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bardspeak · 3 months

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And if you lost it all, and you lost it | ao3 link

(Some of) Hawke's letters to Fenris during dragon age inquisition. Hawke was left in the fade here.

Fenris -

I’m sorry for leaving, and I’m sorrier for getting angry that you didn’t want me to. I know you want to be with me, to protect me from what’s to come. I also know that what you could most protect me from is also what could most hurt you. I can’t have that. We protect each other, right?

I’d have you with me if it wouldn’t kill me to see you hurt.

The Inquisition has been looking for me, and Varric has held them off long enough. I guess I’ll find out why it was so important for them soon, but I know for me it’s Corypheus. We were both there – and I’ll never feel safer than when you have my back – but this is a burden of my own. It was my father’s blood that locked him away and mine that set him free. I feel I should be able to know him, understand at least the little my father must have, but I’m just as clueless as anybody else. I just know I can’t sit by and watch him happen to someone else. I hope you can forgive me.

You haven’t said, but I know I’ve been hurting you. I’m not sure why I don’t know how to live without something like this to turn to, to throw myself at. But I won’t drag you into it with me. It doesn’t mean I love you any less, and it doesn’t mean my heart doesn’t ache to be away from you. I love you so much I don’t know what to do with it some of the time. When you’re just gone for the day I’ll turn to tell you when you’re not there. I love your humor, even when you’re laughing at me. I love your anger, even if you’re angry with me now. I love your happiness, and I can’t be sorry enough that it’s not what I’m leaving you with.

You’re with me, even if I didn’t let you be. I’ll be thinking about you all the time. I’ll be dumb enough to forget I left you behind. But I’m leaving my heart there with you.

Make sure nothing happens to it, if it’s not too much trouble.

- Hawke

Fenris -

Varric hasn’t gotten anything from you, but I hope you’re reading this anyhow. I know you hate letters going through him (the nosy rat), so maybe you’re waiting to say whatever it is when I get home. I hope I’m not too long to hear it.

Everything here reminds me of you, even the Inquisitor! She’s not much like you, but I suppose I see an elf glow and I get misty in the eyes. In all seriousness, she’s kind of lovely once you get past the weight of the world on her shoulders. She even got me talking – I told her a couple stories from when it was all of us, and even about that hawk I brought home once. I still have the scar from where he bit me and you didn’t even appreciate the likeness. Still sore about it!

She got me to talk about you, too. But that’s not particularly difficult. What’s the opposite of a sore subject?

Varric’s the same as always, but he seems to feel the weight of Corypheus too. I know I shouldn’t tell him to back off, but come on. That’s my burden! The blood of my father trumps being the guy who came along, in my most expert of books. He’s also in trouble with a seeker here for hiding me for so long. Well. I suppose I’ll take a punch for him, if it comes down to it. Even though he didn’t tell me that CULLEN is a COMMANDER in the INQUISITION!

I couldn’t believe it either! They let him within an egg’s throw of command again? But alas. It’s just like old times, only instead of staring in judgment across the gallows it’s across fields of burly men, or a particularly robust table.

There hasn’t been much action yet, though we’ve gone to see our warden friend. I suppose there’s more than corruption in the ranks, if Corypheus has anything to say about it. I can only be glad Carver’s still in Highever.

Blood magic’s abound, there’s a Tevinter altus (as he so insists) trouncing about the library, and I can’t step three times in any direction without knocking into a templar. But as much as I’m glad you aren’t having to deal with this, I do wish you were here. I miss you more than I can say. Maybe that’s selfish of me. Sorry. You can be cross with me about it when I get back.

I love you! I hope you’re doing well. I always hope you’re doing well.

Don’t forget to walk the dog! I wouldn’t mind if you killed a couple of snakes in my honor, if you’re already at it.

All my love

-Hawke

Fenris,

I’d have given anything to not have to send you this letter. I’d have given anything to send him back home to you. But there was no fighting this. Fighting him.

Hawke is gone.

We were fighting something impossible. The fight had dragged us into the Fade, and that’s where we left him. We couldn’t go back. You know I would have if I could. I’d have been lost right along with him if the rift hadn’t closed behind us.

He slipped from my grasp, gone before I could do anything. The Inquisitor says he stayed behind to save her, shoved her through so she couldn’t even look back, and stayed to fight on his own. He liked her well enough. They got on like a house on fire. Maybe he thought it was something we would have been proud of him for. I’d just have wanted him alive. I know you do too.

He was staying in one of the rooms and I found a note on top of the mess he’d made of his desk. It doesn’t say it, but I know it’s for you. He was wearing his token, though, so I can’t send it with you.

I’m sorry.

Varric.

I’m hoping I’ll be able to throw this away, or it might be some sort of something I bring with me when I come back home. A reminder, maybe, of how much I wish I was there with you. Something to knock me over the head with if I ever decide to leave again. I still hope you never have to read it.

