#All the Karls wore stilts

[banana-breadses]

Another thing they did was to cast the shortest guy in the cast as Karl the giant.

the funniest thing the directors did was cast the tallest guy in the entire cast as the guy named tiny Tom

[goth-surana]

Hope and Hopelessness Chapter 3

Chapter 3 of 5

Main pairing: Anders/Male Hawke

Main tags: Angst with a happy ending, tranquil!Anders, cure for tranquility

Summary: After some time on the run with Hawke, Anders is caught and made tranquil. Hawke cannot bring himself to kill him, instead chasing a distant hope that there may be a cure.

Read on AO3 or below the cut

Weeks had passed since parting ways with the Warden Commander, and Hawke was no closer to the cure.

They were ambushed, eventually. Hawke got recognized by a rogue Templar from Kirkwall, who then pointed him out to his companions. Anders and Hawke were beaten in the town square, and without Anders’ magic they would have died if not for the intervention of two Qunari who happened to be walking by.

The man and the woman rushed into action, dispatching the Templars with skills born from years of battle.

Hawke was blinking the blood out of his eyes when the Qunari man extended a hand to help him up. The woman had Anders in her arms, and Hawke immediately tried to run and make sure he was okay.

He got two stumbling steps before falling again, and needing to be helped up.

“He is alive,” the woman told Hawke. She had a stern voice, but not an unkind one. She looked at Hawke with ice blue eyes, which Hawke had never seen on a Qunari.

The man, who was slightly shorter, gave Hawke’s shoulder a pat. “Come with us,” he said, “you need medical attention.”

Now at the mercy of strangers, Hawke went along. Hopefully these strangers didn’t figure out who either he or Anders was.

The two Qunari led them to their quaint house, and the woman set Anders on the sofa. He wasn’t unconscious, but didn’t look great. There was a bruise forming on his forehead and his lip was split. His normally expressionless face was grimaced in pain for moment, and Hawke’s heart ached. Seeing Anders with any expression now was almost worse, because it was so close to what he couldn’t have.

Hawke limped to the sofa and sat down next to him, brushed a thumb along his jaw.

“Where are you hurt?” Hawke asked. The battle had been short and chaotic, and had ended with both Anders and Hawke on the ground being kicked brutally.

“I believe I have a bruised rib,” Anders observed, his expression falling back into neutrality. “My arm also sustained a wound.”

Blood was seeping through his sleeve. Hawke gasped, was about to call for help but the Qunari man was already there with bandages.

“Take off your coat, please,” he said. Hawke had never heard a Qunari say “please,” in his life.

The way he spoke was still somewhat stilted, but there was an air of easiness that Hawke found strange. Just who were these people?

The woman had clearly seen battle, and the man was now dressing Anders’ wounds with practiced efficiency.

“You are also hurt,” the woman told Hawke, kneeling by his injured leg. Hawke bent down to unlace his boot, then winced.

“Allow me,” said the woman. Bewildered, Hawke sat back and let the two strange Qunari take care of them. As the adrenaline wore off, Hawke’s body ached all over.

“Your forehead needs stitches,” said the man. “I’m afraid whisky and elfroot is all I can offer for the pain.”

Hawke nodded, then felt the world spin a bit.

“Why are you helping us?” Hawke asked the two Qunari as the woman returned with supplies.

“Because those brutes were going to kill you,” the woman said simply. “We will not watch while that happens.”

“We could be anybody,” Hawke argued, pushing his luck out of sheer confusion. “How do you know we did not deserve it?”

The Qunari said nothing for a moment, and then they looked at each other briefly.

“Please be clear with me,” the woman prefaced her question with. “Are you a mage?”

Hawke was thrown off, took too long to answer.

“You are safe with us,” the man told Hawke very seriously.

“No, I’m not a mage,” said Hawke.

“Your companion is,” said the man, clearly doubtful. “Only mages travel with the tranquil.”

“You… you know what tranquility is?” Hawke asked. People in far off towns like this tended not to, with no Circle in sight.

“Yes,” the man said simply. “You did not answer my question. Why do you travel with a tranquil man if you are not a mage?”

