Chapter Text
9:34 Dragon - Kirkwall
Some days, Merrill does not leave her house. It’s very easy, with pieces of the eluvian about her, almost making patterns; the lore in her head nearly making sense. Her room is thick with dust and dead flowers, her mug close by and her plates clean because eating is bodied and complicated and when she is just a little bit giddy some of the patterns she needs begin to fit, the world ringing and clear.
Today, she did leave. Her head is full of Lowtown’s markets, her skin damp with rain and the weight of her purchases cutting red lines into her palms to match Varric’s string. He’d gone with her, kind and quick-talking, saying she needed air and food as much as any other daisy.
He does that, she thinks. Checks on people, even when it means sneaking into the Gallows to see Bethany, or walking from one end of the Hanged Man to the other so that Fenris and Anders can complain about each other in different spaces.
“Everything’s a mess,” he’d said to her today. “Doesn’t mean you have to get lost.”
“I’m not lost,” she’d told him. “Just busy. Are you lost?”
“I—“
“—Is this about Hawke, Varric? Has she started with you, too?”
His smile had tilted, the gold at his chest painting small, flicker-shadows against his skin. “Started what, Daisy?”
“...being Hawke, I suppose.”
He had laughed. There’d been sighing in it, and then smoke and drums. A shift in the crowd that made him say oh, shit, and: “Are you coming?” followed right up by: “no, don’t. I’ll find Hawke,” that made her want to kick him in the shins. Just a little.
Hawke only asks for Merrill’s help when Anders is too tired for magic. And the shopping should be put away.
Varric had left her at her door. And now Isabela is in her room.
This is strange. Isabela shouldn’t be any rooms. Ships have berths, instead. Merrill remembers that. The tangle of new words she learned crossing from Ferelden into Kirkwall in boats that stank and rocked and turned half the clan green. They’d two berths between them all, and—
--Creators. What did that matter? Isabela stands before her, thick shards from her one window glinting sadly about her feet. Merrill’s groceries are there too. She doesn’t remember dropping the basket.
“I’m normally a better housebreaker,” she says. “Blasted book threw out my balance.”
Merrill blinks. Isabela holds a book under one arm, half wrapped in sacking. Bright colours show through. Orange. A sky blue she has never in ink. The script isn’t in Trade, isn’t anything elvhen.
“What is that thing?”
Not the words Merrill wants to ask, though it feels like there’s a little bit of “where were you?” and “are you safe?” shaking in in the corners.
“Something I don’t want any more.” Isabela says. “It’s not worth the trouble.”
Merrill swallows. “What trouble?”
“All my trouble.”
“So…you’ve come back?” Merrill steps forward. There’s glass under her bare feet, harder to see than her bruised fruit and flatbread, but it’s still far too thick to cut. She doesn’t know why Isabela makes a face. No matter. She steps. She reaches. Isabela’s free hand catches hers.
“I missed you,” Merrill says. “I know you haven’t been gone long, of course, but I thought you were. Everyone does. Hawke was furious.” A pause. “More furious.”
Isabela rolls her eyes. “Of course she was. It’ll be even worse once I get her arse out of this mess. I should be there now. I was just going, but I wanted—” she shakes her head.
“You wanted?” Merrill swallows. There’s something special about that word, sometimes. It fits in her mouth like a secret and Isabela’s eyes are bright in her tired, grimy face. She speaks secrets.
“I always want, kitten.”
“I wanted,” Merrill says. She fizzes with it; her fingers slide up on the inside of Isabela’s wrist. “To see you again, I mean. I always—I—me too, I mean.” Elgar’nan.
A slow smile. A tiny huff of laughter that licks up into all the spaces Merrill has left. “I wasn’t even sure you’d be here, kitten. I thought you might be with Hawke. There’s a huge bit of mess, and I need—well. I can clean it up. Just this once.”
“Hawke…doesn’t take me places,” Merrill says. “Not often. She’s still cranky I threw her out of the house.”
“You did?” her eyes grow wide. “Where was I?”
“I have no idea.”
Isabela sighs gustily. “Well,” she says. “When I get back, you have to tell me. Every bit.”
Merrill smiles. “You’re coming back?”
Isabela’s hair tickles her cheek as she leans down, lips brushing Merrill’s forehead. “For you, kitten? I’ll even promise.” The smuggled book digs into Merrill’s side.
“Good,” Merrill says. She lifts her chin, flushing as the space between them shrinks with every breath they both take. “And you didn’t need to break in, Isabela. The lock doesn’t work very well. I liked that window.”
Isabela doesn’t say anything. But that’s all right. She’s not the sort to make promises twice. Merrill pulls away, but she kisses her own fingertips, watches in delight as something soft and wondering uncurls in the new smile she feels when she brushes them against Isabela’s lips.
