Hawke chuckles. "Not Isabela, no, not for lack of her trying. There was one rather memorable kiss one night a while ago, but don't tell me she didn't do the same to you because I won't believe it." Good news, Hawke! He's not broken! She hadn't known whether to be mortified, relieved, envious as hell, or to laugh herself sick. Being Hawke, she'd gone for the last option. "No, it was back in Ferelden, when I was a soldier. And you're getting cold, where'd all your body heat go? I swear I didn't steal it." Obligatory theft jokes, part of being a rogue. "We're on top of the blankets instead of under them because we were doing deliciously wicked things to each other against the headboard, and if you've forgotten already we'll just have to do them again. Though perhaps not just yet." That would involve moving, and she likes being where she is, leg hiked up over his hip and arms entwined everywhere. No more than a breath away from a kiss at any given moment.
There's a twinge of pain at the mention of Bethany, though it's fainter now. Leandra has almost forgiven Hawke for taking her younger sister into the Deep Roads, and for the choices she made there; whether Bethany can forgive Hawke or Hawke forgive herself is another matter, though she knows that the if only game is a dead-end path. At least Bethany is alive, even if she is lost to them. And if she's unhappy in her new life, there's at least the hope that her life will change to make her happy again in time. Given the choice between time and no time, Hawke knew what to pick.
And Anders is entirely right in his judgement that Bethany might have chosen to hand herself in voluntarily; she'd brought up the subject to their mother once (and only once, given Leandra's reaction), to Hawke a few times. Hawke had been able to talk her out of it with various arguments every time, but wondered if those arguments would hold if she weren't to hand. One reason why Bethany had been brought with her to the Deep Roads after all.
Not now. Too painful, too serious for now, for this time. They've discussed this before, will discuss it again in the future, but not now. Hawke tries to turn the conversation back to a lighter topic. "I want the story, of course. Young, reckless Anders chasing--it was you who did the chasing, then?--the older, more experienced man all around the tower. Did he take some convincing, or was it a case of catcher-turned-caught?"
Anders laughs. "I won't deny I did some chasing. Not of Karl, though. He was a captive audience, you see: my tutor. If you're thinking I cribbed this out of Varric's stories, I promise I'm not. It all seemed very logical to me, only it took some time to construct an argument he would entertain. The sweetest man you could ever hope to meet, but give him a pot of red ink and a report to use it on, and he was an absolute terror."
A pause. He traces the line of Hawke's shoulder, his finger an imaginary pen, her skin the parchment. Idly he draws little glyphs on her shoulder blade. "He knew that it wouldn't be doing me any favors to go easy when the stakes were low. Even when he was being stern, he was really being kind. And I'd seen so little of that, in anyone, for ages," Anders admits, and there is not a lump forming in his throat, and he does not have to swallow hard. "I knew one way to show my gratitude. This will sound dreadful, but I was horrified when he was horrified. I assumed it was the done thing, you see. Everyone talks about their favorite and least favorite of the apprentices and enchanters; everyone claims they've gotten by with something perhaps they really haven't, or that they've earned some special grace, so they can feel special, for a while. And I knew the way he looked at me, and I thought I knew what that meant. Imagine my consternation when Karl Thekla very gently picked my hand up off his knee and deposited it upon the desk. The maneuvering I had to do even to be sitting on his side of the desk, to make that move ..."
Is she going to laugh? Anders has to laugh at his younger self, a little. "Well, then he'd just made it a challenge. I could have let it go, before that. Not after."
"You seduced your tutor?" Hawke does have to laugh, a bit. He's right, it's too much like one of Varric's tales. "And he resisted? A man of firm principles and iron willpower, then, in addition to compassion. Oh, Maker, I can just see it, the way your dismay would've turned into determination." She can, too. A younger, more callow Anders, lanky, his eyes narrowed with purpose.
"A man of principle, indeed. He kept on resisting up until he wasn't my tutor anymore. Can you have any idea how long that took?" Anders is amused despite himself, remembering. It's Hawke who does this for him, lets him see what's good amid so much that could be painful. "It wasn't as though I could tally the days on a chart, or count down how many left, because he didn't tell me he'd be all right with it when he wasn't my tutor anymore. He should have done; I'd have worked even harder. I've always been gifted," he says this as a fact rather than a boast, "and I had two strengths, healing and elemental magic. My natural inclination might even have been more strongly toward the latter." Burning down the barn, that was an accident, best not to allow that memory in to taint the rest. Fire and lightning and ice, the sheer delight of releasing those forces, letting everything burn, sizzle, crack ... "It was Karl's work that made a healer out of me. I was very good at it, and he was a good tutor, so soon enough I was advancing to the higher levels. I may have been holding back a little bit, not wanting to let those lessons go, but I couldn't do that for too long. He'd be terribly disappointed in both of us if I didn't perform well."
