1. Xestsemon AU

[questionablewit]

[Entanglement AU set a year or a bit more in the future, in no way shape or form canon, locked to birdhousesoul]

Hawke is chopping wood. The sleeves of the short-sleeved shirt she's wearing are rolled up as far as they can go, leaving her shoulders bare; it's cool out, breezy, but chopping wood is hard work even when you have her muscles.

She's still muscular, in a lean way. Thinner than she was, without regular access to brickstuff, which might have been unappetizing but was at least nutritious. Her hair is longer, shaggier, pulled back with a brown headscarf to keep it out of her face; her clothes are the usual shirt and trousers and tight-laced boots she's always favored, though much patched and darned. It's not an easy life up here, but she gets by. The villagers have accepted her by now. She's been here almost a year, working as a hunter and trapper; it was a small enough place that they didn't have one of their own, and while at first they might have been wary of the strange woman who'd walked into town, they were won over over time. Friendly gifts of meat and fur will do that. Taking down a rabid bear who'd attacked over the winter had helped rather more. They don't ask about her past and she doesn't cause trouble, and all in all it works.

Behind her is a house, more like a shack, only two rooms to it. When she'd arrived it'd been so long abandoned and run-down no one else had cared that she'd moved in. It'd taken months to fix it up, but those were months she looked back on with pride. Staring down at her hands, sawing and hammering wood, making things fit together, half-remembered lessons from her childhood spent watching Malcolm Hawke at work. You have to work with the grain, not against it. If you go against the grain you'll break the wood. Make it want what you want. She's fiercely proud of her tiny, still pretty pathetic looking shack. It keeps heat in and cold and rain out. Mostly. And it's hers.

The planet is Xestsemon, the feudal one she visited not long after arriving in the Void. She'd liked it at the time. Dirty and misogynistic and flawed, but familiar, the sort of place she knew, a society she could blend into and hide in. Rat-spit mountain villages are much the same no matter what world you're on.

Hiding had been important, for a while. It hadn't been hard. Wait until the station was just about to leave, slip down-planet with Teo, tell everyone you're coming back with someone else so they wouldn't look for her until it was too late. Plant a few false leads and move, as fast and far as possible, away from the few spaceports the planet had. Up into the mountains. One tiny speck of a person on one planet in one gigantic universe, multiverse. It went beyond a needle in a haystack, and that's just what she needed to accomplish.

It's not such a lonely life. She still has her dog, though he's beginning to show his age and then some; the rabid bear had gotten a good swipe at his side, and the scar is still there. Teo's slowed down a lot. But they manage. And she takes pride in that, too. She holds her pride close, because it's such a surprise to have it again.

And if there things she doesn't let herself think about, people she doesn't let herself think about, it's impossible to tell here, in this moment: Hawke, shirt-sleeves rolled up, woodcutter's axe in hand, chopping wood for the fire and then pausing to wipe sweat from her brow.

Comments

1/?

[birdhousesoul]

[have a soundtrack for the past year, with words]

A needle in a haystack doesn't begin to describe the difficulty of locating Hawke. In fact, it's only possible because Anders knows at least which haystack he's got to check. She left the station when they'd stopped at Xestsemon; that's where she's got to be. Unless she took ship from there, somehow. Unless she's found more resources than he has any idea how to lay hands on, and Hawke's always been notably resourceful.

It's a starting place, at any rate. The only place to start, so that's the place he starts, when the time's good and ripe, when the station comes back round to Xestsemon again.

How has he weathered her absence? A better question might be, why does Anders come after Hawke at all? Her leaving's always been a foregone conclusion, to Anders. What he didn't expect was that she'd make it such a severe break, removing herself entirely from the scene. When she's been gone long enough that he can think more rationally about it, he decides it makes perfect sense. The fight against the Fay'lia was never her fight, only a cause to which she lent her arms for a while, for lack of any better project to tackle, and because she's never been one to sit idle. It's been Anders' cause, though, ever since waking in a blighted pod. He needs a cause if he's going to keep on keeping on, and he needs to believe he's been brought into the Void for an important purpose, otherwise it would be just another abduction, unremarkable in a life marked by several forcible removals to places he didn't choose or want to go. Unacceptable. He took in Justice to ensure that would never happen again. No more conscriptions. No more imprisonment.

He lets Hawke go. She didn't give him a choice. If he'd had a choice, he would have let her go anyhow, which he supposes might be half of why she left. He throws his energies and efforts into the unsatisfiable Void that is a resistance movement against a multiversal empire, impossibly long odds, impossibly slow progress. The periodic missions onto various planets of differing allegiance are what keep Justice from chafing the way he did in Kirkwall. Between missions they float in a soothing cocoon of vacuum, like the Fade, a place where time doesn't seem to pass and nothing much changes.