Isabela nods. Just once, and walks away.
At the end of the day, the Qunari are gone. There is a clamour as they leave Kirkwall, the alienage milling as people come in from the docks full of stories about dead shem and shouting.
“Your boss,” a child says to Merrill as she joins them. She can’t remember his name, which is poor of her. As bad as the whispered Dalish or witch that follows her about.
I am not a very good First.
The thought is familiar, slipping through even as he talks and she catches on the word boss with confusion. “I’m sorry?”
“Your Hawke,” he says. “She made ‘em go away.”
“Oh,” Merrill says. She remembers Varric’s face. The smoke. Isabela’s talk of messes. Isabela.
(“When I get back…”)
Merrill visits the Hanged Man. Stickiness and warmth. Old beer and older straw. Varric in his chair and Hawke leaning near it, smile hot and hectic, dangerous as melting glass.
“Merrill!” she says. “I’m a Champion.”
Merrill swallows. She can see Anders, eyes safely warm and brown. He looks less tired than usual. His face is tilted up to Hawke’s, while Fenris is scowling at cracks in the table. There’s Aveline, too. She looks very strange. Pale, chin set. Freckles stand out like blood on her cheeks.
“Oh? What’s that?” Merrill asks.
Hawke laughs. “Me.”
Merrill watches Fenris curl his llp. She isn’t sure if he’s more exasperated, or amused.
“Reductive,” he says.
“I—“ Merrill swallows. “Is it because of the Qunari?” she asks. “I heard you did something.”
“Did something?” Hawke takes a pull at her glass, throat working. “I sorted it out. Before Meredith could get antsy. They’re gone.” She shakes her head. “I am never going to understand religion,” she says. “Yours, Merrill. My mother’s. The Qun. Four years here, all because of a book.”
“A sacred book,” Fenris mutters.
“”Well, they’ve got it back and I wish them joy,” Hawke says, leaning down at letting her hand fall to the table near his. “Far, far-away joy.”
“And Isabela with them?” Aveline. The words were edged. Muscles tick in her jaw and neck as sweat starts up in the small of Merrill’s back. The inside of her elbows. Her palms. She watches as Hawke finishes her drink. Watches Varric wince and Anders sigh and Fenris make another one of those noises that say anger and a whole roiling lot of other mess beneath it.
She watches.
“Please stop, Aveline,” Hawke says. “I did what I could with what was in front of me.”
“She was in front of you.” Aveline snorts. “Trusting you, too.”
“Hawke?” The name is hard. Merrill tries it again. “Hawke, what—“
“Maker. I don’t know why you’re the one who’s upset about this,” Hawke says. The words fly past Merrill, aimed at Aveline’s scowl. “You’re at each other’s throats.”
“I told you.” Aveline folds her arms. “If anyone’s going to kick her ass, it should be me.”
“So I should have refused?” Raised eyebrows and a laugh that makes Merrill’s toes curl against the floor, her skin feel far too big for her body. “Defended her, after all that dance? That’s leaving room for a lot more death, just because she was—“
“—What was she, Hawke?” a pause. “Yours? That’s…unsettling.”
“Hawke.” Merrill isn’t very good at shouting. Something splits in every voice every time, and she must look like she’s crying because people always make soothing noises, even when she’s telling them to watch out for traps, or a spider as big as her head is ready to take bits of out of their arm. Still, she manages it. Ragged and wild, with silence for its shadow.
At least Hawke never makes noises.
“What did you do?” Merrill asks. “Where is Isabela?”
Hawke tells her.
Some days, Merrill does not leave her house. She imagines herself back there, the words unheard, her floor littered with glass. She imagines gathering it up. Filling hours with cleaning. She would, she thinks, take extra care. Wiping and dusting and putting a new leg on her chair so it stops tipping every time someone uses it. She’d cover the eluvian in its sheet, just this once. She’d have time.
Merrill imagines herself home, filling hours that would stretch out as she waited for Isabela to keep her promise. It would hurt, because Isabela couldn’t keep it, but at least Merrill wouldn’t know. Wouldn’t look at Hawke and see indifference.
“She’s escaped before,” Hawke says. “I’m sure she’ll do it again. Eventually.”
“Eventually?”
Hawke smiles. “Just to spite me,” she says. “If she stabs me in the kidney later, you can argue that I deserve it.” She shrugs, expression softening. “I know you like her, Merrill. I’m sorry. But it was her choice to come back, and mine to do this.”
“I can see that,” Merrill says. She’s counting in her head. The rhythm helps. Her breathing is steady.
Hawke’s smile brightens again. Her broad smile. Her bar fight smile. Her “follow me and don’t be an ass” smile.
“And you know,” Hawke says, “It is lovely to say that something is just not my problem. I never get to say that.”