Anders has disappointed Karl too many times, for too many reasons, for there to be anything much funny in that, the double entendre notwithstanding.
"So eventually we were working together. He wasn't that much older, little more than a handful of years; the way you saw him, the Gallows had changed him, aged him beyond his time. They had no right -" Anders' hand clenches into a fist behind Hawke's back. He's silent for a moment.
He doesn't know whether he can finish this story without ruining something, casting some shadow across the evening that can't be dispelled. It's the middle of the night, he's not inclined to pull on his pants and head back to Darktown, and if he tried, Hawke would probably point out very sensibly that this is the hour for roving gangs with silly names to be waylaying solitary travelers. Anders forces his hand flat, lets it rest in the curve where Hawke's back dips in and yields to the outward swell of her (amazing, incredible) hip. Soaks in the warmth of her skin.
"Anyhow. There was one time, we were making some salves that turned out to be rather convenient, and I asked Karl, is it strange for you, to be working beside me when I used to study under you? And he said, I wouldn't call it strange, it's how the Circle works; you'll be teaching soon enough yourself, and then your students get older. I hadn't gotten that much older, mind. He was deflecting, and I wasn't about to let him get away with that. I took his wrist, and I said, You've done me a disservice. You haven't taught me everything you could. The look on his face, I don't think I'll ever forget it - as though I'd burned him." The barn burning, but it was an accident, an accident, no one was supposed to get hurt.
No one was ever supposed to get hurt.
"I'd really gotten to him. No more evasion. He said it straight out, more honest than anyone in the Circle had ever been. I can't love you, he said. It costs too much. I should have taught you that." Perhaps it does sound too much like Varric's stories. The Circle mages do a lot of reading. Karl might have planned out what to say in this eventuality, Anders has no idea. All he knows is that it happened, in this way, and no other. "Well, what was I going to say to that? I was never as kind as Karl, otherwise I'd have let him go. I said to him, Who said anything about love? And then I kissed him, very smug, probably smirking, I was so damned proud of myself. For about thirty seconds. Then I was the one being kissed, and I couldn't be smug in the slightest."
Two strengths, elemental magic and healing. She likes that. It's not something she can put into words, but being a refugee changed something about Hawke. She's a fighter, always will be, knows someone must be, but it's not enough. It's not even what's most important, to her mind. What matters is what happens after the fighting, the rebuilding process. That Anders is capable of both causing and healing damage is something she envies.
Though perhaps she has some healing abilities of her own after all; perhaps that's something she can give him. Or if not healing, at least comfort, understanding. She listens, feels the moment of tension as he speaks, the deliberate release of it, the way he uses her skin and presence to ground himself to now. Eventually she takes his hand from her hip and brings it to her mouth, kissing it in silent, brief gratitude that he's here, trusting her not just with this story, but with himself. That he's finally let himself love her despite all of this.
All she says is, "Turned the tables on you, did he?" There's a quirk of a smile. It sounds a bit familiar. Teasing, goading, and flirting with Anders had become...not routine, but second-nature, to a point where even though she still wanted a response beyond more banter she had no real expectation of getting one, not after three years of hedging and refusal and reluctance. His sudden capitulation and that starving kiss had caught her by surprise.
There's a twinge of pain at the mention of Bethany, though it's fainter now. Leandra has almost forgiven Hawke for taking her younger sister into the Deep Roads, and for the choices she made there; whether Bethany can forgive Hawke or Hawke forgive herself is another matter, though she knows that the if only game is a dead-end path. At least Bethany is alive, even if she is lost to them. And if she's unhappy in her new life, there's at least the hope that her life will change to make her happy again in time. Given the choice between time and no time, Hawke knew what to pick.
And Anders is entirely right in his judgement that Bethany might have chosen to hand herself in voluntarily; she'd brought up the subject to their mother once (and only once, given Leandra's reaction), to Hawke a few times. Hawke had been able to talk her out of it with various arguments every time, but wondered if those arguments would hold if she weren't to hand. One reason why Bethany had been brought with her to the Deep Roads after all.