2/2

[birdhousesoul]

What prompts Anders to seek after Hawke again? Ask him and he can't give a convincing answer. Resolve forms like a pearl, slowly, around an irritant grain; here, the grain is Xestsemon, the knowledge Senburu-Trati'salan is headed back that way, brought up in one of the station meetings (Anders never misses a meeting) and hardly a surprise when it comes, as the station moves among its allies cyclically.

It's been half a year since Hawke left, now. A year passed between the first visit to Geldeheim and the second; if anything, the station's a little hasty to take some sustenance from Xestsemon. Maker knows they've not collected enough allies to refrain from accepting (or, politely, trying to hide their desperation, requesting) any material support they can get, too needy to keep from tapping the same source twice.

But that name on the agenda is what starts him thinking. Subconsciously, first, Hawke laughing in dreams, sometimes fleeing (catch me if you can) other times in need of rescue, still other times simply appearing and smiling and refusing to speak. Then more consciously, and the breaking point's when Martin asks him, with the quiet serenity of a father confessor, Do you think Hawke's down there still? You could re-establish contact. It could be useful, he adds, cleverly, for the resistance, to have a contact gone native. The priest knows Anders far too well.

If Martin knows anything about the circumstances under which Hawke left, he isn't telling. Anders suspects he doesn't, which is the only reason Anders doesn't press him.

So, Xestsemon. Once Anders starts looking, the task gradually stops being about resistance. Rationalization wears away, forgotten. The search becomes an end in itself. The station has to leave, finally, and Anders tells them he's staying. Going native himself. It's a place not unlike Thedas in many ways, and he thinks he can make a good job of it. If anyone guesses why he's made this choice, they don't confront him with the guess.

If Hawke didn't want to be found, she shouldn't have started trading furs. Trappers and traders talk, the long silences between trading posts and villages make them hunger for conversation, and Anders is very good at forging shallow friendships with chance-met travelers. He's on the road himself, an itinerant healer, would be a snake-oil salesman if the stuff he makes didn't work. It does work, and he's welcome wherever he goes, especially since he charges hardly anything, and lives mostly off the hospitality of the people he helps.

It's months of time planetside before he finds her, even so. Over a year now since she left the station, by this time. He might have found her sooner if he'd gone into the mountains sooner; they're so much like the Anderfels, he's allowed himself an irrational avoidance of the region, preferring the easier lowlands. But because he isn't only here for Hawke, he does go to the mountains, so the resistance will gain familiarity with the terrain and people there; and because he isn't only here for the resistance, he has to go to the mountains, so he can make sure Hawke isn't there, as the lowlands offer no leads.

He's far too much at home in rat-spit villages. He knows how not to seem too friendly, how not to raise suspicions. The black coat is long gone, the feathers a luxury of the past; Anders looks like any mountain herdsman, which is like any Anders, crude undyed wool cloak lined with fur, tunic and trousers of coarse wadmal, leather boots held together by a system of elaborate ties meant as much to give the calves support as to hold the bootshape together.

He has a staff, its arcane finial long ago removed, so it's nothing more than a walking stick to anyone's scrutiny. He has a bag of medicines, and another bag of his own belongings, and a bedroll, all of which he carries slung over his shoulders or strapped to his back variously as efficiency dictates. He's been walking what seems like forever. He doesn't mind the walking, or the solitude, and he's thrilled when he comes across a traveler or an inn or a little village too small to have an inn. He tells stories that are clearly tall tales, meant for entertainment, legends of the Black Fox. He bandages and cleans wounds — there's never a shortage of those, and infection's always a serious danger for these people, living in remote places without much more skill than the occasional herbalist's lore might have preserved in part — he uses his healing magic surreptitiously when he feels he's got to use it, relies on mundane means whenever possible.

He asks the kinds of nosy questions that anyone in a little village asks, or any traveler might want to know. Anyone new in these parts? Anything interesting?

That's how he hears about a certain trapper. Eventually, that's how he finds out where she's based, more or less. Whereabouts he ought to look.

He circles in. He lets word percolate ahead of him, if it's going to, if she's got an ear out. Rather suspects she won't. Why would she think he'd ever come to a place like this? He hates the Anderfels. Too many unfortunate associations, too many memories. He whistles to the goats as he passes, to see if he's still got the knack.

In the end it comes down to this: a thin and wiry woman chopping wood, and a ragged man striding up the narrow track into the little clearing where she's chopping.

"Keeping busy, I see," Anders calls, over the sound of splitting wood.

[questionablewit]

The result is comic, if rather lost on the participants: Hawke, who had the axe raised over her head prepatory to the next swing, starts so hard that the axe misses its stroke entirely, burying itself in the stump that serves her as a chopping block. The log she was intending to cut in half falls over from the impact; she actually loses her balance for a moment, catching herself on the stump.

So she's bent over the stump, holding it with both hands for support, as she looks up to see what she already knows she'll see. It's not entirely a surprise. Not just that part of her wanted to see him again, wanted him to find her someday, even though she made it as difficult as she could given the resources she had at the time. More that it always seemed inevitable. Anders was never one for letting loose ends stay loose. Or turn the analogy around: they've been inextricably tied together for years, never quite able to get free of each other even when they did try.