Hawke thought for a moment, and then opted for as much honesty as it was safe to show.

“He was my lover.”

The two Qunari remained stone-faced, but Hawke saw a grim pity there.

“I am sorry,” the woman told him very seriously. “A great injustice was done to you both.”

Hawke didn’t like being the subject of their pity. He didn’t deserve pity, he hadn’t for a long time.

“To him, not me,” Hawke told them quietly. “I still have my mind.”

“But not your lover,” the man replied. “You are a victim too of the Templars’ cruelty.”

These people were getting stranger and stranger. Hawke had never met Qunari or Tal-Vashoth with strong opinions about Templars. If anything, their opinions about mages were… worse.

“Never met Qunari who thought much of mages,” Hawke told them. Again, pushing his luck. But he had to know where these people stood and why they were helping two strangers.

“We are Tal-Vashoth,” the woman said with a frown. “We do not, will never again, follow the Qun.”

There was some kind of story there. Maybe if he were Varric he could get it out of them. Maybe he would try anyway.

“Still, I must ask again… why are you helping us? Why do you have such sympathy for mages?”

Both of these Tal-Vashoth had their horns and had been part of the Qun once, so they were not mages themselves.

The man gave Hawke a small smile. “You are a very direct man. It is not a quality I find often in humans. Very well, if we expect vulnerability from you we must be willing to offer it ourselves.”

The woman nodded, as giving him the okay to continue.

“Our daughter is a mage,” the man told Hawke. Hawke winced, could only imagine the pain of that under the Qun.

“She is Vashoth,” the woman told Hawke as a response to the face he made. “She has never known the cruel ways of the Qun, and she never will.”

“Pardon my ignorance, but what does Vashoth mean? Without the “tal”?”

“Not born under the Qun,” explained the woman. “Myself and my husband left before she was born. She will never know the name “saarebas,” although we find the name “mage” is not much better here.”

“Was your daughter in the Circle?” Hawke asked. He had never heard of a Qunari- well, “Vashoth” Circle mage before.

“No,” the woman told Hawke firmly. “We left the Qun to keep our child, we would not give her away to your Chantry.”

“It’s not “my” Chantry,” Hawke said with a raised eyebrow.

“Apologies,” the woman said plainly. Plainly, but sincerely.

The man, who Hawke was beginning to realize was the softer of the two, gave Anders a pitying look.

“We also feared they would make her tranquil without a second thought. She would be strange and frightening to them and their closed minds.”

Ah. Now Hawke understood. He relaxed minutely around the two Tal-Vashoth.

“So tranquility is personal to you, that’s why you’re helping us.”

“Perhaps,” admitted the man. “But we cannot claim to feel its pain the way you two do.”

“I am not in pain,” Anders pointed out. Hawke almost wanted to laugh, a vicious miserable laugh. He was in pain, he just didn’t fucking know it. Hawke remembered Karl. Karl hadn’t known he was in pain but the second his mind was returned he begged for death.

Anders didn’t know it, but Hawke was torturing him every day he didn’t end his suffering.

“Did you wish to be made tranquil?” The man asked Anders.

“No.”

“Then you are in more pain than you realize.”

Hawke didn’t know how he felt, hearing someone else acknowledge it. It was strange having two non-mages really understand the brutality of what happened. But they loved a mage, same as Hawke. Would Hawke even think twice about their plight, if not for his family?

He hoped he would.

“You may stay until you recover,” the woman told Hawke and Anders. “We will protect you, should the Templars return.”

Even knowing their backgrounds, it floored Hawke that these people were willing to go to these lengths for two strangers. Hawke’s confusion must have shown on his face, because the woman addressed him again.

“It is what we would want for our daughter, were she in such danger. She is in some danger every day, and we hope she will also meet kind strangers in her time of need.”

“Where is your daughter now?” Hawke asked.

Both Tal-Vashoth were silent for a moment.

“Perhaps it is best to leave that unanswered,” the woman decided. “Just as we will not ask your names. Some knowledge will only bring trouble.”