Not now. Too painful, too serious for now, for this time. They've discussed this before, will discuss it again in the future, but not now. Hawke tries to turn the conversation back to a lighter topic. "I want the story, of course. Young, reckless Anders chasing--it was you who did the chasing, then?--the older, more experienced man all around the tower. Did he take some convincing, or was it a case of catcher-turned-caught?"
Reply
A pause. He traces the line of Hawke's shoulder, his finger an imaginary pen, her skin the parchment. Idly he draws little glyphs on her shoulder blade. "He knew that it wouldn't be doing me any favors to go easy when the stakes were low. Even when he was being stern, he was really being kind. And I'd seen so little of that, in anyone, for ages," Anders admits, and there is not a lump forming in his throat, and he does not have to swallow hard. "I knew one way to show my gratitude. This will sound dreadful, but I was horrified when he was horrified. I assumed it was the done thing, you see. Everyone talks about their favorite and least favorite of the apprentices and enchanters; everyone claims they've gotten by with something perhaps they really haven't, or that they've earned some special grace, so they can feel special, for a while. And I knew the way he looked at me, and I thought I knew what that meant. Imagine my consternation when Karl Thekla very gently picked my hand up off his knee and deposited it upon the desk. The maneuvering I had to do even to be sitting on his side of the desk, to make that move ..."
Is she going to laugh? Anders has to laugh at his younger self, a little. "Well, then he'd just made it a challenge. I could have let it go, before that. Not after."
Reply
Reply
Anders has disappointed Karl too many times, for too many reasons, for there to be anything much funny in that, the double entendre notwithstanding.
"So eventually we were working together. He wasn't that much older, little more than a handful of years; the way you saw him, the Gallows had changed him, aged him beyond his time. They had no right -" Anders' hand clenches into a fist behind Hawke's back. He's silent for a moment.
He doesn't know whether he can finish this story without ruining something, casting some shadow across the evening that can't be dispelled. It's the middle of the night, he's not inclined to pull on his pants and head back to Darktown, and if he tried, Hawke would probably point out very sensibly that this is the hour for roving gangs with silly names to be waylaying solitary travelers. Anders forces his hand flat, lets it rest in the curve where Hawke's back dips in and yields to the outward swell of her (amazing, incredible) hip. Soaks in the warmth of her skin.
"Anyhow. There was one time, we were making some salves that turned out to be rather convenient, and I asked Karl, is it strange for you, to be working beside me when I used to study under you? And he said, I wouldn't call it strange, it's how the Circle works; you'll be teaching soon enough yourself, and then your students get older. I hadn't gotten that much older, mind. He was deflecting, and I wasn't about to let him get away with that. I took his wrist, and I said, You've done me a disservice. You haven't taught me everything you could. The look on his face, I don't think I'll ever forget it - as though I'd burned him." The barn burning, but it was an accident, an accident, no one was supposed to get hurt.
No one was ever supposed to get hurt.
"I'd really gotten to him. No more evasion. He said it straight out, more honest than anyone in the Circle had ever been. I can't love you, he said. It costs too much. I should have taught you that." Perhaps it does sound too much like Varric's stories. The Circle mages do a lot of reading. Karl might have planned out what to say in this eventuality, Anders has no idea. All he knows is that it happened, in this way, and no other. "Well, what was I going to say to that? I was never as kind as Karl, otherwise I'd have let him go. I said to him, Who said anything about love? And then I kissed him, very smug, probably smirking, I was so damned proud of myself. For about thirty seconds. Then I was the one being kissed, and I couldn't be smug in the slightest."
Reply
Though perhaps she has some healing abilities of her own after all; perhaps that's something she can give him. Or if not healing, at least comfort, understanding. She listens, feels the moment of tension as he speaks, the deliberate release of it, the way he uses her skin and presence to ground himself to now. Eventually she takes his hand from her hip and brings it to her mouth, kissing it in silent, brief gratitude that he's here, trusting her not just with this story, but with himself. That he's finally let himself love her despite all of this.
All she says is, "Turned the tables on you, did he?" There's a quirk of a smile. It sounds a bit familiar. Teasing, goading, and flirting with Anders had become...not routine, but second-nature, to a point where even though she still wanted a response beyond more banter she had no real expectation of getting one, not after three years of hedging and refusal and reluctance. His sudden capitulation and that starving kiss had caught her by surprise.
Reply
Leave a comment