It's not as bad as the time in the Bucket. Neither of them is drunk, for one thing. Teo's not handy to act as an icebreaker--he's in the house--but Hawke has that bit of practice with unexpected Anders thanks to last time. The shock then was how much the same he looked. The shock this time is how different. Like one of the locals, or anyone from the Anderfels, any wanderer. Nothing screaming apostate in not-very-convincing-disguise, no notes with ask me about mages. He looks like anyone who's been on the road a long, long time.

"You know how it is with me," she returns as he draws nearer. "Always at least one thing that needs doing, and more usually four or five."

One other thing is different about her, if he notices. The restless uncertainty that never quite left her on-station is gone. She's startled by his sudden appearance, oh yes, and moved by it; there's no disguising that and she doesn't try. But the old determination is back, the internal compass point with a fixed direction. If there's wariness or discomposure at his appearance, or any other strong emotion too fleeting to identify, there's also an iron core underneath it. Hawke knows what she's doing, what she's done, what she intends to do. It's all there in her stance, for those who can read it. Which Anders always could.

She stands up and brushes her hands together to shake off the sawdust and sweat, waiting for him to approach. He came this far, after all. He can manage another few yards.

[birdhousesoul]

Hawke has the home advantage: they're on her turf. Anders has the advantage of surprise: she didn't know he'd be coming, whereas he's had nothing to think about for miles except this moment. Neither has the upper hand. They've always done better as collaborators than opponents. At once, Anders falls back into the old conversational pattern. Work with what she says, expand upon the theme. Complementary.

"So I've heard. Everyone's amazed at the local hero, she who laid low the fearsome bear. Your false leads had me baffled for a while — you did plant those, didn't you? — but then you had to go and give yourself away by saving people. Always your weakness, saving people." He's continuing to approach as he speaks. She doesn't seem inclined toward violence, a good sign. When he reaches the stump where she's standing, Anders gives the axe a long, hard look. "That's for wood only, yes? Wood, and rabid bears. Not people who've come a very long way for the chance to see your lovely face again." If she wanted to run off trespassers, of course, they wouldn't get close enough for her to use an axe. She had Teo for that.

"... Where's Teo?"

[questionablewit]

A half-smile quirks her mouth. "Did you ever see me use an axe as a weapon? Too slow. Not sharp enough. Especially not one of these." How many times is she going to have to reassure him that she's not going to kill him? It's almost funny by this point. They always did have dark senses of humor.

She looks again at his clothes. A very long way, if those are any indication. It only took her a month or so to find her way here. But then, she'd come in a straight line--not towards, but from, away--whereas he's clearly had to take more time at it. "A very long way," she says aloud. "Long way to come just to see a pretty face." It's her way of asking why he's here. The answer's never as simple as it seems, with Anders, never can be as simple as a lover tracking down the object of his affections. Not with Justice in play, not with a war going on. She's rather surprised he'd been able to devote as much time to this project as he clearly has. Perhaps he carved manifestoes into the tree bark along the way. One tree for every ten miles.

He sounds faintly worried when he asks about Teo, so she's quick to reassure him. "He's just inside." And as she says it, Teo comes to the doorway, drawn by the sound of voices. He doesn't trot over to Anders this time, though his ear flops in a Ah, you again gesture and his tongue lolls out for a moment. There's more grey in his fur.

More startling, there's less fur, thanks to an impressive bit of scarring on his right side, several inches long. It looks like the remains of a thoroughly nasty and near life-threatening wound. It was. Hawke had sewed it together herself with a needle and thread--Teo in too much pain to protest this new pain--spent night after night tending it and him, fully aware that she'd rather lose both her legs than her dog. It'd been a nightmare time, little sleep for fear she'd wake to find he wasn't breathing, cleaning up after him--mabari housetraining goes out the window when you're dying, it seems--cursing every god she'd ever heard of, and praying to them as well, all while using every trick to ward off infection that Anders had ever mentioned and hoping one of them would work, making her own poultices with what healing herbs she could find and applying them, pouring meat-broth down Teo's throat to force him to eat, since he couldn't do it himself. Cursing Anders for not being there, even though that was hardly his fault (for once); cursing herself for leaving to begin with, if this was the price.

She still thinks Teo is alive less because of her haphazard skill or luck, and more because he, like her, is too blighted stubborn to quit even when he knows he's beaten.

[birdhousesoul]

There's something about the way Teo moves that Anders doesn't like. The mabari should be running out to leap on him. No, the mabari shouldn't have been in the house in the first place, with Hawke out of doors. The mabari should have been here all along, well clear of any flying wood chips, yet present nonetheless, perhaps sniffing about for things that might interest a mabari between bouts of watchfulness and devoted doggy-eyed gazing upon his human.

