fadewalk | RP: Hawke (hawke_groundzero

Anders moved through the guest wing, heading for Hawke's room.

Neria wanted him back. Of all the things that might have happened when he got dumped in this shithole away from the people he cared about, that was not one of them. It was a small comfort when he was not nearly as confident as she that they would ever get out of here, but a comfort nonetheless, a tiny warm feeling in the center of his chest that he clung to, afraid it might gutter and go out.

Nevertheless, she was preoccupied with Alistair, as it should be after their time apart, and this place, for all it apparently had half-crazed templars running amok, was entirely too quiet for his liking. It made his skin crawl and Justice uneasy. The spirit almost never stopped his muttering when they were alone, preferring to lurk in the back of Anders' mind and keep up a steady diatribe against the wrongness of this place and his longing for the real Fade, just out of reach as it was, and now of course his anger against Meredith. Combine that with Anders' own loneliness, and he really felt he might go out of his head if he didn't find something to distract him. That, or he would go on a hunt for Meredith and not stop until Justice's fingers were wrapped around her throat, and Neria had made it clear she had good reasons for not wanting that to happen, as much as it gave him pause.

So. Here he was, outside Hawke's door. It was his duty as a healer to check in on her recovery anyways, right?

He knocked.

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The knock on the door tugged Hawke's eyes up from the journal that was open on her lap. She'd been frowning as she flipped through the pages for the last hour, running fingers through her shaggy hair and trying to decide whether or not she should do anything about Meredith.

She'd been alone for the better part of the day as Varric did... Varricy things and she was starting wonder if everyone was avoiding her. Of course, she wasn't really venturing out, half convinced if she opened the door she was going to step out of the warm comfort of Varric's room and back into Nightmare's domain.

Or that she'd have to find her own room eventually. The knock startled her and her hands flinched for weapons that weren't there, but after a moment she called, "It's unlocked. Unless you're a crazed Templar with a grudge against me. Then it's definitely locked, bolted and barred. Also trapped with fire. And bears. So go away."

Anders poked his head in first, to prove it was only himself, and then the rest of his body followed. He shut the door behind him.

"Me, a templar?" He sounded affronted. "Tsk. And I thought we were friends, Hawke." He gave an exaggerated, mournful sigh as he walked towards her.

"Well, I'll call of the bears, but only because I like you more than your average apostate." Hawke swung her legs off the bed, sitting forward and looking at him expectantly. "So, you're not covered in blood. I guess that means you're steering clear of the mess with our most very favorite Knight Commander, hmm?"

"You used to make conversation before you just jumped into the thick of it," Anders said dispprovingly, settling a hand over his heart like she'd wounded him. The crease between his brows undermined his light tone.

He dragged a chair back in front of the bed and sat down backwards, straddling the back.

"She hurt Neria. I'd like to set her on fire," he said blackly.

"And Neria seems to think that's a bad idea. Something about paradoxes?" Hawke lifted a bare foot and poked Anders in the knee with her toe, a stiff prod. "Besides, what am I going to talk about? The pattern of the ceiling? How I named Nightmare's minions with every letter of the alphabet three times before I couldn't think of any more names that started with X? Whether or not you've gotten any sleep at all since you landed here?"

She cocked her head to the side, eyebrow lifted.

Anders waved a hand. "Yes, Neria seems to think it would be bad if I killed her - again, or for the first time, or whatever - so I'm attempting to not. Barely." A shiver of blue cracked across his skin and then faded.

He cleared his throat. "X is a difficult letter. Very intractable. And sleep is for the weak. And the morally secure. Who needs it."

Hawke reached out and snagged Anders' wrist, her hand whip-quick. Her calloused fingers were intractable as she turned it over and ran a thumb lightly over Anders' pulse. "Xavier, Xander, and Xenon were the only ones I could come up with."

She wrinkled her nose, the light stroke of her thumb happening in time with the heartbeat beneath it. "Moral security? Do you know anyone who can claim that? I would like to meet them. And then sell you a bridge in Orzammar."

Anders froze at the contact and spent an inordinate amount of time just staring at where her fingers met the soft skin on the inside of his wrist. He wet his lips.

"Ah. Aveline? Aveline was always a very principled woman." He shrugged and attempted to look Hawke in the eye. "I don't know, Hawke, I don't associate with very many goodie-two-shoes, you know me." He glanced back at her hand on his wrist distractedly.

