Chapter Text
The Wardens bed down for the night in twos and threes. Almost no one is left alone, and those who are, prefer their own company.
Alistair sets up their bedrolls as he has every night, a little apart from the others, and a little apart from each other. Then he stands over the bedding a moment, expression thoughtful before kneeling and sliding the rumpled quilts closer together, until the ends overlap and it’s one big space for the pair of them. He gives her a wide, sheepish sort of grin that makes her heart flip several times over.
They clamber in together, dressed and damp, into the little space they've built for themselves, and Bethany leans in towards Alistair, and he curls himself around her, pillowing his head against her breasts.
His hair is still damp at the back of his head, and she cards her fingers through the short spikes with a sigh, trying to remember when she’s been happier. It’s almost absurd. Here, down in the dark, hungry and cold and blurry with exhaustion; she is happy.
“And I don’t even know your last name,” she whispers almost to herself.
Alistair runs a hand over his face, barely visible in the darkness. “Technically I don’t have one,” he says after a long moment. “And it doesn’t matter anyway. You give up who you were when you join the Wardens.”
Bethany closes her eyes. What she gave up was everything. Her mother. Her brother. Even Gamlen with all his faults and flaws was family, and he'd taken them in when they had nothing.
And yet—
her heart gives a happy bump bump
—she found Alistair.
She found love.
Extraordinary.
“I almost didn't go with my brother, you know,” she says quietly. “Garrett… he wanted Aveline. He already had a mage in Anders, but no warriors.”
Alistair reaches over silently and takes her hand, holding it between his palms, thumbs stroking against her knuckles. It feels good enough that Bethany’s breath catches a little.
Just a little.
“I asked to go with him," she continues. "I was a brat about it actually. I thought… Carver would have been with him, if he could.” Her voice breaks a little on her twin’s name, but she pretends it doesn’t.
“He shouldn’t have let you go,” Alistair croaks. “He shouldn’t — Maker Beth, the Order is meant for people who have nothing else left. It shouldn’t. You had — have a family. People — a mother and brother who love you. It just isn’t — you shouldn’t have to give them up. You shouldn’t have to give anything up. You should have all the things people are supposed to have, Beth. Every one of them.”
He is so absolutely indignant that Bethany smiles. “What are people supposed to have?”
“A home,” he says promptly, “with a roof and windows, and a lock on the door. A proper bed, with a wood frame and extra quilts and everything. Wood stacked to the ceiling so you’d never be cold.” He takes a breath, and some of the indignation wears away from his voice. “Chickens maybe. Somewhere. Probably not in the house. Children. One or two perhaps. Probably have to keep those in the house.” He folds both his hands around hers, voice solemn. “And a… a garden. With flowers growing in it. Yellow ones, and the other kinds that smell nice. And just — food, and warmth, and safety, and family, and a future, Beth.” his voice cracks on the word.
Bethany’s heart clenches. It’s Alistair who dreamed of home, and family. She only ever dreamed of not having magic.
“You should have those things too,” she says.
“I was never going to have those things, Beth,” he says quietly. “The Order gave me more than it ever took. Purpose. Friendship. A place to belong.” His fingertip traces over the curve of her jaw. “Love.” The word is all quiet hesitancy.
“It gave me love too,” Bethany whispers back, and brushes a lock of damp hair off his brow.
His answering smile is small, but blinding and full of wonder. He kisses her forehead, and the tip of her nose, and then her lips, tenderly. "Say that again," he breathes against her mouth.
"I love you," she says between kisses. “I love you, love you, love you.”
Alistair kisses her through the blur of I love yous. Until each word is little more than a gasp of breath. He kisses her jawline, and her neck, and works his way down to her collarbones. He kisses her bare shoulders, and the slopes of her breasts, thumbs brushing at her nipples through the fabric of her tunic.
Something warm and syrupy stirs in the cradle of her hips.
Something bright, and eager.
"I haven't your excuse, Beth but…"
"But?" Something about Alistair's touch makes it difficult to focus on anything else. Maybe because it’s slow, and teasing, and he’s got his knee slotted between her legs. Or maybe it’s because her mana has been creeping back, and with it, the effects of joining. That hollow need that’s all heat and bottomless hunger.
The tips of her fingers tingle.
Alistair chuckles, the sound of it muffled against the fabric of her tunic. “But if you’d like… I’d very much like… to make love to you, Beth. Er… probably more than once,” he adds, cheeks coloring faintly.
