#varric: yeah no i think the parents might be able to guess

[vigilskeep]

Anders talking in pissy anders concept of all time love 2 think about how companions react 2 it

fenris is swearing in tevene, aveline can swear in half-remembered shreds of her father’s orlesian, merrill has dalish curses, varric has dwarven curses, sebastian can come up with something scottish i’m sure, and hawke surely has the best of rural fereldan. you’ve gotta give anders something

[athenril-of-kirkwall]

For DWC: Fill, Wanted, Trouble for Hawke x Athenril

Woohoo, more of Hawke and his bae/boss/it’s complicated/(?)

m!Hawke/Athenril, “Wanted in Ostwick” (AO3)

“You said you wanted to see me, Aveline?”, Hawke asked innocently.

“I did indeed,” the Guard-Captain said, folding her hands together on her work desk. “Oh, come off it. You’re not in trouble. Not this time, anyway.”

“Right,” Varric said, “because people only ever get hauled up to the Guard-Captain’s office for social calls.”

Glaring at the dwarf standing behind Hawke, Aveline said, “I don’t recall inviting you.”

Hawke explained, “Oh, that was on my initiative. I figured that if I was being dragged here I’d need him to talk me out of whatever circumstances I’d find myself in.”

Aveline felt a headache coming on. “You…oh, never mind. What I wanted to talk to you about was this.”

She reached into a drawer, carefully lifting a well-worn piece of parchment covered in writing and decorated with two portraits. A stamped decree on the corner denoted Ostwick as its place of origin. Hawke and Varric leaned in to study the poster as Aveline explained why and how it’d come into her possession.

“You see,” she said, “I was clearing out some old files when I moved in, and I just so happened to spot this old poster. What’s this all about?”

Hawke shrugged his shoulders. “I haven’t the foggiest, Aveline. This is clearly a wanted poster for ‘James Faulkner’ and ‘Jessie Varvel’.”

“Oh for the love of the Maker…!” she yelled, jabbing her index finger at each picture in turn, saying “That’s clearly you, right down to that stupid smear of blood you’re never able to wash off after a fight,”

“I beg your pardon!” Hawke ejaculated, defensively wiping at his nose, which was perfectly clean this time round.

“, and that’s obviously your old employer Athenril!” she continued, pointing at the redheaded elf whose picture was right next to his.

“I, ah, hasten to remind you that she happens to also be your old employer, my dear Guard-Captain, so I wouldn’t be screaming this from the roof of the Viscount’s keep,” he retorted.

“Oh, please. That’s not even close to the worst skeleton in anyone’s closet here,” Aveline said, rolling her eyes.

All three of them waited for Merrill to interject with some confused comment about skeleton infestations in the keep, until they realised that she was still in the Alienage.

“Anyway,” Hawke huffed, “I claim the right of habeus corpus. My lips are sealed.”

Varric stared at him. “I think you mean protection from self-incrimination, Hawke.”

Squinting as her headache got worse, Aveline said, “Actually, you’re both thinking of the statute of limitations, which I assure you is well past.”

Hawke turned to Varric, asking him, “Isn’t a statuette of limitations that thing Bartrand had us fish out of that creepy thaig?”

“I suppose you could call it that,” the dwarf quipped.

It definitely was worse now. “A ‘statute of limitations’, you numbskulls, means you can’t be prosecuted for a charge after a certain amount of time, but this doesn’t happen to include murder, robbery, or grand theft, so don’t get ideas. And no, I’m not telling you how long right now either.”

Eyes dimming after lighting up at the idea of gaining clemency for the odd felony by getting away with things for long enough, Hawke turned back to Aveline. “Oh all right, I suppose you’ve got a right to hear this story. This was a special assignment Athenril had for me, hence why you were left out of the loop when we went over to Ostwick.”

Aveline leaned forward, steepling her fingers. “Special assignment, huh?”

“It was, ah, a two-man job.”

Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “Is that what they call it now?”

“Look, if you’re going to take perverse pleasure from questioning me about this, I think I have a right to make Varric tell you the story so we’re even.”

They both started to protest, but Hawke clapped the merchant on his shoulder, telling him, “Too late! You’re up, says me and your unpaid tab at the Hanged Man, which will disappear tonight, if everything goes well right now.”

“Oh, all right,” Varric said, “but only because Hawke’s still kind of hung up about…”

Hawke was staring daggers at him.

“Look, you drag me into this, I’m going to take you down with me.”

Aveline gently pounded on the tabletop. “Do you mind getting on with it, Varric?”

