fadewalk

"You could have bothered to write a more heroic end." Other than her voice, the only sound was Hawke's gritty, uneven steps, as she climbed. "No, I know, if I'd only let the chitonous appendage of Nightmare's eleventeenth leg impale me as I thrust my blade deep into it's brain pan and twisted, it all would've been very neat, right?"

She gave a soft cry as the footing of the slope gave way under her feet and she landed hard on her knees and a shoulder. Her hand, the useable one, was busy holding the other arm in a tight press against her side. "Balls, I've got it alright? Tragic, entrail-muddied slog to some poetic vista and then I can rest, right?" She groaned as she pushed herself up, using her head and her knees and mostly just her own stubbornness.

The sting in her eyes didn't go any further. She was saving all that up for when she finally got to sit down. It was darker. Hawke thought so anyway. She couldn't remember much other than the roiling abyss and the Black City above her, fighting, and killing, and running. And then she'd found a mountain, sighed heavily, and started to climb. "Mountains in the Fade are a shit-poor plot device, I hope you know that."

The path broadened and she picked her way past the shapes of short dolmens, elven graves lost in dreams when their dreamers died, maybe. She wanted to sleep, to sleep and sleep and never have to pick up a knife ever again. "But I'm not telling this one, am I? Shut up, it would be a good ending."

The altar that swirled out of the mist at the edge of the cliff above nothing was a surprise. Hawke snorted, staring at it. "Really? Sundermount. You utter bastard."

She traced her fingers over the depression where years ago an amulet rested. The stinging in her eyes was stronger now. "What is this? Am I supposed to get it?" She tipped her face up, shouting in an aimless arc at the sky. "Don't you think it would be a little convenient for Flemeth to be here now?"

"Convenient, perhaps, but for whom? Who can say." Another voice for the first time in years maybe. Hawke whirled toward it, good arm reaching for weapons she'd lost somewhere at the bottom of the mountain.

"Well, this is a surprise. Finally come to teach me to turn into a dragon then?" Hawke's bad arm dangled, shoulder screaming, as the useful one clenched into a fist.

"Is that what you really want, child?" Flemeth's eyes, flat and gold, shown with more light than could be reflected here.

"Oh, fuck you, you old bat. I want a bath, and a ham sandwich and to see Varric again." The name was out of her mouth, ragged and almost unfamiliar. She tried it again. "Varric." Better, he was.. he was here? Or he had been... she had just been talking to him, hadn't... his voice, soothing and low, telling her where she went next, what she did. He was supposed to know when the story was over.

"Well, if that is all you wish." Flemeth smiled her cat's smile as she paced closer to Hawke, reached out to pinch her chin with the pads of her finger and thumb. Her skin was like worn paper. "And in return... A favor when I ask."

Hawke's mouth opened to sneer, but the weight of Flemeth's gaze froze her and she nodded, eyes streaming suddenly with tears. "I just wanted to be able to tell him..." She shook her head, forcing her chin out of Flemeth's hands. "A favor. I can do a favor."

"Then it is agreed." Flemeth turned, skirls of smoke and mist rising from her as she walked, already fading into the Fadestuff all around them.

"Wait! What am I supposed to do?"

"For once, dear girl, follow my advice." Flemeth was gone and Hawke was alone.

Well there weren't many ways to interpret that. Hawke turned slowly and stared past the altar into the unlit distance of the Fade. "Isn't this kind of synchronicity usually a sign a hack wrote it?" She hauled herself up onto the altar. "Well I'm certainly not the one running this show, buddy."

The edge of the stone slab was underneath her boots, half her feet hanging over. She just needed to lean forward, she'd fall, fall and fall and... but no, that hadn't been Flemeth's advice. "And you're a stickler for the important details aren't you?"

Hawke dropped into a crouch, drew a deep breath, and leaped.

She fell or flew until there wasn't anything anymore, no air, no light, no her. And then there was a pop, sharp pain in her ears, her arm and shoulder screaming, the sudden clawing ravenous hunger in her belly making her wretch into the stone floor she found herself face first on.

Alive, maybe, and not there anymore, thank Flemeth, and maybe she could start with that nap because the world was spinning and then it was blank.