Instinctively he goes to meet Teo, noting that the mabari doesn't cross any of the distance between them, only slips outside the door and stays there. Nothing too awry in the four-footed stance, but now Anders can see just how much fur is missing, the bulky silhouette somewhat altered even on such a short-haired dog, and along the mabari's side he sights the suggestion of raised keloid tissue. Can't get a good look, since Teo's facing him. Facing him down, almost. It's odd: the mabari's not showing any signs of aggression at all, nor any threat, nor warning; and at the same time, it's clear he's not welcoming Anders.

Past Teo's broad frame, the door's hanging only half-open, and Anders catches an unremarkable glimpse of a typical mountain cottage: clutter of quotidian work, a shelf with some unfinished carvings or whittlings, could be trade goods in the making or simply a hobby. Maker knows you need a hobby or two, in the mountains. Anders remembers it well. Whittling, yes, and carving pieces of bone. Riddling contests and storytelling were favorites too, in the Anderfels, to while away long hours of darkness.

"I'd lay money on you to win a riddling contest any day, mabari," he tells Teo as he crouches by the mabari's side to have a better look at that scarring. It doesn't escape Anders' notice that while Teo does turn to allow better access, he turns such that the side in question is facing away from the door, and keeps his huge body between the house and whoever might attempt to go inside.

Which would have to be Anders, presumably. "Don't worry, I can do my own whittling," he murmurs to the mabari. "You're a fine piece of stitchery, you are."

[questionablewit]

Hawke takes an abortive step forward as Anders approaches the door, and if he were looking at her instead of the mabari he'd see a quick flash of fear in her eyes. But it passes, or is covered, the fear replaced by a longing that then lapses back into the calm determination that characterizes her. That used to characterize her, and now does again.

She walks forward more slowly, without whatever panic drove that first step. "That was the bear," she says, and there's an echo of those nightmare nights in her voice. "I'd fallen, slipped on a patch of ice I hadn't spotted in the dark, and Teo leapt in the way. Distracted the thing for the crucial seconds I needed to throw a knife in its eye." She kneels next to Anders, places a hand on her dog's hindquarters; Teo relaxes incrimentally, as though the touch grants permission, and turns his head to lick Anders' face.

"I did the best I could with it, afterwards. There's no sort of healer up here, as you no doubt noticed. I had to rely on what I'd scraped together from watching you all those years. It's a miracle it wasn't worse." She doesn't have to say that it's a miracle Teo isn't dead. Anders will be able to read it for himself. "It was a few months ago." She doesn't want to ask, but it's Teo, so she does. "Can you do anything more for him?"

[birdhousesoul]

Absently, his attention on the mabari's old wounds, Anders replies without conviction: "I might do. Can't promise anything, I'm afraid; his body's done too much on its own. Imagine a bone healing after a break, without having ever been reset. Tissue's a little like that too, in its way. A mage can mend it far more cleanly than it mends itself, and that's got a lot to do with how the wound's initially managed ..." He looks up, then, from Teo's side to Hawke's sweat-smeared face. "Not that you should blame yourself one bit," he says firmly. "You did everything you could. He shouldn't even be alive today, from what I'm seeing."

Funny how there's always work to be done, and how Anders falls right into step. "If I'm going to try anything at all, we need to boil some water. Lots of it. Now, I can speed that along with fire, but I'd rather reserve my mana for Teo, you understand. Better to do it the old-fashioned way, draw lots of water and dump it in a nice big cauldron and put it on the hearth for a bit. We need linens or any old cloths, for steaming poultices. Whatever you've got will do."

Patting the mabari's broad skull, he stands and looks at Hawke expectantly. "Show me the buckets. I can carry water with the best of them." He hopes her source of fresh water isn't far.

[questionablewit]

Hawke strokes her dog's back, and Teo's tail flips up in response, as she voices the thought she had: "He's always been too thickheaded to know when to quit." The half-smile says, as clear as words, like master, like mabari.

She frowns in concentration and bites her lip a bit at his statement about hot water and lots of it, though impossible to say why. Where are the buckets isn't such a difficult question, after all. "Haven't actually got a big cauldron," she says. "One small and one medium. Haven't actually got much of a hearth, come to that. You might have noticed this place isn't very big." She glances up at the shack. From the angle where they're crouched you can just see the edge of the chimney, some smoke coming through; she's got a fire on in there. Not surprising. It's early spring, and still cool weather, even in the day. She has dinner going in one of those cauldrons, the sort of stew that simmers all day above a hearth and can be largely ignored; Hawke's always been an indifferent cook at best, a campfire cook. Worse, a Fereldan campfire cook. Take things, put in pot, boil forever. She's not bothered; it still tastes better than brickstuff.

"Linens and cloth I've got, plenty of them." She gets to her feet, walks around to the other side of the house, where there are two large buckets stacked, one inside the other. "There's a creek just about five, ten minutes over that way. I've worn down a path to it by now, you can't miss it." She gestures the correct direction, picks up the buckets by the handle and holds them out to him.

Funny how there's always work to be done, how easy it is to fall back into the habits of working in tandem.

