hanging from the walls. “What have you done with my Ma?”
There was another fire lit in this room, and a man was standing in front of it next to a chair, gazing into the flames. He looked over his shoulder at us, and I recognised him from the painting.
“You must be Trip,” he said. “Leandra was so sure you’d rescue her. And here you are. And Gasgard too; this is a surprise.”
“Master,” DuPuis stepped forward, looking angry but controlled, “you killed my sister, and then you just left. You bastard.”
Quentin’s strange, bland smile softened a bit, “I’m sorry Gasgard, but the Templars were getting suspicious and I couldn’t stay. You were too young, too unskilled. However, I see you’ve been practicing-“
I punched DuPuis in the back of the head before we found out what Quentin was going to offer him. I’d been waiting to do that for a while. He crumpled forward onto his knees before falling face down to the floor.
“You could have saved some for the rest of us,” Varric said.
“If he wakes up, he’s all yours,” I told him. I turned my attention back to Quentin, “Don’t make me ask twice.”
Quentin glanced down at DuPuis and then back up at me, apparently unmoved by his apprentice’s fate. “You will never understand my purpose. Your mother was chosen because she was special. Now she is part of something greater.”
I let my magic ripple up over my hands and curl off my knuckles.
Quentin didn’t seem to be paying much attention. “I pieced her back together from memory. Her eyes, her fingers, her delicate figure. That face, oh, her beautiful face.” I suddenly felt very, very cold. “I searched far and wide to find you again, beloved, and no force in this world will part us.”
I started running. I heard someone shout behind me, but I didn’t hear what they said. I had to know what was sitting in that chair. Quentin’s magic hit me like a punch in the stomach and sent me careening off course into a wall. When I’d recovered my balance, the room was heaving. Rattling bones and hellborn hisses filled the air, and Quentin was laughing.
No one else was.
I stumbled as a corpse dug its way out of the ground from under my feet and frantically hurled magic, trying to clear a path to the fireplace. All I did was clear a path to Quentin. A burst of lightning erupted from his outstretched fingers and I dove out of the way and back into the bloody melee. I could hear the heavy thudding of Bianca and the crashes of Aveline’s revolver. I couldn’t even see them, let alone which direction they were firing. I kept my head down.
“It’s all right, I’m here, it’s safe.” Ma wrapped her arm comfortingly around my shoulders. She smelled like she’d been baking.
“That’s just sick,” I practically sobbed, and punched her, and again, watching her skin become scales and her hair fall away to nothing as the demon clawed at my face. Blood was trickling into my eyes when she finally disintegrated.
“I’ve got your back,” Fenris murmured. “Maker’s Teeth, Trip!” he objected when I elbowed him in the side. “What are you doing?”
“I thought you were a demon,” I said, ignoring his horrified expression.
Fenris wasn’t a demon, and he stayed at my back as we worked out way across the room towards Quentin. The mage had cornered Anders and was trying to get through his shield.
“What should we do?” Fenris asked, picking off corpses with his automatic.
“Hold him still,” I said through my teeth, “and I’ll beat that smile off his face.”
Fenris’s markings flared, and he charged. Quentin must have seen him coming, or maybe something in Anders’ expression gave him away, because he turned and cracked Fenris across the head with his staff. Fenris ducked and raised his arm in defence, but he’d lost the element of surprise.
I still had it, struggling past a shade, feeling its amorphous flesh balloon and burst under my magic.
Quentin drove his staff back into Anders’ stomach, stopping him from bolstering Fenris.
I ducked as a heavy beam of wood crashed down on the shade’s head.
“Go!” Isabela said, “We’ve got this.”
She was obviously out of throwing knives, and I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t have time to argue. Fenris was holding his own pretty well against Quentin; Quentin obviously didn’t know what to make of his lyrium and was fighting defensively. Anders seemed to be exhausted, barely maintaining his shield. I wondered how many people he’d extended it to.
I launched myself at Quentin, aiming for his staff. My magic and I hit him at the same time and he stumbled. I could feel his magic searing my hands as I twisted his arm back, the bones in his wrist grinding together as I squeezed.
Fenris paused to reload his gun while we wrestled and put it against Quentin’s temple. He pulled the trigger.
I expected to get a face-full of blood and bone. Instead Fenris yelped and his gun flew out of his hand. Quentin was baring his teeth with the effort, but he was hanging grimly on.
He looked so dammed righteous. I could see it in his eyes; not a trace of regret, just a pure light of self-belief and twisted love.