“I want—” she cuts herself off with a frown, uncertain. That word has held them apart from one another for so long. And she's half afraid that if he knows it’s back—
“Hey,” Alistair says, curling his hand around her cheek. “I want, too.” He tucks a stray curl behind her ear. “So much. For so long.” His thumb catches her lower lip, teasing a smile out of her. He presses a kiss to her lips. "I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
"I do." And there's something there, a seriousness edge in his voice she’s so rarely seen. He swallows hard enough that she can see the bump in his throat wobble. “I love you, Bethany Hawke.”
His smile is tiny, all tremulous at the edges.
Hers is as bright as the sun.
She grabs his ears and pulls him down for a proper kiss. One that’s all breath and joy and swallowed giddiness and swallowed laughter.
“Bethany,” he husks. “Beth…Maker, Beth," and kisses her some more.
His mouth drifts down, across her jaw, pressing a line of teasing bites down her throat and the deep neckline of her tunic. One of his hands is at her breast, the other carefully crumples the fabric of her tunic into his fist, slowly inching it upwards. He skims his touch across her bare flank with a sound so full of wonder that she knows she’ll remember it for the rest of her days, and slides his body lower, planting an open-mouthed kiss against her stomach.
The faint stubble on his chin rasps, and she shivers at the sensation.
"Ticklish?" Alistair asks, delighted. He scuffs his face against her deliberately, just to be certain, and she writhes against him with a soft, swallowed laugh. “Oh,” he breathes.
He kisses her belly again, very carefully, and continues his slow, teasing journey down down down her skin, until he reaches the waistband of her breeches. He tugs at the laces with his teeth, and grins up at her. And Bethany’s heart does a ridiculous sort of flip that has little to do with the white hot flare of heat in her loins.
He uses his teeth to get her laces undone — nearly snarling them into a knot in the process — but he uses his hands to work her breeches and smalls off her hips. Inching them down as a bright flare of desire breaks out across her skin like a heatwave. He leans forward, breath gusting across bare skin and Bethany cannot stop a tiny sound of need from escaping her.
Alistair’s mouth quirks up into a lopsided smile as he nudges her thighs apart, slinging one knee over his shoulder. “May I?” he asks breathlessly.
She swears roundly, in desperate affirmation, and cants her hips up towards him.
Alistair chuckles, and bends to his task.
His mouth is wet heat. All suction and sensation and the deep, approving growl that thrums in the back of his throat like thunder. And it’s—
She grabs at his head. The pleasure is so intense that she doesn’t know if she means to pull him off, or hold him between her thighs forever, until fire inside her burns itself out.
"Oh, forever is good," Alistair says blearily.
The hands in his hair become a sharp tug as she grips him, desire spiking sharply. Starved for his touch though his hands are everywhere, and his mouth is everywhere, and the weight of him presses against her.
The heat Alistair stokes between her thighs isn’t low, or lazy, or blunt with exhaustion like it was at the pools. It’s a bright, terrible thing, all sharp-edged and desperate.
He comes up for a breath, grinning. “Like that do you?”
Bethany makes a wrecked sound.
“Oh? That good, eh?” His expression is too gratified to be deemed a smirk, but it’s close.
His hips rock back and forth a little, a tiny pantomime that’s part reflex and part anticipation. But he keeps the heat of his mouth between her legs, wet and bright, making deep, rumbly noises of approval as she dissolves into a puddle of pure sensation beneath him. There’s too much to feel, so she focuses on the tiny details of him to keep from being completely overwhelmed.
The scrape of his teeth.
The rasp of his stubble.
The stir of his tongue.
The deep slide of his fingers.
Her hips shift and flutter as he breathes quite praise into her skin.
Bethany tips forward against him with a silent cry, every nerve brightly overloaded. A rush of heat that builds and builds and builds until everything is outlined in fire.
A bright, blinding light.
A roar of bliss.
Alistair keeps his mouth against her as she comes. Keeps her hips steady. Keeps her heart beating as the whole world dissolves around her.
"Maker, Beth." He raises himself up, face slick. Shifting his weight. Reaching between his legs to the tangle of his laces and tugging them open, one-handed. He cups himself, all heat and hardness before pressing forward, against her, into her. He gasps, and stills completely. A breath and beat, as if he’s too overwhelmed to even think about moving. Then he makes a tight sound and begins to grind his hips, working himself deeper and deeper with every slow, careful thrust.
“Alistair,” she tugs at his hips, trying to urge him deeper still.
He smiles, and tangles their hands together. First one, then the other, and brings them to his lips, brushing a tender kiss across the backs of her knuckles.
“Alistair…”
“Shhh,” he presses each of her hands above her head and holds them there, gently. “I’ve got you.”
