and now my heart stumbles on things I don't know

[unconfines]

Varric spins a story, because that's what he does.

He describes the chill of the Frostback Basin in elaborate (if not quite loving) detail, the tall tree forts in the mountains and the wide, glassy lake. He writes about the barbarians— the Avvar— and their feud: the Jaws of Hakkon and Stone-Bear Hold. He writes about their Augur, their apprentices, and their relationships with spirits.

There is a ritual, according to Varric.

Anders reads the letter through the cipher and then lays it back down again, because it doesn't just sound impossible, it is impossible. He spent nearly two decades learning it and a decade more living it: there is no way to separate a spirit from its host without killing one or both in the process. He thinks he's done enough to Justice in his lifetime without tempting that rule.

He lives with the choice as he made it, the same as all the others.

He sits. He rubs his hands over his face, and then he reads it again: the first and last paragraph, with his thumb smoothed into the creases of the vellum. Believe me, I think it sounds like crazy shit, too, Varric writes, But I wouldn't bring it up if I didn't think there was something to it.

It isn't that he doesn't want to take Varric at his word. He does. That's the problem.

"Well," he starts, then stops. He rolls his free hand into a loose fist when it registers that he's been drumming his fingers on the table, agitated. "It's not exactly the vacation I had in mind."

Comments

[forcemageure]

Hawke feels like for sheer dramatic appropriateness this is where he should take the letter from the other side of the table and reread it for emphasis, except he's already done that enough to have memorized parts of it. All the parts one would expect, the parts he also wants to hope are possible. He's still much more willing to fling himself off the precipice of places like 'hope' than Anders ever has been, but even for him it sounds so good it can't be true.

"No? I can't think of anything more fun than ferrying rocks up a cliff for no reason," he highlights, absurdly, although it's--actually as he's saying the words they might be tragically apt. He does actually take the letter, glances at Varric's thick black lines, stark and unmistakable. Of course the part he chooses to focus on rereading is not any of the aforementioned egg-shell fragile hope. "What did it say you get if you win? A sheep? Two sheep? Three sheep and a bilingual goat?"

Hawke toes his shin under the table. Which is just code for he will do anything Anders wants, he just--apparently can't talk about it. "You hate the cold," he points out with several iotas more seriousness. Like that's a real reason.

[unconfines]

He breathes out through his nose, slow and measured. Listening to the bright roll of Hawke's stream-of-consciousness is settling, in its own way; it calms an instinctive urge to defend himself, from— Varric? Justice? Himself? He isn't sure.

The corner of his mouth pulls taut on one side; it might have been a smile, under different circumstances.

"That's true." Always has been. He could never quite get warm enough in Kinloch Hold, and Amaranthine was even worse, with its damp, stifling winter. Kirkwall should have been an improvement. (It wasn't.) "I also have some vested interest in keeping my head where it is."

Two points against already, then. Good. Fine. That makes it an easy decision. It would be a risky, foolish leap at smoke, too dangerous for the both of them if there's no hope of payoff. Whatever that payoff might be.

His head aches.

"He's a dwarf." Hawke isn't even arguing one way or the other. Anders is arguing with himself and he knows it. "He might not even have properly understood what he was seeing, whatever it was. Maybe she was a healer. Or it was a wisp, or— anything."

He knows better, though. More importantly, he knows that Varric knows better. Varric wouldn't send them this without verifying it through every source he could think of, and would have shut it down at the first whiff of deception. There's no leg to stand on.

[forcemageure]

Hawke takes what he can get when it comes to Anders' smiles; this has always been so, but more in the last few years. Under different circumstances he might quell the urge to reach out and touch the tightened-up corner with a forefinger - like he needs to mark the occasion somehow - but not these. "I haven't let anyone remove your head yet, have I?"

Which is only sort of the point, it's just ...something familiar to add to the mix of unfamiliar everything. Honestly, they've gotten this far together, might as well take even more stupid risks. He makes a move with the same forefinger like he's trying to trick the curve of Anders' mouth into a real smile, then withdraws to fold his hands on the table. "As appealing a possibility as that sounds at this point Varric probably knows his wisps from a hole in the Fade." As opposed to, a hole in the ground etc etc. If he stops making terrible jokes where will they be?

He breathes out, attempts to pin Anders with eye contact, faintly mismatched irises. "I can't decide this, you know that."

Turns radial wheel to select green companion option? Yes.

[unconfines]

It works. He's quiet for a moment, feels himself steadied even with anxiety still winding through every inch of him. "No," he says softly. He reaches to follow the touch, grounding and calming as it was, and runs his thumb over Hawke's knuckles. Soothing himself, rather than the other way around. "I know."

All of this: they're excuses, fear, not real arguments. Maybe there never was a real argument to be had anywhere with this. Just a choice to be made.

"I don't know what will happen." He can't hold eye contact anymore, not with the real source of all his agitation rising to the surface. His eyes drop to their hands, and then close altogether. "To him. To me. I hardly think they've designed their ritual with a case like this in mind, do you?"

He can't be the man he was before Justice anymore, of that he's certain. And the line between them— Anders and Justice, Anders or Justice— has blurred so much in the years since that he really and truly doesn't know how much of either of them would be left if you tried to peel them apart.

But maybe he's reached the point where that can't matter, anymore. A chance to give his friend his life back, his self back— he's owed Justice that much, for far too long.

"Even knowing that, I— Maker." His whole expression pinches painfully, even with his eyes still closed. "I'm not sure I could live with myself if I didn't try."