“Bastard!” I punched him. His head snapped back as his shield failed. “You son of a bitch.” I punched him again, and he stumbled.
I didn’t even keep my guard up. I sensed Fernis move to defend my back, but I didn’t look up from Quentin. I just kept punching him. I didn’t even think about it. I chanted a litany of curses as my knuckles stung, and then bled, and then pain lanced up my wrist.
But I didn’t stop.
I didn’t even reach for my magic, and that was all that saved me.
“Trip?”
“Ma?”
She staggered towards me, her face as white as chalk, and her eyes dark. A neat row of stiches reached around her neck. I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to her, catching her as she fell.
“Oh Ma, what did he do to you?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but the body I held in my arms was not Ma’s; it was different, and so cold and stiff.
The others clustered around us, and I looked up at Anders.
He shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do; his magic was all that was keeping her together.”
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
“There has to be something.” There was, of course, there always is. I could hear the demons whispering hope in my mind; it would be easy enough, just agree, open a vein and step into the gap that Quentin had left before time ran out.
Ma smiled at me, she must have known what was going on in my head; she had loved other mages after all, “I know you won’t. I know you’re strong.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You freed me. He would have kept me trapped in here forever if you hadn’t arrived. All of you.” Her gaze shifted away from me for a moment, and focused on the others. I heard Merrill sob and the others sigh, but I didn’t take my eyes off Ma. “You’ve been so good to my family.”
This isn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be a dream or a delusion, surely.
“I get to see Bethany again,” Ma continued, although her voice was fading, “and your father, but you’ll be here alone.”
“There’s always Gamlen,” I said. Maker, I just can’t help but make jokes no matter how horrible it is, apparently.
Fenris cleared his throat.
“He won’t be alone,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, we’ll take care of him, don’t you worry,” Varric promised.
“I’ll be fine, Ma,” I managed to choke out.
“Tell Carver,” she said, “I love you. Both of you. You’ve always made me so proud.”
And that was all she said. I waited and waited for another word, another breath, but it never came.
I heard a bloody rattle from a few feet away. Quentin was still breathing. I couldn’t mourn yet, there was still so much to do. I took a deep, shaky breath, and managed not to cry. Somehow.
“We need to-“
“No,” Fenris said. I looked up at him. I couldn’t read his expression as he gazed down at us. “Let me do this for you. I will take responsibility.” He turned away, and walked over to Quentin.
“Fenris, no.” I didn’t have the heart to object more forcefully, and no one else moved to stop him.
His markings flared as he knelt down and with one swift motion punched his hand right into Quentin’s chest. I heard something snap as he pulled it out again, and the mage was still.
“Emeric,” Aveline said, “we need to tell someone.”
“I’ll take care of DuPuis, I think it would be best if some of you were to make yourselves scarce before the Templars arrive.”
I stopped paying attention. Anders knelt down and murmured something about a broken knuckle as he applied his magic to my hands. Then Emeric herded Merrill and Anders out, and Aveline went to look for a telephone and I held on to Ma until an ambulance attendant took her away.
It wasn’t even time for dinner.
Rating M
Warnings Violence.
Spoilers For pretty much everything, eventually.
Pairings Hawke/Jethann, Hawke/Isabela, Hawke/Fenris
Summary Hawke and his family fled the war in Ferelden on a liner, dogged by Darkspawn U-Boats. Two years later the war is over and Hawke is a private detective in Kirkwall, a city awash with jazz, bootleg liquor and a lot of trouble.
Master List Here.
We watched in complete silence as DuPuis knelt on the floor of my office and cloaked himself in a mist of blood. Some of the faces in the audience were disapproving, but no one wanted to be the one to say the price was too high, not when it could be Ma’s life hanging in the balance. I didn’t want to think about it. Quentin had to be stopped and even if Ma were to walk in the door at that moment and ask us what we were doing, that fact wouldn’t change.
She didn’t walk in the door.
“He’s close,” DuPuis said. “Lowtown close.” He stood up, cupping an ounce or so of blood in his right hand. “I can lead you.”
“We’ll go in Merrill’s car,” I decided. “You come with us, Anders. We might need your expertise.”
“The rest of us will follow in Emeric’s motor,” Aveline, decided.
“I’m going with Trip,” Fenris said, speaking for the first time since he’d thanked me for his share of lunch. “I’ll stand on the running-board.”
No one argued.