[birdhousesoul]

"Medium will do, if you've got a washtub or something to hold the water in whilst more is on the boil. As I recall, you always had a fondness for baths." The whittling. Perhaps she's making herself a replacement for the lost Ser Quackers, who's presumably still in Hightown unless the Amell estate's been looted of absolutely everything portable.

With that, he's headed for the buckets, approving of her good sense in procuring or perhaps making a decent shoulder yoke for the carrying of same. She'll have some time to herself while he retrieves the first two buckets full. Already he's thinking about what's under Teo's skin, how the fibers of muscle will have been torn, what damage he'll need to do first before he improves on the mending. It won't be fun for anyone. He's never been an Entropy mage, he can't use Sleep, and anesthesia is a doubtful proposition. As Karl used to complain, no doubt quoting some ancient authority: When soporifics are weak, they are useless, and when strong, they kill. The Xestsemon-indigenous equivalent of elfroot can only numb so much.

Teo's a brave boy. It will all work out. Whatever Anders damages, he can heal again. The worst that can happen is Anders will have done no one any lasting good, and then he'll be on Hawke's bad side, but he's already been that, so what does he have to lose?

The first two buckets he brings back, he calls: "Now would be a good time for whatever kettle we're using to materialize. I haven't got one hidden up my —" It's not out of a sense of propriety that he stops, it's more a sense of Maker, that's a horrible thought, ouch, and he finishes, "— sleeve."

[questionablewit]

Hawke appears in the doorway, looking apprehensive. Or resolute. "Here, let me take those." Without waiting for him to respond she reaches out to the yoke, unhooks one of the buckets, hefts its weight without much difficulty--he has to re-balance himself, hang on to the other bucket to keep it all from falling--and sets it on the floor just inside the doorway. She then does the same for the other one. No sign of a kettle or any other useful transfer bucket contents into this other thing yet. Instead she's lingering in the doorway, door still partly closed behind her.

She takes a deep breath, as though preparing to say something--then doesn't, dispels it, shakes her head just a bit. "It's through here," is all she says finally. "You better come in." She opens the door wider, picks up the buckets and carries them inside.

This is what Anders will see, going from left to right:

On the left is the desk he noticed earlier, piled with a stack of furs and assorted trapper's tools. Small ones, most of her real tradework is done outside, where she has a frame set up for stretching hides, and so on. There's a miscellany of things on the table, the sorts of small useful things you use in daily life. Above it is a long shelf with small pieces of wood, carved or whittled in various shapes, only a few of them completed, the level of skill varying a great deal; clearly, someone's learning as she goes. There is indeed a wooden duck mixed in among them, and if Anders looks closely he'll see it's actually the original Quackers, not an approximation. One of the few things she brought with her out of Kirkwall's ruin. There's another duck much like it nearby, and she clearly used the first as a model.

Alongside the rest of the left wall is the hearth. Not a big one, and rather crowded at the moment because she's managed to hang a washtub up in it, though clearly with some effort; it's roped to the spit, and not designed for this purpose. Metal washtub, the sort for washing clothes or people, assuming the people in question don't mind crouching down, maybe sitting if they get a bit squished. It'll do for this purpose, hopefully. On the floor next to the hearth are two cauldrons, one small and one mediumish; the mediumish one steams as though it's just been pulled off the hearth, which it has, and the room smells like something that might be rabbit stew, or something like it. Hanging from the wall are a few cloves of garlic and some dried herbs; Hawke's picked up a few cooking tricks, anyway.

The middle of the floor is decorated with two cured fur pelts--wolf, or something like--as are blank parts of the walls, either to make the place look less barren or to help keep heat in. They accomplish both tasks. There's a small doorway (no door) on the back wall, which leads to a tiny room clearly being used for storage, and nothing else.

Along the right side of the wall is Hawke's bed, which isn't a bed so much as a makeshift mattress on the floor, the sort made by sewing two sheets together and stuffing them with bracken or grass. It's piled high with blankets, and over it all is, unmistakeably, a large bearskin. There's another shelf on the wall behind the doorway, with a bare handful of books, which she must have gotten down in the lowlands or larger cities as she moved up, because few people in a village like this can read. There's a window next to that shelf, in the middle of the right wall, letting in sunlight; some thick cloth has been nailed above it to make curtains, and another nail serves as a hook to pull them out of the way. The window and fireplace provide most of the light for the room, though there is a small stack of candles resting on the bookshelf. They're a bit dusty, clearly hoarded for times of need rather than used flippantly.

None of this is what's significant.

What's significant is that next to Hawke's bed is something like a box attached to part of a barrel. The sort of thing a haphazard, still-learning carpenter on her own might put together to use as a cradle.

It has an occupant, currently asleep, with a feathering of black hair like his mother's. Teo is curled up at the foot of the cradle, resting and guarding.

Hawke allows Anders his first moments of observation--and realization--in silence and what relative privacy she can give him, concentrating on emptying her buckets into the washtub-turned-giant-kettle-thing. Once that's accomplished she sets them back down and stares at the fire for a moment.