"You know that principle isn't the same as being good. Following the law and ignoring suffering isn't moral." Hawke frowned, looking up from her fingers to Anders' face, meeting his eyes steadily. "You-- or well, you know what I mean-- taught me that."

She kept with the light, smooth, steady stroke of the thumb, trying to soothe some of the tension out of the raggedy man. "You need to sleep, by the way. Justice is always crankier when you're tired."

"No," Anders said softly. "No, I suppose you're right."

He blew out a breath, and tried to force his shoulders down, tried to force some of the tension out of his body, but the touching really seemed to be only making him more tense.

"This, ah." He reached up and pinched some of the skin on his forehead between several fingers. "This isn't just his usual crankiness," he admitted. He waved his hand at his head vaguely.

Perhaps if he closed his eyes...

He did so, trying to forget, even if just for a moment, and when he wasn't looking directly at her, that actually helped. His knees stopped jittering about. Of course, that just made Justice's mutterings get louder, this time with disapproval of letting her touch him. NOT HAWKE.

"Fuck," he swore violently, opening his eyes.

The vehemence of Anders' outburst caused Hawke to grow very still, eyes searching his face. She drew her hand back slowly, letting his wrist go, and scooted back on the bed a little and then sat on her hands.

"Sorry," she said quietly, chewing on her lower lip, brows knitting together into a frown. She didn't look away though, just peering at him cautiously until she finally added, "You do need to sleep, though. Before your heart explodes or whatever it is that happens when people die of being tired."

Anders got a horribly guilty expression on his face at Hawke's reaction to his outburst - his eyebrows peaked and furrowed and generally sort of twitched and he bit his lip, looking pained.

"Hawke..." he started, reaching out a hand for her and then abortively pulling it back. He raked his fingers through his hair instead, upsetting most of it from the tie.

He gave a sort of snort-chuckle at her mention of death by heart explosion.

"Far more likely I'll start hallucinating instead. And wouldn't that be a joy. Although I think you'll find my capacity for sleeplessness is rather superior to the common man's. There are two of us, after all." He looked away, clearly avoiding saying the obvious, that he had spent this much time and longer without sleep in the past.

"Hallucinations! Brilliant!" Hawke had plenty of those to go around, although they'd started to settle. The voices (voice, it was really only ever one) that had dogged her through the Fade growing quieter, commenting less often. She was seeing fewer shadows and shapes shifting in the corners of her vision, but she still felt like she could feel blood, wet and tacky running down her neck.

She wrinkled her nose, trying not to worry so loudly at him, but she had eyes made for concerned glaring. "So, why are you avoiding it? I mean, it isn't as if there's a thousand pages of manifesto to write and every urchin in Darktown to heal..."

She suspected it had something to do with the blazing red light of the Chantry explosion and a great deal of blood that were waiting on the back side of his eyelids, but... that wasn't going to go away before he finally collapsed.

Anders watched her with keen amber eyes - healer's eyes, after all, picking up on some of what she wasn't saying. He didn't address any of it, however.

"Take your pick," he said, waving a hand and setting his chin on the back of the chair. "I've become spoiled and accustomed to sleeping in a dogpile of bodies and occasional actual dog, all of whom I may never see again. I should be dead, not alive to think of such petty indulgences as sleep. Oh, and Justice won't shut up. Ever." His lips twisted in something that wasn't a smile. "I may have left something out."

"Anders." The sadness in Hawke's voice was liquid. She rubbed her fingers along the new scar above her ear, and then shook her head. "You-- you have to keep something of yourself left for when you do see them again. Because this? All this is so absurd, so plainly ridiculous, there's no way it ends here. I mean, this isn't my ending. He wouldn't write-- Dying of boredom in a dream castle doesn't sound like me, and it doesn't sound like you either."

She sat forward again, catching his eyes. "And Justice, I know you're unsettled, but if you want to go home, wherever you think that is now? You can't run Anders so ragged all his brains run out his ears."

"It appears more likely I'll be murdered in a dream castle by a woman I watched be consumed by red lyrium only a handful of days ago, but. Details."

Anders' eyes flickered blue, and Justice's voice answered with palpable longing, "HOME."

Anders closed his eyes and shook his head, the color back to normal when he opened them again.