“I’ll, err… look after the house then,” Gamlen said as we gathered hats and coats and checked weapons. Gamlen looked genuinely worried, and stood in the doorway watching us pile into the two motors. He shouted ‘good luck’ as we pulled away.
DuPuis sat up the front next to Merrill, and gave directions. They weren’t always helpful; he was tracking as the crow flies, and Merrill sent us tearing down side streets and occasionally into dead end alleyways and we had to back up as she tried to follow instructions.
We were halfway across Lowtown when I realised where we were going.
“The Foundry District,” I said. “Where we found the bodies the first time.”
“You think he returned to the scene of the crime?” Fenris asked, holding his hat on with one hand and hanging on to the car with the other.
“I’m not sure he ever left. Merrill, take us there, and DuPuis can tell us if I’m right.”
“You got it,” Merrill swung the car around and I grabbed Fenris’s coat to make sure he didn’t get thrown off. When we arrived at the Foundry district, DuPuis hadn’t told us we’d gone off-course.
“Here?” Aveline said when we halted in front of the old factory and disembarked. “Just great.”
“Come on.” This was the last place I wanted to revisit, but I had no choice.
“He’s around here somewhere,” DuPuis said, finally shaking the drops of blood off his fingers.
“Good enough.” I put my foot to the front door, but since last time someone had replaced the lock and all I did was hurt my toes. “Maker’s Breath! Get this damn thing open!”
“Hang on, Hero.” Varric came to my rescue. “It’ll only take a minute.” A minute was a minute too long for me, so I tapped my feet and scowled while we waited in silence for the dwarf to do this thing.
He got the door open and we all cautiously edged inside, those with guns reaching for them. Merrill drew her parasol cane. The shop floor had been gone over; there was a lot less rubbish, although dust and cobwebs now covered everything again. We spread out, on-edge for another attack like we’d experienced before.
Nothing stirred in the broken machinery but a couple of rats.
Aveline slowly lowered her gun. “Nothing.”
I looked at DuPuis and he shrugged. “I can still feel him,” he waved his hands, “somewhere close.”
“Horse! Find Ma.” Horse circled the room with his nose to the floor and we then started opening doors for him, letting him into back rooms and storage areas.
We hit pay dirt eventually. In the corner of what had once been a supply room, Horse found a trapdoor under some rubbish and pawed at it, whining.
“How did they miss this?” Aveline asked as we gathered around it.
“He might have hidden it with magic,” Anders said.
“They should have brought a Templar along,” Emeric said. “We would have found it, even so.”
“It doesn’t matter now, help me get it open.” Fenris and I pulled up the heavy wooden trapdoor. From the darkness below I could smell smoke and something sweeter and more horrible behind it.
“I wonder how many more women we’re going to find down here,” Emeric commented soberly.
We wasted no time finding out. I climbed down the metal rungs set into the stone wall beneath the trapdoor. There was just enough light coming from a nearby room to see where I was putting my feet.
“What is this place?” I wondered softly.
“Smuggler’s den,” Isabela said. “Legitimate goods in the foundry up top, and slaves or liquor down here. It’s probably as old as the foundry itself, or older.”
Kirkwall had a long and chequered past, and you could find evidence of it everywhere.
There were too many of us to be completely silent, but we did our best. We followed the glow and found ourselves in a large, book-strewn room, with a fireplace and a couple of armchairs arranged around it. The smell was stronger here.
“I bet a lot of these books belong to the Gallows library,” Emeric said.
The back of my neck prickled.
“Look out!”
This time, we were ready. The shades and demons melted out of the shadows, and the fireplace roared with burning hate. I heard Merrill give a cry of battle in her own language, and the air was thick with bullets and magic. Even DuPuis joined the fight, frowning and murmuring about missing his staff. Horse must have dragged him off without it.
My ears were ringing by the time the battle was over, and it was over fast. The mages were keyed up and dangerous, and those less powerfully equipped were reloading and snapping their weapons back together and the room reeked of gunsmoke.
Something on a cot in the corner caught my eye, and I hurried over, bile rising in my throat not just at the stench but at the familiar ladylike dress of the doll-like corpse I’d discovered. I pulled on a stiff, cold shoulder, and sagged as an unfamiliar face turned towards me, the eyes gouged out and dried blood stiffening the greying hair that framed it.
“It’s not Ma,” I said over my shoulder.
Emeric joined me and looked very sad. “We should have prevented this.”
“She’ll be the last,” Aveline said with quiet determination.