“Very well, so this was, as you can guess, sometime during Hawke’s first year here…”

Somewhere, sometime in the future, a short-haired Nevarran Seeker of Truth let loose a disgusted noise once she realised that she’d let Varric recursively nestle his narratives within each other yet again. The dwarf’s smile threatening to reach both his ears, he began.

Sometime during Hawke’s first year in Kirkwall, and when he was still working for Athenril the Hightown smuggler, he went on a special assignment to Ostwick with her, namely smuggling lyrium mined around Kirkwall and selling it to their branch of the Mages’ Collective at a killer rate in return for certain services, specifically getting them, along with some Tal-Vashoth mercenaries she’d pay for this one-off, to come over to Kirkwall and deal the Coterie such a bloody nose that they’d get off her back forever, ladder or otherwise.

Hey, you’re the one that mentioned the statuette of limitations, Red. Once you tell us how long that is for lyrium smuggling, I’ll just say it happened that long ago plus a month.

So anyway, they were supposed to go there with just a small sample of the stuff, with Hawke as “James Faulkner”, an eccentric Fereldan nouveau riche who was wasting his parents’ money on a tour of the rest of the world, starting out at Val Chevin, then Cumberland, followed by Kirkwall, then the coastline of the Free Marches, which left Ostwick as his next port of call. Athenril was posing as Varvel, his elfin mistress, because you know, that’s the kind of world we live in.

That said, I don’t think she wasted a single opportunity in their shared quarters reminding Hawke just who was boss.

…I did say I was going to drag you down with me, Hawke. You don’t like how I’m telling this story, you can take over any time. I can pay for my own drinks, you know. Fine, Aveline, I’ll get to it. Where was I? Oh yeah. After riding the rough seas day and night, they finally got within sight of Ostwick, and the loving couple…of business associates…disembarked, with a heavy suitcase of the stuff in tow.

This, as you might expect, is where everything started going wrong. You see, the Coterie firstly didn’t really fail to notice their chief rival, even with her hair and ears wrapped in a headscarf, leaving the city, and secondly, the Coterie happened to have friends of their own in Ostwick, specifically amongst the Templars, whose lyrium addictions they were already feeding, so this really was a ship doomed to sink before it launched. Figuratively, although it could well have been literally too if they had so wished.

Still, they probably wanted their marks to get a little bit further into the city before getting at them, so that they had the opportunity to really make examples of them. Such was it that “James Faulkner” and “Jessica Varvel” rather overconfidently got through the customs, what with their specially lead-lined valise nominally containing the various curios that this Fereldan fop had been picking up on his Grand Tour but instead secreting the good stuff within its secret panels.

Finding lodgings in a chateau so ridiculously beyond their usual accommodations that it’d have broken their budget had they actually intended so stay more than the night, or, well, not just steal it back once they were done in Ostwick, Hawke and Athenril went on to indulge their fantasies of wealth and privilege, strolling through Ostwick’s rich markets and supping on fine food and wine – a fleeting dream, that they only wished they could hold onto for more than just one day…oh, all right, Hawke, I’ll move on. I hate seeing you grumpy.

In truth, they were also reconnoitring the streets, seeing where and how they’d approach the drop-off point, having picked up their contact’s signal at the bottom of a tankard in one of their better establishments, also surveying the rooftops for possible exits and escapes. This in particular would come in handy afterwards, when it all went to shit. Their supposed contact was in fact a mole, a double-agent for the Templars if you will. Safe be it to say that if they had actually turned up at their agreed-upon alleyway in Ostwick they’d have never made it out alive.

But you see, Templars in Ostwick are a bit more of an organised and efficient bunch than the hobnailed thugs…excuse me, Aveline, beleaguered civil servants…we have over here, and from the moment they’d landfall there they were already making preparations to nab the two of them, and as they slept in their down-lined bed, posters were already going up and their informants were already spreading the word that this Fereldan dandy and his elvhen maid were both Public Enemy Numéro Un.

Still, to give Hawke and his lady-boss some credit, they did sense the air shifting outside their room well in time to get dressed into their armour, shoving their finery into their lyrium case, dumping the mass of worthless Lowtown gewgaws onto the carpet, before the Knight-Lieutenant assigned to the case started kicking down the door after his usual “you-are-under-arrest” speech, bolting out of the window to the waiting rooftop outside.

Well, you can imagine the sort of wonderful escapade that resulted. Real exciting stuff, these rooftop chases, what with being weighed down by that precious valise which was the source of all their troubles. Hawke can tell you just how difficult it is to balance on a slanting roof with five pounds dragging you down on one side. Clutching it to his chest like it was a child, Hawke zigzagged his way to the harbour, with Athenril leading him the way there.