Eventually she turns back to look at him and take in his reaction.

[birdhousesoul]

"We might scorch the bottom of your washtub that way. Best take that right back down and heat the water in the smaller cauldron, then pour that into the tub and put more water on to —" Typical Anders, focused on the task at hand, far from indulging curiosity. What grabs his attention is that he looks about for Teo, and sees the mabari next to something that doesn't belong in a hermitage.

Suddenly, he understands, and that's when he goes silent.

In his years serving as healer to a slum teeming with refugees, Anders has learned a fair amount about babies. How to help them into the world, what kinds of illnesses they're prone to catching, what makes them fuss, what makes them less likely to keep fussing. How they look when they're newly born, and when they're a few months old, and when they're a year old, and when they stop being babies.

He doesn't need to ask. He knows how to count. He winds his way around the few pieces of furniture she has, treading as quietly as he can, and kneels beside the roughly fashioned cradle.

The baby looks like Bethany, he thinks, because it has a softness and roundness he's never associated with Hawke. (Later he'll rethink that. Of course she wasn't born sharp as a blade.) Swaddled and covered as it is, he can't discern the gender. Its nose, he's well aware, is attributable to himself, though it's a soft and diminutive version; he knows what he looked like as a small child, they had a mirror, wavery and not fancily framed but they'd got one, his family. A month or so away from cutting its first tooth, this child, Anders thinks; not any older than that, and can't be much younger either.

It's his, of course. He'd always thought this impossible — not literally impossible, Wardens aren't totally sterile; perhaps unthinkable would be a better term. He'd told Hawke as much: he'd be no good to her or a child, the way he is. Then there's the likelihood of magic, inherited through both their family lines, which could be trouble on a space station. Perhaps that's why Hawke left. (He knows it's not why.)

"Hello," he says quietly to the sleeping child, hardly more than a whisper. For all the baby talk he lavishes on cats, he addresses this tiny human as though it were older and capable of understanding, a new acquaintance of some kind.

Then he just gazes at it for a long while, sitting back on his heels. The buckets and water are quite forgotten.

[questionablewit]

Hawke does untangle the washtub from the setup she's made, replacing it on the floor next to the hearth. She doesn't bother to replace it with the cauldron. She's not sure why she bothered to put up the washtub to begin with; something to do with her hands while she waited for Anders to return with the buckets of water, while she tried to think of some way of preparing him. She hadn't come up with one.

She crosses the few steps back to the bed--it's not a large room--and sits cross-legged on her mattress, next to the cradle. It's low to the ground, easy for them to overlook even while seated. She reaches out a hand, brushing a tendril of hair from the baby's forehead, so lightly that he doesn't so much as shift in his sleep. "This is Malcolm," she says, quietly.

There's too much to say, and nothing else that needs to be said. Not yet. Just that introduction. Everything else can wait.

[birdhousesoul]

"A good name." A mage's name, for that matter, though that's obviously not why she chose it. To Anders, Malcolm Hawke will always be the apostate who lived the dream, succeeded against all odds. To Hawke, Malcolm will always be her father. And now, also, her son.

He's grateful, and immensely unsurprised, that she didn't name the child after him. Anders isn't even a name, it's a nationality or something close to it; everyone from the Anderfels is an Anders. He's made it his name, over the years, fiercely disinclined to keep the name his parents gave him. Thinks of himself as Anders. The name and the baggage that goes with it aren't suited to a wanted child. As this child clearly is wanted, so much that Marian would go through this much hardship just to keep the child safe from him.

"I'm sorry," says Anders. "I didn't know. I could have helped." To think of her in labor, in this forsaken place, or even in the lowlands, in some city of this backward planet, without a well-trained healer — he hates it, and hates himself for making it necessary, as he must have done. "I wish I'd known," he says, almost angrily.

[questionablewit]

Hawke hears the anger, assumes part of it is for herself. She deserves some, for leaving without telling him, and especially for leaving without telling him the truth of why she left. For not offering him the choice. Hawke knows the value of choices, of being presented with them even if there's only one path you can take. Knows how much they mean to Anders in particular, who had so few for most of his life.

But for her there was no choice at that point, only one clear priority. So she can face Anders' anger without flinching, should he direct it her way. She regrets none of her actions, could have done nothing else.

As for the rest..."I wasn't alone," Hawke says, looking down at her--their--son as she says it, remembering. "I had help, resources. I'd prepared for it." Months of hoarding every coin she could get, every trade item, every fur. Once she arrived here, bartering them for future credit. Not just goods to collect, to give her the supplies and equipment she'd need to live in her then-still-a-shack, but favors owed. And while the villagers had initially been suspicious of a strange woman walking into town with daggers on her back and steel determination in her gaze, they'd been much more willing and able to warm to a woman several months pregnant and clearly needing help. Weakness can be a resource too, if you know how to use it.