She squeezes his hands back, and rolls her hips against him, grinning. “I’ve got you, too.”
He swears. A quiet surussus of breath against her neck, and begins to move in earnest.
Alistair whispers to her through the bright staccato motion of his hips. Things like beautiful and everything and please and love. He whispers other things too, but the words fragment and fall away until there is just the sound of her name, over and over like a ragged litany. “Bethany, Bethany, Bethany, Beth… ”
Pleasure builds like the thrum of a heartbeat. Steady. Pounding. Driving on and on. Faster and faster.
She tips her head up to kiss Alistair, but it’s hardly a kiss, just another way their bodies slide together. Open mouths and harsh pants, and he breathes her name against her mouth, each syllable broken into its own little sound.
His thrusts speed up, then slow down, then speed up again. Rhythm suddenly as ungainly as his breathing.
"Gods. Maker."
Bethany's toes curl, and her heart bursts, and she can't tell which of them makes that fractured sound. But it’s loud enough to echo in the dark.
A cry of completion and joy.
Alistair is perfectly rigid above Bethany, carrying enough of his own bodyweight, one-handed so he doesn't squash her. A fine tremor runs through him as he bends his neck, resting his forehead momentarily against hers. Then he makes a broken sound as he slides out. Holds himself upright, breathing hard, arms trembling. A single drop of sweat slides down the bridge of his long nose.
And the world is utterly perfect and peaceful.
Bethany floats for what feels like forever, a single hand still clinging to Alistair. She’s too sated and heavy-limbed to do more than breathe. Certainly not think. She can’t even count their heartbeats, but she acknowledges every one, steady and slow and nearly in sync with one another. Tiny drums in the dark.
She feels Alistair shift above her, and instinctually grips him, fingers twisting around his in an effort to keep him close. He chuckles quietly, and carefully disentangles himself from her.
Bethany makes a flat sound of complaint.
“Greedy.” He murmurs, and kisses her on her nose.
She tips her chin up for a proper kiss, and he obliges, lips soft and sweet and faintly salt from their lovemaking.
He double checks the gear they have piled up next to their bedroll, then rucks Bethany's clothes back into place, and drags her against him, tucking them both into bed, pulling the fraying quilts high over her shoulders. He strokes the curve of her skull, fingers carding through the spill of inky curls.
How the world has changed in a single day.
"Beth, I wasn’t…" Alistair starts, voice scratchy with exhaustion. He falls suddenly silent, and presses a kiss to her temple, fingers still working soothingly through her hair. “I... wasn’t allowed a last name, because I was born a bastard,” he says very softly after a moment. “But… Theirin.”
“Oh, ha ha. I am Fereldan,” Bethany nudges him through the blankets. “I know what that name means.”
But Alistair is staring straight up into the darkness above them, body rigid, face blank but lined with a tense sort of misery.
He isn’t joking.
What?
“Alistair, you—” She rests a careful hand on his chest and sits up. Even through the fabric of his tunic she can feel his heart hammering. “But that would make you—”
“It would make me nothing.” He interrupts tersely, and grabs her hand. She thinks she might shrug off her touch, but he just folds their hands together, fingers interlinking. “It isn’t safe Beth,” he says softly. “Most everyone who knew I existed is either dead or… or rather happy to think that I’m dead. Or both."
She frowns, and leans over to plant a kiss on their interwoven fingers.
Alistair's hand lifts unconsciously to cup the back of her head. “The whole of my life I never fit anywhere. Not at court. Not with the Templars. But the Warden’s take anyone, don’t they?” He smiles at her, but there’s pain in his eyes. Bright and glimmering with a razor sharp edge. “Even unwanted nobody’s who pose a threat to Ferelden’s monarchy. And though no one has ever even bothered to ask me, I never wanted anything to do with—” he makes a frustrated sound through his teeth, “politics.”
And that’s Aveline to the bone. That ferocious disdain for a world that sets politics above people. And Bethany knows in that moment he'd make a terrible King.
And a fantastic one.
“Does anyone else know?” She asks quietly.
“No,” he shakes his head. “Not for certain, at least. I think Stroud suspects. He was a Chevalier for half his life. Grew up too close to court-life, the nosy git. The Order brought him in from Orlais when I wouldn't lead them. Poor man. The Fereldan armor isn't nearly as fancy. No griffon feathers or lacy underthings in sight.” His mouth twists into a smile, but she can see how forced the expression is. “I did petition Weisshaupt for the lacy underthings, though. They said no. Bloody cheapskates. That's gratitude for stopping a blight.”