It was all going well until he twisted his ankle and slid all the way down a tiled roof to land amongst a pile of grain sacks, only to find himself surrounded by a group of opportunistic bandits who were on the lookout for “James Faulkner.” Wincing in pain as he drew his daggers, Hawke prepared for the inevitable. There were a lot of them and just one of him, and his foot was aching something fierce.

Then, like an avenging spirit, Athenril dove off the next roof, her arrows landing in one thug each, making a perfect descent to the cobblestone quay, fighting her way to Hawke.

“Come on, don’t make me do all the work,” she said, smirking at him.

Returning her grin, he told her, “I was distracting them while you lined your shots up.”

Oh what? You don’t like it when I do the voices?  Fine, Hawke, you do yourself since you know yourself so well, Red, you do Athenril since I can’t hit the high notes. Well, if you’re both going to be like that, no more dialogue. Wet blankets.

Anyhow, you can pretty much guess how that fight went, and eight or nine corpses later, Hawke, still gripping to that case like his life depended upon it – and let’s face it, it probably did – hobbled his way along the waterfront. It was clear that unless they found a boat they’d never make it out of Ostwick. Neither of them being sailors, they settled on a dinghy they cut loose from a docked caravel, slipping between the ships until they made it to the coast.

Well, Ostwick and Kirkwall, different as day and night as they are, do share a common problem, namely big horny men along the shore. Turns out they’re even thicker with Tal-Vashoth than here, because their kinsmen decided to start spreading the Qun at Ostwick, and over time more of them got disillusioned of their ethos, and so they’ve got a worse infestation of wandering, directionless, ox-heads on their stretch of the Wounded Coast.

Wandering and directionless as Hawke and Athenril were at this point, it was pretty much inevitable, really, that they would run into them, and so they did. A camp full of dozens of them wasn’t all that far down the coast, and wounded as Hawke was, there was no way they could fight their way out of that one, so they did the only thing they could think of.

Namely, surrender.

After convincing her of that very point, he crouched down to the valise whilst maintaining eye contact with their leader the whole time and popped open the secret compartments, pulling out the enriched lyrium as it shone in the night. Turning to the saarebas to see their reaction, the leader nodded in approval, gesturing to one of their tents.

And, well, what happened that night, after she tended to his wounds, I leave as Hawke’s prerogative.

They left the next morning on a fishing boat headed for Kirkwall, having impressed upon its captain that they were more trouble than any bounty was worth, with no lyrium, no mages, and no gold, but a fine story to tell and memories of living it up in Ostwick that would last a lifetime. And that, Red, is the story behind that poster on your desk.

“Hawke?”

Varric and Aveline turned to their mute companion. He hadn’t moved an inch since Varric had finished spinning his tale, just sitting quietly in his chair in front of the table and gently tapping at the poster lain upon it. Blinking in silence, he eventually looked back up at them.

“Hm? Oh, right,” he said, “Well told, Varric. Very discreet, very tasteful. Just had to mention my impromptu roof dive though, didn’t you?”

“Well, it does explain why you handed it over to the Tal-Vashoth without a fight.”

“I suppose it does,” Hawke murmured.

Aveline looked over to him concernedly. “Are you feeling all right, Hawke?”

“I’m always all right, Aveline,” he said, standing up. “See you at the Hanged Man tonight? Drinks are on me, and not just Varric’s. Thanks for reminding me of, well, simpler times.”

“I’ll let you know, Hawke,” she said. “We do have a bit of a lull at the moment, hence the social calls. And, well, thank you both. I suppose that is one story I’d been waiting to hear.”

With that, Hawke and Varric, the former still oddly silent, left the Guard-Captain’s office.

“Funny thing,” Varric told the Seeker some unspecified time in the future, “when Aveline came back the very next day that poster was missing from her desk. Some of us say it was next seen pinned to a wall in the Hawke Estate, some say it flittered its way to the Red Lantern district after that, but there’s no way to know one way or another now.”

Cassandra groaned and asked, “Was any of that the truth, dwarf?”, pinching at her slightly throbbing forehead as she did so.

“Well,” Varric said, “it does explain why Hawke remains persona non-grata over in Ostwick, statuette of limitations or otherwise.”

“I suppose it does, at that,” she said. “But is the Champion of Kirkwall really such a…sentimental creature?”

“Lady Seeker,” he asked as he innocently raised his palms, “aren’t we all?”

Letting forth another disgusted noise, Cassandra said, “Absolutely not.”

Still, she too was quiet for a long time before resuming her questioning, idly tracing circles on her copy of The Tale of the Champion with her fingertips as Varric discreetly swiped a drink of grog from her mug. Stories were hard work.

@dadrunkwriting