I’ll do anything I can to make it back, I’m not giving up. It just seems like this gets bigger and bigger in my head every day I’m here. You know I’ll throw my lot in with anything I believe in even if it gets me nowhere good. It got me you, though, so it can’t all turn out bad.

This might be the most important thing I’ve ever done, but right now all I can think of is you. I’m still sorry for leaving you, for hurting you and not letting you be with me. I’m also sorry for being glad you’re not here. That feels like the worst thing I’ve ever done, but I know I wouldn’t have been able to say goodbye to you to your face. And you deserve that, if you can’t have a promise kept.

I’m not sure I’ve ever told you how proud I am of you. You’ve been the strongest person I've known since I met you, and you knew my mother. It’s a pretty high bar. But you don’t have to be strong all the time. You can hate me, never want to think of me again, and I’ll still love you. My heart is still there with you whether you choose to bury it or not. I’m not sure I’ll ever live up to how I wish I could love you, but I love you all the same. I still turn to tell you when you’re not here.

-Hawke

#fenhawke #da2 #dragon age #dragon age fic #fenris #hawke #dragon age 2 #writing #i love them a lot. unfortunately me and my friend are planning on leaving hawke in the fade in our thing GNSDLFHD #and my hawke really is so.. he knows he should stay for fenris. that they basically only have each other right now #but he cant help fall on that sword. learned instinct

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bardspeak · 3 months

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My durge's sad lonely funeral for Alfira | ao3 link

Warnings for: Suicidal ideation, handling/preparation of the dead, gore/blood, and durge-typical description.

Kaivir kneels at his bedroll for long enough that his thighs have been aching and trembling long before the sun begins to rise. Blood and viscera dries sticky and cloying on his hands up to his forearms, dipped through the leg of his pants as though he knelt just like this in the spray of her. It flakes off in little chunks though he tries not to move, head dipped low - wrists propped against his knees, palms turned up. Tendons and veins and arteries turned out toward whoever might bring teeth to tender flesh. Punishment or measure of justice. Snap of the whip or relief.

But when the dawn comes - sunlight breaking over the horizon and making their display bright, obvious, dusty, beautiful, and disgusting - and people begin rustling and milling about, when they notice , it’s obvious that of everyone here, only he would have the stomach.

Karlach shouts at him, but like an owner might at a bad dog. A beast who is expected, if discouraged, to disembowel defenseless people - to kill and keep going until claw scrapes raw against bone. A beast expected to kill a woman who wanted shelter for the night, to gain stories to tell and give hope. Expected to splay her out across the campsite. There’s a sigil of blood under her body that they ignore in favor of a convenient explanation.

Ignore the beast with obvious intention.

They all have something to say, a false laugh getting caught at the back of their teeth or an admonition that meets the bad dog where it’s at. And they all watch but don’t look as he gathers her body in his arms. They glare, Lae’zel reaches for her sword, but they don’t move to stop him. Was she this small before? Was she this small when she was working on her song, smiling up at him, asking him for a chance? Was she this small when he was killing her? Was she so small and feeling it, or was she small and dead before it could hurt?

Her shoulders are still smooth and unmarred, skin soft and ice cold against his as he hefts her up, thighs continuing to burn and shake as he brings her to Withers - the gazes of his companions at his back.

His voice croaks as though with disuse, though it hasn’t been long since he last spoke. The back of his throat aches and burns. “I didn’t mean to kill Alfira,” he tells Withers - voice coming out weak, reedy and pathetic - laying her down delicately in front of the skeleton. Careful placement of her hands at her sides. It matters little to Withers, who stares down at him with the shadows of his face obscuring eyes. “Please bring her back,” he adds, a raspy whisper, though he can already see the answer.

“The bard’s death is a weight for thine own conscience to bear,” Withers says, finger outstretched as if in instruction. Bad dog. “She will be left to the peace of eternity, where the Urge shall seek her no more.”

And if Withers knows the Urge, Withers would have known if there was a way to stop it before he did this. And if Withers knows the Urge, Withers would know if Alfira being alive would mean she could never be free of him.

He ducks his head - swallows against the hot, red, bloody feeling in his throat - and gathers her in his arms again. He paces her back and forth like a caged beast until the wet drip of shame down his neck pushes him away from their eyes.

The river might wash away the blood enough that wildlife wouldn’t come for her body. The river is symbolic, he thinks, of death somewhere - if not of hers. The river is further from camp. The river is pretty. So he brings her there, just to the bank, and washes the blood off of his hands so he can wash it off of hers. There’s nothing under her nails, the beast notes, like she’d been unable or unwilling to put up a fight. Washing her only reveals more wounds, though her body is too cold to bleed anymore. Her purple-tinged hair tangles around his fingers.

The lutes - both hers and that of her teachers - he puts further up so that they don’t get wet. It wouldn’t be good for them, he guesses distantly, not if she wanted to play them again. Bloodied musical notation goes with them. She doesn’t have much else.