"He's very close," he said, sadly. "All this talk of you lot being physically in the Fade, which would have solved all our problems long ago, and then we can feel it, the real Fade, only it's just beyond our reach. And this place is so - so - unnatural. That doesn't help."

"You aren't going to be murdered by anyone, Anders." Hawke was using her dangerous voice, quiet, sweet, too smooth by half. "Because I'll cut all the fingers toes ears tongues and noses off of anyone who tries."

She pursed her lips at the mention of being physically in the Fade, unable to hide the shudder that swept over her. "Well, maybe one of the Heralds can wave their glowy hand and open a rift going that direction? Have you asked? Because that's how I got stuck there." Her voice was softer, trying for blitheness, and missing.

Anders gave her a sappy sort of smile, his chin still resting on the chair back. "Aw, you always say the sweetest things."

He pulled a face. "I suppose I could ask that Inquisitor Lavellan. She seems...all right. I suppose." He looked like he was going to say something else and then decided against it at the last minute, sighing. "Truth be told I've been...sort of avoiding. So far no one seems to want to stab me, but from what Varric said when I first got here and, well, common sense, I am only hoping that continues to be the case rather than expecting it to be."

He frowned. "Also, as much as I would like to be able to just drop Justice off in the Fade and say 'go, be free,' I, personally, would prefer not to get stuck there, so I'm a bit loathe to just go diving in. And he mostly wants to be home but he feels guilty about it with the work we still have to do, so it's not as though he's of one mind about it himself."

"Maker, how many minds does that make rattling around in your skull then?" Hawke smirked for a moment and then rocked slightly, forward and back, eyes going distant. "As for the Fade..." She refocused on Anders, eyebrow lifting and shook her head. "You can trust Aria. She's not going to leave anyone... well anyone else in the Fade if she can help it, and she has no love of Templars or the Chantry. Dalish apostate and all."

Anders stretched one gangly arm out and tipped his chair forward at the same time to flick her knee.

"Yes, that much I had gathered," he said, nodding.

Hawke caught the rung of the back of the chair with her foot, nearly pulling him over as she leaned forward to flick his nose in retaliation. She unhooked her foot to let the legs of the chair thump back into the floor. "So? You could at least talk to her about it, what she thinks the risks are. Maybe that would help Justice be a little quieter?"

She huffed, staring at the ceiling. "It's easier to help you jerks when you come to my house and say, 'hey could you kill this guy?' or 'please Hawke just steal this one little thing for me!'."

Anders let out a squawk of surprise as his chair clattered back to the ground. He rubbed his forehead and conceded. "You may be onto something there."

Still, the mention of houses and simplicity made him look pained and guilty again. He looked at the floor.

"Sorry." Hawke grimaced, running her hands into her hair. Years since she'd had a house, but there it was, still etched in her mind, home. And knowing the man sitting there he blamed himself for his Hawke having to flee hers.

"I just meant I wish I was more help." She wet her lips and reached out tentatively, patted his arm lightly over the coat before letting it fall into her lap. "Anything you need, though, okay?"

Anders looked up at her through his lashes.

"Honestly, you help by existing, Hawke. You may be the most normal thing I've encountered here."

He colored lightly and looked away again.

"Normal! Now that's something I've never once been accused of before..." Hawke grinned at him from under her fringe, and shook her head. "I'm actually not convinced you'd know it if you saw it, this--" she brought her hands up, wrapping the word in air-quotes, "--'normal'."

Anders wrinkled his nose at her. "Perhaps my definition differs from most everyone else's, but I hardly think that makes it less valid, Hawke."

He stretched out a boot to nudge one of her feet.

"Normal is your sardonic jokes and your weird acceptance of me no matter whether or not I deserve it, and maybe I doubted you - her - once, but my constant for three years has always been her regardless of all else. That's normal. And clearly I'm a great mess if I'm latching on to you when you're not even-" he exhaled sharply through his nose. "But it does make it better, somehow."

Hawke's pale skin blushed a soft pink as she listened to Anders insist on saying nice things about her. She shrugged, looking down at where her bare foot rested on top of his boot, ears turning pink as well. "Champion of Kirkwall making something better for once. I wish Varric was here to write that down."

She shifted, looking back up at him. "You know I was angry. About the Chantry. For weeks I didn't speak to you - him. I mean I dragged him onto the boat, made sure he didn't throw himself overboard, made sure he ate. But I wouldn't speak to him. Bethany was in the Circle and I couldn't believe you'd - he'd endanger her like that without telling me the truth."