“Alistair…”
“I’ve already decided to let the next one slip right through.”
“Alistair.”
“It’s thongs for the lot of us, or I won't lift a finger.”
“Alistair.”
He sighs, and brings her hand to his lips, suddenly serious again. “I know, Beth. Just leave it. Please. It’s a mess, and I don’t know how to begin to untangle it. And I don't need to. I'm right where I want to be. Or, almost..." He snags her around the waist and pulls her down flush against him. One hand threads itself back into her curls, the other drifts cheekily down to her buttock. "There. Now I'm right where I want to be."
Bethany sighs, a quiet happy sound, and slips her hand beneath the neckline of his tunic where she can feel his heartbeat beneath her fingertips. “So am I.”
***
It is four years, eight months, and twenty-three days before Bethany sees her brother again.
Kirkwall’s silhouette is unrecognizable whenever it is visible, which it mostly isn't . There’s enough smoke and silt in the sky that it nearly blocks out the sun, and the world seems to flit eerily from day to night and back again with each passing breeze.
And worst of all, the air is brimful of magic. Or, the aftermath of magic. It’s a spent husk, angry and desperate. An echo of the mage who cast it.
And Maker protect them all, it feels like Anders.
Or it feels like the parts of Anders that felt like Justice — all harsh and spirit-scorched. Like the wine at the bottom of the bottle that’s still the same wine, but is too intense to drink. There’s so much Justice now, it’s overwhelming.
(But Anders is still in there somewhere, faint and mellow. A note of elderberry lingering on the back of the palette.)
(Maker, she doesn't know what will happen if he disappears entirely.)
Kirkwall is on fire. Parts of it. Most of it, it looks like from here, though Bethany isn’t really sure where here is. Not Hightown, she doesn't think. Near the docks maybe, but she can’t smell the sea, only the sour reek of death by fire.
She needs to find her brother.
The Hanged Man? Uncle Gamlen’s house?
She closes her eyes against the smoke, and the bitter smell of the place. Where are you Garrett?
“Huh,” Alistair says behind her, pointing. “Isn’t that...?”
Oh shit.
It is.
It's a full-length, marble statue of her bloody older brother. About 10 feet tall, bearded and stern, with a ridiculous crimson streak across his nose, and a wicked pair of daggers in his hands , and his foot planted on — is that a Qunari skull?
“Huh,” Alistair says again.
The words Champion of Kirkwall are engraved in gold leaf along the bottom, and it’s as telling as the statue itself of how far Garrett has risen that no one's tried to scrape off the gold to sell. And oh Maker, please let it not be a memorial to her brother.
“He’s here, I’m sure of it.” Alistair grips her shoulder, and plants a reassuring kiss against her temple. “He struck me as the sort that's rather hard to kill.”
And well, he isn't wrong.
But if there was anyone who reached for death with open arms, and a smile...
She grips Alistair’s hand and tries to press down the rising panic inside her.
They walk past smoke filled streets, going up — she thinks — towards the heart of the city. They encounter no one, which is almost eerier than the smoke, and the fires, and the distant screams. Kirkwall is a city always on the verge of overflowing. Too many people shoved into too little space. But now it's so empty that even a corpse might be comforting.
Maker, what happened here?
The wind shifts, and Bethany gets a faceful of smoke, and then she sees him.
His back is turned to her. Head to toe in unfamiliar, blood red armor. Hair shaggy enough to fall well past his collar. But she'd recognize him anywhere. She'd recognize him in the pitch dark with only her heart to guide her.
“Garrett! Garrett!”
He straightens, slow and jerky like a man half-caught in a dream, and drops the oh Maker that’s a dead Templar in a heap at his feet.
A swoop of that old fear deep in her gut, and she freezes. “What — ?”
“Bethany!” He bellows from across the clearing and rushes at her, figure blurring and blinking across the courtyard, and she’s never understood how rogues can bend space like that without magic. But he's at her side in a moment, between the span of one heartbeat and the next. Their breastplates clang together together as he wraps her in a hug so enormous, it all but knocks her off her feet.
His armor is stupidly pointy, and not at all good for hugging, but she hangs on anyway, laughing and crying all at once.
“I knew it, Bethany. I knew you weren’t dead. I told Mother—” a choked sound into her hair. “I knew it.”
“There’s so much I want to tell you,” Bethany says helplessly, voice cracking on every other syllable.
“It was my fault,” Garrett mutters. And that heavy guilt in his voice might be anything. The Deep Roads. Carver. The fact that Kirkwall seems to be actively burning to the ground, and he's red to the elbows in dead Templar.