“Hey, Hero, come and have a look at this,” Varric said, gazing up at the wall above the fireplace.
“Do we really have time?” Anders asked.
Varric was looking at a portrait, an old one, of a middle-aged man and woman who were presumably husband and wife. They were smiling.
“That’s him,” DuPuis said, nodding at the picture. “That’s Quentin.”
“Yeah,” I said slowly, “but who’s the dame?” If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was Ma with an old-fashioned hairstyle and darker eyes.
“That’s his wife. Well, was his wife. She died of tuberculosis a few years ago,” DuPuis explained.
“We have to find him,” I said. “We have to find him fast.”
After the noise we’d made, Quentin had to know someone had found his sanctum. We practically ran down a flight of stairs and along the corridor beyond it, Horse bounding along ahead of us. Aveline and Emeric had both thought to bring torches, and their lights jumped and shuddered as they ran, our shadows dancing ahead of us.
There was a door at the end of the hallway and I flung some magic at it and it burst open as we tumbled through.
“Quentin!” I snarled, coming to a halt. Upstairs was the study, downstairs was the lab; but to my relief I didn’t see body parts hanging from the walls. “What have you done with my Ma?”
There was another fire lit in this room, and a man was standing in front of it next to a chair, gazing into the flames. He looked over his shoulder at us, and I recognised him from the painting.
“You must be Trip,” he said. “Leandra was so sure you’d rescue her. And here you are. And Gasgard too; this is a surprise.”
“Master,” DuPuis stepped forward, looking angry but controlled, “you killed my sister, and then you just left. You bastard.”
Quentin’s strange, bland smile softened a bit, “I’m sorry Gasgard, but the Templars were getting suspicious and I couldn’t stay. You were too young, too unskilled. However, I see you’ve been practicing-“
I punched DuPuis in the back of the head before we found out what Quentin was going to offer him. I’d been waiting to do that for a while. He crumpled forward onto his knees before falling face down to the floor.
“You could have saved some for the rest of us,” Varric said.
“If he wakes up, he’s all yours,” I told him. I turned my attention back to Quentin, “Don’t make me ask twice.”
Quentin glanced down at DuPuis and then back up at me, apparently unmoved by his apprentice’s fate. “You will never understand my purpose. Your mother was chosen because she was special. Now she is part of something greater.”
I let my magic ripple up over my hands and curl off my knuckles.
Quentin didn’t seem to be paying much attention. “I pieced her back together from memory. Her eyes, her fingers, her delicate figure. That face, oh, her beautiful face.” I suddenly felt very, very cold. “I searched far and wide to find you again, beloved, and no force in this world will part us.”
I started running. I heard someone shout behind me, but I didn’t hear what they said. I had to know what was sitting in that chair. Quentin’s magic hit me like a punch in the stomach and sent me careening off course into a wall. When I’d recovered my balance, the room was heaving. Rattling bones and hellborn hisses filled the air, and Quentin was laughing.
No one else was.
I stumbled as a corpse dug its way out of the ground from under my feet and frantically hurled magic, trying to clear a path to the fireplace. All I did was clear a path to Quentin. A burst of lightning erupted from his outstretched fingers and I dove out of the way and back into the bloody melee. I could hear the heavy thudding of Bianca and the crashes of Aveline’s revolver. I couldn’t even see them, let alone which direction they were firing. I kept my head down.
“It’s all right, I’m here, it’s safe.” Ma wrapped her arm comfortingly around my shoulders. She smelled like she’d been baking.
“That’s just sick,” I practically sobbed, and punched her, and again, watching her skin become scales and her hair fall away to nothing as the demon clawed at my face. Blood was trickling into my eyes when she finally disintegrated.
“I’ve got your back,” Fenris murmured. “Maker’s Teeth, Trip!” he objected when I elbowed him in the side. “What are you doing?”
“I thought you were a demon,” I said, ignoring his horrified expression.
Fenris wasn’t a demon, and he stayed at my back as we worked out way across the room towards Quentin. The mage had cornered Anders and was trying to get through his shield.
“What should we do?” Fenris asked, picking off corpses with his automatic.
“Hold him still,” I said through my teeth, “and I’ll beat that smile off his face.”
Fenris’s markings flared, and he charged. Quentin must have seen him coming, or maybe something in Anders’ expression gave him away, because he turned and cracked Fenris across the head with his staff. Fenris ducked and raised his arm in defence, but he’d lost the element of surprise.