Hawke was grateful to them. Again, these strange people understood. They understood life on the run, and they were kind enough to take risks for those in need.

Hawke felt a little safer, knowing he and Anders had a place here for a few more days. Because those Templars could very well return, if they figured out where Hawke and Anders went. They could be putting up wanted posters right now, telling everyone they saw that a notorious murderer was hiding in the town.

But Hawke couldn’t worry about that right now, right now he just had to make sure Anders was okay and was recovering.

The stitches on Hawke’s forehead didn’t take long, and neither did bandaging his leg. Anders kept offering to help, but the two Tal-Vashoth were insistent that he rest. Hawke was inclined to agree.

At night the two Tal-Vashoth retired to the room and left the men in the living room. Hawke set up his bedroll in the floor and offered Anders the sofa.

“You were also hurt,” said Anders. “Perhaps you should take the softer surface.”

“You said yourself you had a bruised rib. You need to be lying down.”

“Very well,” said Anders. Normally, this would be a prolonged argument where Anders insisted on fretting over Hawke. Hawke never thought he would miss the fretting, and had always thought he would only feel joy when Anders finally thought of himself first.

If they found the cure - when they found the cure, Hawke would insist on taking care of Anders first until the day they died. It shouldn’t take the removal of his emotions to make the man grow some self-preservation.

Hawke and Anders ended up staying for a week, and thankfully no Templars found them. Hawke finally did learn the names of their gracious hosts. Antonio and Portia Adaar.

“Those aren’t Qunari names,” Hawke had remarked.

“The names we were given referred to us as things, as only what we were useful for. We chose our own names when we left,” had been Antonio’s explanation.

“But you kept “Adaar?””

“To retain some memory of our culture. It was a cruel place… but there were fond memories nonetheless.”

Eventually Portia suggested they give some kind of names to be referred to as, even if not their real names.

“Malcolm,” Hawke had said. “And you can call him Nathaniel.”

Anders looked somewhat confused for a moment, but went along with it. It was hard to notice confusion on the tranquil, but it did exist. Hawke once again wished he never had cause to learn that.

After the conversation about names, Anders posed a question to Hawke.

“I could have offered a more convenient pseudonym.”

“Hm?” Hawke asked as he retied a bandage around Anders’ arm.

“My given name,” he explained, “no one knows me as-“

“Wait!” Hawke stopped the man. “No, don’t say it. You didn’t want me to know.”

“Hawke, I do not care now if you know the name my parents gave me.”

“I already know your name, it’s Anders.”

“My name does not matter.”

“Yes it does,” Hawke insisted. “It matters because it’s you. It’s what you called yourself. You’re Anders.”

“Am I still?” the man asked. Hawke’s stomach dropped, his chest tightened.

Yes, he wanted to say. Yes, you’re still Anders. You’re still the man I love. But he found he couldn’t speak.

“I am certainly not the Anders you knew,” Anders continued. “That man was quite foolish, very brash and prone to dangerous behavior.”

Hawke’s words were still caught in his throat. Instead, he reached out and hugged Anders to his chest. The man went willingly, but passively.

“I want to honor what you would have wanted,” Hawke eventually said. “You didn’t want me to know what your name had been. You wanted to be Anders.”

“If you were honoring his wishes,” Anders argued, “you would have killed me.”

Hawke chuckled darkly. “I’m not a very good boyfriend, then. Too damn selfish.”

He still held on then, and Anders let him.

“You are not selfish,” Anders told him. “You protect me despite great personal risk to yourself. Just being in my presence hurts you, yet you stay. You are very devoted to the man I was. I believe I would have appreciated that… or perhaps I would be angry that I yet live. It is hard to know.”

“When we fix this,” said Hawke, finally pulling away, “I hope you won’t be too mad.”

Anders considered his words. “I could never stay mad at you for long. But there is likely no cure.”

Another punch to the gut.

“I have to believe there is,” Hawke said. Not even to himself or Anders, just to the world. To whoever was listening.

“Or else, what am I doing letting you suffer like this?”

“I do not suffer, I already told you that.”

Hawke didn’t have it in him to argue anymore.