Hawke brushes a finger against Malcolm's hair again, because she can, because she treasures him beyond words. He's worth all the prices she had to pay, and more. "Moved into the village properly for a while, even. This place wasn't much to look at back then, and I couldn't get around so well. But I'd made allies. I wasn't alone."

It's only partly true, because during labor she had been alone. Oh, there'd been other women there, the one who served the village as an unofficial midwife because she had six living children of her own, and someone else to help besides. But Hawke had been alone, and she'd cursed Anders to the skies for not being there for this, blight him, even though it'd been she who'd left. Screamed for him, screamed for her mother. She has no doubts he could have helped, but it wasn't for his healing skills that she'd wanted him there.

Done now, though. And not done badly, all things considered. Not to her mind.

She leans back against the wall, pulls the scarf off from her head and runs a hand back through her hair, the same old gesture, though it looks different with the longer hair. It's a bit past her shoulders now; if she pulled it back into a ponytail she'd look remarkably like Leandra. Hawke juts her chin towards the cradle. "Want to hold him? He should be waking up soon. And waking up hungry, most likely." There's a fond exasperation in the last sentence. Malcolm is stirring a bit, roused by the sound of voices.

[birdhousesoul]

Of course Anders wants to hold his son. He would've done sooner, only the baby's been sleeping, and he hasn't wanted to disturb that sleep.

To his surprise, the baby's not wet. It's Anders' experience that babies almost always are, and if they're not, they're about to be, prodigiously. Gently, he cradles little Malcolm against his chest and shoulder, one hand supporting the baby's rump, the other flat and high on the baby's back. "You're a clever little thing, aren't you?" he inquires softly of the baby, who's drowsy and mercifully disinclined to fuss as yet. "With eyes and a nose and everything, and hands. Already I'm impressed."

[questionablewit]

Hawke just watches, her smile somewhere between pleased and wistful. "You might be less impressed when he wakes up properly. Or more impressed. If you still had your feathers, you'd lose them all within five minutes. He's at a grabby stage." Her smile grows a bit, loses the wistful edge. "All my curiosity and more, I'm afraid. Maker help me when he learns to crawl."

[birdhousesoul]

"All your curiosity, and more than likely all my magic." The speculation is not happy, nor is it despondent; it comes out mainly resigned, and more than a little concerned. Anders' sharp nose parts the baby's wispy hair, as he breathes the soapy-milky scent of a well-tended infant, nothing else like it, unmistakable and always a little heartwrenching. A newborn's hardly ever cause for rejoicing in Darktown, and yet. And yet. He's rarely seen anyone not fall in love with their child immediately. He finds he's no exception.

"Is that why you're out here? In the middle of nowhere, worse than the blighted Anderfels?"

[questionablewit]

"One reason. One of several." The similarity of this place to the Anderfels hadn't escaped her, though it wasn't one of her reasons for coming. It could have been, move to a place where Anders would be least likely to go, someplace to remind him of where he lived during a childhood he hates to think about. "The thought hadn't escaped me, certainly. Between you and my family, it's more than likely. But there's a few years yet before I'll have to worry about that problem."

The baby's waking up now, what with all the attention, and in addition to being at a grabby stage he's at a point where he's started to realize there are things and people in the world, and they're all exciting. He turns wide eyes--still baby blue, impossible to say what color they'll turn out in the end--on Anders, looking surprised and delighted in the way babies do. One hand struggles to get free of the swaddling cloth wrapped around him.

1/2

[birdhousesoul]

At this age, swaddling is helpful for sleep. It reassures a baby, Anders thinks; makes it feel secure, when it's not being held. This is a simple cloth, not the tight-wound swaddling bands he lectures people against, and it's easy enough to help Malcolm out of it. The tiny hand's a fist, uncurling moistly into a star that lunges at Anders' face and paws a moment at his cheek before the still-unsteady fingers curl again and flail elsewhere. He tries for an ear. Anders chuckles.

"That's right, I have a face. That's my ear, my right ear. You have ears as well, you know." He shifts Malcolm a little in the crook of his arm so that the support of his other hand won't be needed, and touches the baby's left ear, mirroring. "See? That's your ear. I expect you've known this stuff for ages, and you're thinking, what a dull person this is, just learning about ears and practicing on me. I'll bet he's no good at card games either. You and the mabari, masters of diamondback."

All this is fascinating to the baby, but it isn't food. Instinctively Malcolm twists toward his mother, both arms free now with the swaddling cloth bunched about his waist, and flails, not yet distressed, only purposeful.

"He knows what he wants," says Anders, amused, and hands the baby over the cradle to Hawke. "Hungry as a Warden, or thirsty as." Thinking of Oghren, there, and comparing his own son to Oghren is practically blasphemy even if he hasn't made the comparison aloud, so it has to stop there.