I still had it, struggling past a shade, feeling its amorphous flesh balloon and burst under my magic.
Quentin drove his staff back into Anders’ stomach, stopping him from bolstering Fenris.
I ducked as a heavy beam of wood crashed down on the shade’s head.
“Go!” Isabela said, “We’ve got this.”
She was obviously out of throwing knives, and I wasn’t so sure, but I didn’t have time to argue. Fenris was holding his own pretty well against Quentin; Quentin obviously didn’t know what to make of his lyrium and was fighting defensively. Anders seemed to be exhausted, barely maintaining his shield. I wondered how many people he’d extended it to.
I launched myself at Quentin, aiming for his staff. My magic and I hit him at the same time and he stumbled. I could feel his magic searing my hands as I twisted his arm back, the bones in his wrist grinding together as I squeezed.
Fenris paused to reload his gun while we wrestled and put it against Quentin’s temple. He pulled the trigger.
I expected to get a face-full of blood and bone. Instead Fenris yelped and his gun flew out of his hand. Quentin was baring his teeth with the effort, but he was hanging grimly on.
He looked so dammed righteous. I could see it in his eyes; not a trace of regret, just a pure light of self-belief and twisted love.
“Bastard!” I punched him. His head snapped back as his shield failed. “You son of a bitch.” I punched him again, and he stumbled.
I didn’t even keep my guard up. I sensed Fernis move to defend my back, but I didn’t look up from Quentin. I just kept punching him. I didn’t even think about it. I chanted a litany of curses as my knuckles stung, and then bled, and then pain lanced up my wrist.
But I didn’t stop.
I didn’t even reach for my magic, and that was all that saved me.
“Trip?”
“Ma?”
She staggered towards me, her face as white as chalk, and her eyes dark. A neat row of stiches reached around her neck. I scrambled to my feet and hurried over to her, catching her as she fell.
“Oh Ma, what did he do to you?” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but the body I held in my arms was not Ma’s; it was different, and so cold and stiff.
The others clustered around us, and I looked up at Anders.
He shook his head, “There’s nothing I can do; his magic was all that was keeping her together.”
“I knew you’d come,” she said.
“There has to be something.” There was, of course, there always is. I could hear the demons whispering hope in my mind; it would be easy enough, just agree, open a vein and step into the gap that Quentin had left before time ran out.
Ma smiled at me, she must have known what was going on in my head; she had loved other mages after all, “I know you won’t. I know you’re strong.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You freed me. He would have kept me trapped in here forever if you hadn’t arrived. All of you.” Her gaze shifted away from me for a moment, and focused on the others. I heard Merrill sob and the others sigh, but I didn’t take my eyes off Ma. “You’ve been so good to my family.”
This isn’t happening. This couldn’t be happening. This had to be a dream or a delusion, surely.
“I get to see Bethany again,” Ma continued, although her voice was fading, “and your father, but you’ll be here alone.”
“There’s always Gamlen,” I said. Maker, I just can’t help but make jokes no matter how horrible it is, apparently.
Fenris cleared his throat.
“He won’t be alone,” he said quietly.
“Yeah, we’ll take care of him, don’t you worry,” Varric promised.
“I’ll be fine, Ma,” I managed to choke out.
“Tell Carver,” she said, “I love you. Both of you. You’ve always made me so proud.”
And that was all she said. I waited and waited for another word, another breath, but it never came.
I heard a bloody rattle from a few feet away. Quentin was still breathing. I couldn’t mourn yet, there was still so much to do. I took a deep, shaky breath, and managed not to cry. Somehow.
“We need to-“
“No,” Fenris said. I looked up at him. I couldn’t read his expression as he gazed down at us. “Let me do this for you. I will take responsibility.” He turned away, and walked over to Quentin.
“Fenris, no.” I didn’t have the heart to object more forcefully, and no one else moved to stop him.
His markings flared as he knelt down and with one swift motion punched his hand right into Quentin’s chest. I heard something snap as he pulled it out again, and the mage was still.
“Emeric,” Aveline said, “we need to tell someone.”
“I’ll take care of DuPuis, I think it would be best if some of you were to make yourselves scarce before the Templars arrive.”
I stopped paying attention. Anders knelt down and murmured something about a broken knuckle as he applied his magic to my hands. Then Emeric herded Merrill and Anders out, and Aveline went to look for a telephone and I held on to Ma until an ambulance attendant took her away.
It wasn’t even time for dinner.