He mutters a blur of I’m sorrys into her hair, and she grips him even tighter, wrapping him in the protective shell of her magic because she can feel the exhaustion and terror winding around his bones, and he’s her brother, and she loves him, damnit. “I don’t blame you.”
“Idiot. Probably should.”
“Probably,” Bethany concedes with a wet sort of laugh. “But I don’t.”
He pulls away from the hug enough to eye her up and down. “So, they kept you.” He tugs at the shoulder seam of her uniform, where the blue gives way to a hint of silver. “You’re a Warden now.”
“And you’re a – a Champion? The Champion. I saw your statue.”
“Viscount, actually.” He scrubs his hand across his face, neatly smearing the streak of scarlet across the bridge of his nose. “Or the nearest thing to it.”
Bethany blinks.
Last she knew her family was living cheek by jowl in Gamlen’s foul smelling hovel, manhandling third-rate bandits, just to get by, and now her idiot older brother is Viscount of Kirkwall.
“What in the Maker’s name has been going on here?” She breathes, then coughs, waving away the smoke that wreathes them. Her voice drops. “And why are you murdering Templars?”
Garrett grinds his teeth together, jaw tightly clenched. “There isn't time to explain.” There’s something in his voice that is just so lost and bleak that for the first time she thinks to look for—
No Isabela.
No Aveline.
No Varric.
No anyone.
Her brother is a human magnet. He draws people into his orbit with an almost laughable ease. Garrett might have been twelve the last time she saw him alone — when there wasn’t someone hanging on his arm or his word or with bated breath.
She licks the sudden chill off her lips. “Garrett, where is everyone?”
“At the Gallows, Bethy. What's left of it, anyway. How are you at fighting abominations?” He grabs her hand and starts to pull her away with him, into the smoke of Kirkwall, but Alistair reaches out, quick as anything and snags her other hand, tugging back.
“Excuse me,” Garrett says, glaring, “but that's my sister you’ve got there.”
“Yes, and that's my wife you've got.” Alistair doesn't glare nearly as well as her brother does, but he manages a respectable level of sternness.
Garrett's glare shifts to a squint. “I remember you. Alistair, was it?” Garrett eyes him up from boots to cowlick in one neat flick of his hazel eyes. “Oh yes, you are just her type.”
“I don’t have a type.” Bethany huffs, because honestly, her brother is the worst.
And Alistair — traitorously — bursts into a snort of laughter that he doesn’t even bother to muffle, and Garrett gives her a smile that’s the same as it’s ever been, wide and white and charming when it isn’t menacing, and it’s always a bit of both.
Garrett drops Bethany’s hand with a tiny mock-bow, and grasps Alistair’s free one instead, swinging it back and forth as though he was a child on his way to a candy shop. “Well, come on then little brother, we've got to go save all the mages.”
Alistair blinks rather bewilderedly at Garrett’s hand in his, but follows all the same. “Am I the little brother, then? I'm older, I think.”
(He isn't.)
Garrett snorts. “So? I'm taller—”
(He isn't.)
“—and better looking,” her brother adds firmly. “So I’m the big one. Bethany agrees. Don’t you, Bethy-whatever-your-last-name-is-now? ” He raises his eyebrows expectantly at her.
“Hawke,” she offers.
“Then what’s his last name?”
“Also Hawke,” Alistair mutters.
And Garrett takes the world in stride. All the bumps and bruises and unexpected brother-in-laws. It’s what Bethany has always loved about him best.
“Three Hawkes in Kirkwall?” Her brother bursts out in a gusty laugh that's all rust around the edges. “The Knight-Commander is so very fucked now. This day is turning around quite nicely. ”
Which means for sure it’s going to be the worst sort of day.
And it is.
But…
After it is done, and the Gallows have been cracked open and bled dry, and Bethany herself has bled, and cried, and wondered — twice — if she might be killed; she sits in the on the floor of the courtyard. Alistair is at her back, his arms folded her middle, and his breath against her ear, and her magic on his skin. Her brother is in the background, bellowing orders at anyone with the energy left to listen.
“This seems an excellent time to remind you that I love you very much, Bethany Hawke,” Alistair nuzzles into her hair.
“You do?”
He squeezes her once, tightly. She can feel his smile against the curve of her neck. “Yes, I believe I do.”
The sun comes out over the husk that is Kirkwall. Bright and warm. Cutting through the smoke-dreary haze like magic.
Bethany turns her face to the sun, and squeezes Alistair back.
Things could be much worse, she supposes.