She let out a long, ragged sigh. "Eventually I stopped being so furious and by then we had to split up, all of us. And I was sure that I wasn't ever going to see that stupid coat ever again, or that stupid hair, or your idiot face." She squinted, hiding tears. "But I'm really glad you're here too, and I'm glad it helps you, even if I'm not the right Hawke."

Anders winced. He looked down at where his arms rested on the back of the chair.

"I expected that of her," he admitted. "Well, I expected to be dead, but after - when I wasn't - I expected her anger. And she was shocked, yes, but she - she refused to give it to me."

"We were on the ship when I got pulled here." He lifted one hand and flexed it. "One moment, her hand in mine, and Fenris right behind me, the next..." He shrugged, and the grief in his eyes was incalculable. He looked like a man who'd lost part of his soul, and after all he had been willing to give up for the sake of his cause only to have it gifted back to him against all hope and then torn away again cruelly and without reason, perhaps that wasn't too far off.

After a moment, he said, "You know why I didn't tell you, right? We couldn't let you stop us, and the thought that you might actually want to help instead - that was even more unbearable. The blood had to be on our hands. Not yours. I couldn't let anyone else do that for me."

"Love can make any woman an idiot, I guess." Hawke sniffled through her smirk, watching Anders look so desolate. The part of her that wanted, always, to help wanted to pull him close and hug him, pet his hair, but she wasn't sure Justice would let her, and she wasn't sure it would help, or only make the things he'd lost more apparent.

She waved her hands at his explanation. "Yes, yes. Heard it. Still think it's shit logic." She snorted. "To go with an explosive made of shit, right?"

There was a moment where she hesitated, and then shrugged. "I'm tired of arguing the right and the wrong of it. There's just what is, and what isn't. I thought I was done with that too. But, here we are, and no reason for you to justify it to me. You get to do that with her when you get home."

Anders looked up, meeting the intense gaze she was giving him, and getting a small furrow between his brows. He wasn't entirely sure how to read that look, for all he'd thought he was getting pretty good at reading all of his Hawke's moods, but something flip-flopped in his stomach at it, so he had to figure it was probably not a bad thought, whatever she was thinking.

"Pfft," he said, getting a smirk of his own. "I think it's safe to say it will be Fenris wanting to know the logic and the morality of it. Cosa is far more likely to want to know why it took me so long, now I can stop and think about it." He shrugged, then grinned wider. "You know she once threatened to burn the Gallows to ashes to Elthina's face."

A woman now dead by Anders' hands, which was a thought sobering enough to wipe the grin from his face. He shook himself slightly. The Divine had tried to get Elthina to leave. She'd had ample opportunities to actually do something that would make a difference in that city. If he started allowing himself regret over what he had done, he was likely to finish what Hawke should have done that day in Lowtown, and then she'd be angry enough to drag him back from the afterlife and murder him again, so that probably was unwise.

"No throwing yourself overboard." Hawke's tone was stern as she watched Anders grin fracture, the hollow expression behind it. She'd seen enough of that on the boat when they were fleeing Kirkwall to know what it meant.

She poked him with her toe in the shin. "No one here to snog you back to your senses if you start circling the drain. Unless there's something you and Varric want to tell me?" She couldn't even keep a straight face at that as she waggled her eyebrows.

Anders covered his face with both hands.

"Oh, Maker, you did not just say that. I'm going to pretend you didn't say that. The horror. Ugh," he shuddered violently. "I'm never going to get the images that conjures out of my brain."

"What is that? Varric isn't-- you can't just-- Maker's balls! What's wrong with Varric?" Hawke sounded actually affronted, the blush fitful and high in her cheeks. "Oh, you prefer your men actively threatening your life, maybe, hmm?"

"No, I prefer men I don't have to bend in half to kiss," he shuddered again. "And men who aren't going to write fiction about our exploits in bed," again with the shuddering, "and just men who aren't Varric, okay, that's just weird."

"Nothing against Varric, I'm sure he and his crossbow are very happy, I just...ew."

Hawke's mouth had twisted into a deeper scowl as Anders talked. When he mentioned Bianca, she looked away, face blank for a brief flash, until she was all lazy smirk again. "Yeah, Varric and his crossbow, fighting for the Inquisition, writing stories about the Herald of Andraste. Exciting things, important people." She stretched, arms over her head, in a slow, long arch.