He still doesn’t remember killing her, can’t fathom wanting to, but setting her things aside and cleaning the blood from inside her - the cavity out of which her slippery organs spill forth and do not go back in no matter how he tries - makes his hands shake. A phantom sensation or imagining of tearing them into her flesh. Of warm blood pooling between his fingers and twitching muscles resisting him to a point. Of tears rolling down his face, though now his eyes run insidiously dry.

It might not be real. He might not have cried.

She’s as clean as she’ll get without undressing her, which he doesn’t want to do. It feels wrong to be her killer and be the one to do so, but the thought of asking another in camp makes his throat ache hot and wrong again. Wyll is watching without looking from his vantage point, tent looking flimsy in the light of day. Withers stands across the bank. Karlach only behind a few grasses and branches. They might not trust him to not attack them. They might not wish to help her killer with her lonely funeral. They condemn her death but looking at the both of them would be too much. He’s washed the blood out of the fabric so that it stains but the smell isn’t so strong, and it’ll have to be enough. She can still wear it.

Her hair is still twisted wet around her neck, mussed and matted around the style she’d put it in, so he starts combing it out as gently as he can with his hands. It tangles still, and terribly - the water and the blood flattening and sticking the strands to each other. A half hour, the sun standing taller, and it’s at least managed enough that it doesn’t cover her face or her neck. But the sun might give her a burn, so he blocks it with his hands for some time until he blinks hard, realizes it’s not going away, and shades her in the trees instead.

He doesn’t know what sort of funeral she’d have wanted. He doesn’t know her at all, except for her teacher and her song. And it wasn’t finished, and he doesn’t remember it, so nobody could sing it. He wouldn’t have been able to play it, with or without her.

A shallow grave, some part of him decides while the rest has only been looking at her, right there in the reeds. Burials are practiced in most every culture, if not primarily in some. He has a shovel in his pack, somewhere, if they haven’t already taken his things. But even if they have, it’s only fair to dig it with his hands. He killed her with them after all.

More time passes while he shifts cold, wet dirt with his hands. Small stones get caught under his nails. The noises of camp fade behind the water, the dirt, and her silence - they might be watching him, or breaking bread, or already left them. They might not wait much longer than they already have, so he stops digging once his hands are aching down to the bone and the hole is deep enough to cover her by a few inches, at least. He leaves her by the bank, water drifting lazily at her feet and reeds shifting in the wind above her head, to go back up to camp.

They haven’t left, and they still aren’t looking. He grabs his bedroll and takes it back to her, tucking her into it as best he can - to hold her together, and because he found it soft. It almost looks like she’s sleeping, nestled into furry warmth and hair wet and sort of combed. A child tucked into bed, except her blue cheeks aren’t flushed with sleep or fever, and he can’t recall ever seeing a sleeping child anyhow.

It’s inappropriate, like it would have been to undress her, but he doesn’t seem to be able to help leaning down and pressing a trembling kiss to her brow. Like an impulse, or another thing piloting his body, or muscle without the memory.

Alfira, he remembers with intent as he tucks a small, escaped strand of her hair back into the bedroll. Apprentice to Lihala. The Weeping Dawn, the song, the eulogy to her master. He remembers parts. The bloodied papers remember others, legible between pools of red.

He lays her in the grave, then, and buries her. He tries to hum the parts he knows as he works, but his throat closes only a few stanzas in.

It’s faster than digging, but still the sun is high in the sky when he’s done and has been burning the back of his neck. His whole body trembles with effort, with exhaustion - lack of sleep and water and food but mostly what’s been done. He’d never put shoes on, he blinks to realize, neither to kill her or bury her. There’s still blood soaked into his pants.

The reeds are disturbed and messy, but he hopes they’ll grow back. At her head there’s rocks and trees and no headstone he can conjure. He takes both of the lutes in one hand, necks crowded against each other and squeezing the bones of his fingers so he can hold her papers in the other hand. Walking back to camp, soaked in water and blood and mud and holding her things, he instinctively bares his teeth at anyone who might look at him.

But they avoid doing so now, while he lays them tenderly in his pack, which they also haven’t yet taken from him. They’re all standing with their bags packed beside them, so he dresses, pins himself back into his armor with sand in his hair and her blood invisible from him but for the stickiness left at his elbows, his neck under the armor. His hair is wet against his forehead when he looks up to the sky. They still seem to take their cues from him, even as they glare, turn their noses, or stink of fear. They’re ready to leave the camp, if ready is something he can be. He wishes any of them had learned the song, or had the stomach.

#bg3 #bg3 oc #the dark urge #bg3 fic #bg3 durge #writing #kaivir #this is based on how i played the game after her death. left her body by the river and took the lutes with me. im up in act 3 now with them #he has a lot of people to remember

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