Anders blinked several times as he picked up on this array of emotions on Hawke's face, and then he peered rather intently at her for longer than was entirely comfortable.

"....No," he scoffed, amber eyes widening. "You - what. You didn't."

Hawke's eyes grew huge and panicked and she shook her head vigorously. "No! No, sweet baby Andraste's shitty diaper, Anders. He's my best friend." Her throat worked as she swallowed around the way that caught in her throat. "Friend. Friiieeeend. I can spell it if you want."

She rolled her eyes, trying desperately to stuff this back down. She had never even kissed Varric, had never admitted to him that she had dreams about his hands, would probably never tell him that when she'd been wandering through the Fade, hearing his voice in her head had given her something to hold onto so she didn't lose herself entirely.

She huffed. "And even if I was going to go there, Varric isn't into human women. Too tall, maybe?" She shrugged, and waved a dismissive hand.

Anders said, "Uh-huh," in a highly skeptical tone of voice.

He rested his arms on the back of the chair again, making a fist to plop his chin down on, and mused, "Yes, friend. Best friend. Varric and my Hawke are practically the same person. It can be a little freaky, to be honest. I've known them to finish each other's sentences, tell the punchlines of the same jokes at exactly the same time in exactly the same tone of voice...hm." He stroked his chin. "Yes, entirely possible they could have been soulmates in another world. Of course my Hawke has this thing...where she likes to feel needed? Like she can help us poor damaged sods. Don't tell her I know about it, if you meet her. Anyways. That leaves Varric out because he's entirely too well-adjusted. But you..."

He squinted at her and looked dangerously delighted with this turn of events.

"And you should have seen this Varric before you showed up. Moping in his cups, he was."

Hawke had never been this red before. Probably. She put her hands over ears and buried her face in her knees. "You're a horrible man, I hate you, and I'm going to strangle you with that stupid bloody bandage you wear on your boot." She tipped her chin up to glare at him. "Don't, Anders. Please don't. I-- you--" She let out a sharp exhale through her nose.

"If - if - what you were saying had any basis in fact on my end, Varric doesn't deserve the shit I pack around in my pockets any more than he's already had to deal with." She tilted her head, wincing at something that she thought, or heard, or felt, and then shook it away. She sounded near tears, the thought of Varric feeling guilty over her presumed death in the Fade strangling her.

Anders looked rather smug at the threats and totally unperturbed. He did, however, give her a thoughtful look, his eyes gentling.

"Frankly, sweetheart, that's nugshit. You don't carry around anymore shit than the rest of us, and you're the first one to go about declaring we all deserve happiness and whatnot, so I don't buy that. At all."

"Also, there is the fact to be considered that Varric appears to rather like that sort of thing. I always thought the flawed hero type appealed to him the most. Why do you think it's always been you he was friends with?"

The fringe falling over her forehead hid the worst of Hawke's consternation, but she widened her eyes in mock-affront. "Flawed hero type? Who are you calling bloody flawed?"

She sighed, expression turning sad, and slightly distant. "I'm happy. Fairly thrilled to be here, even if I'm sure I shouldn't be." She smiled, wan and lopsided and ran her fingers through her hair. "So, see, no reason to go rocking any boats or tipping any apple carts. Just being... happy. Really, really happy."

Anders merely gave her a cheeky grin and nudged at her foot with his boot again.

"Mmm," he said, giving her a stealthily considering look, and notably not agreeing to not tipping over apple carts and what have you.

Hawke just sighed, long-suffering as any doting, underappreciated mother, and shook her head. "Now I have a headache. Some healer you are." She wrinkled her nose. "You want to be useful, bring me something to eat and stop worrying about impossible things."

She made a shooing motion and picked up her journal, burying her nose in it, eyes glaring over the edge at Anders until he left.

(OOC: Close this thread up so Anders can go be tortured about Fenris and Hawke can bother Varric?)

Anders wiggled his fingers and summoned enough magic to heal any headache she might have and then slunk to his feet, putting the chair back against the wall.

"Right. Food. Coming right up."

He paused right at the door to say, "You know worrying about impossible things is our specialty, though, right?" The grin he gave her that time was decidedly unrepentant, but he quickly ushered himself out the door and shut it behind him before she could respond. Or throw something at him.

(OOC: Sounds perfect!)