A tiny person, yet, but he'll grow quickly. Anders envisions this, as Hawke goes about the business of feeding the baby, a process which occasions no comment from Anders. (Breastfeeding isn't a matter for joking, it's just a thing that has to be done, sometimes a thing you have to talk someone through at first if there's trouble latching; one of Lirene's friends used to help consult on that; it wasn't anything Karl ever taught, for certain. At Malcolm's age, the feeding has to be old hat, and still no bitey teeth to make things unpleasant.) He'll be growing teeth soon, and then being weaned, and then walking. He'll start to talk, and have thoughts, and make plans, and ask questions. Some questions are going to be difficult.

Anders thinks about this, and his brows draw together, his lips compress. He considers.

"I'm going to tell you something, so you can tell him, when he's old enough to ask. Where I grew up, it was important to know who your father was, and to have his name. I don't think it can be too much different here. I'm glad you named Malcolm as you did, but there might come a time he wants to know why he's got his grandfather's name, and not his father's, and you'll have to tell him: it's because his father hadn't got a name to give. And that's just the kind of cryptic thing a child hates. So he should know the truth of it."

Not I'm going to tell you a story. Unceremonious, dry, I'm going to tell you something, with the air of someone doing a chore he doesn't enjoy and wants to get it over with.

2/2

[birdhousesoul]

"In the Anderfels, families have family names like anywhere else. If you haven't got one, it means no one bothered to acknowledge you. You weren't worth it, or your birth was an embarrassment, that sort of thing. That wasn't a problem I had; I'm just explaining it now because it's important. I had a family. In fact, my parents were married by a cleric and everything, not always the case in our village, as it was too small to have its own Chantry; my father was devout, so he went to the trouble of having the Maker smile upon his union."

Anders' voice is flat.

"All very aboveboard and above reproach. When I came along, the firstborn son, they named me after my father, as people tend to do. So I had the same name as he had, given and family names both. It's common in the Anderfels to be so-and-so, son of same-name, the family name doesn't actually get used much in day-to-day conversation, and if there are too many people all with one name, then they get nicknames, so-and-so the Smith, so-and-so the Fair, so-and-so the Inhospitable." A thin and sallow smile. "My father wasn't popular enough to need a nickname. We mostly kept to ourselves. Anyhow, as you know, I got dragged off to the Circle when I was twelve," no sense in reciting how that came to pass, as it's not the point. Hawke should know without being told what a late age that is for a mage child to be given to the Circle. The remoteness of the Anderfels accounts for it, but then, if his home was so inconspicuous and so far out of their way, how did the Templars ever find him at all? Not relevant to naming, won't be covered.

"And my mother wasn't thrilled. She cried. She couldn't do anything about it, too late for that, but now it had come, she was angry. They didn't ask my name until they'd gotten me safely secured," he means in chains, "and when they did, my father wouldn't answer. It was his name too, you see, the whole of it, and that wouldn't do. He was more than happy to let me go, he just didn't want his name going with him, I suppose. Mother said, what do you blighters care what he's called? He's an Anders, that's all you care. Because the Templars weren't from the Anderfels, you know, that's what she meant. There's a Circle in Hossberg but these Templars said I was going to Ferelden."

An oddity he can't elaborate upon, even if he wanted. "So that's how it was. The first time we stopped on the journey, they asked me, what was my name? There had to be something I would answer to. I was furious, of course, the whole way." Never stopped being furious, really, not to this day. "I said, are you hard of hearing? My mother told you I'm Anders. So that got to be my name. If my father's alive, he ought to be grateful: his name could've gone down in the chronicles, attached to the man who started the war between mages and Templars. He's been spared that indignity."

It's not a story, so it doesn't have an ending. Anders just falls silent. The assumption is that Hawke will need to tell this to Malcolm when he's older, because Anders won't be around to tell it.

Re: 2/2

[questionablewit]

Much of this not-a-story Hawke had guessed, pieced together from clues Anders has offered over the years, from her own knowledge of him, from things not said. Good to have the gaps finally filled in, and she knows what it must have cost Anders to tell it. That's another thing she'll tell Malcolm when he's older, or try to. Though he might not understand. Hearing that his father's father rejected him might not inspire much sympathy, given that Malcolm will have to feel a similar rejection.

The implication that Anders won't be around in the future is one she's heard so many times that it can't cause pain anymore; it's taken for granted, even though he keeps turning up. It's almost amusing, in its way, the inside joke that isn't funny but becomes funny for repetition. Months of effort and searching to find her, surely, not an insignificant amount of time when there's a war you're ignoring in order to take the time for searching, and no doubt part of him is itching to return to it and wondering why he's indulging this distraction. But still, months, going by the state of his clothes. And then it takes less than half an hour to imply but I can't stay. Just checking on her, a brief visit to make sure she's all right. She has to be amused, even if it's faint amusement. There are reasons they never married, and for Hawke, that's the main one. Marriage implies the promise of a future, and Anders has always been adamant that he can't give her one, no matter how much he loves her. She doesn't ask for promises that can't be given.

It matters a bit less now. It still matters, yes, but she knows the shape of her future, and she can be content with it. That's what she's been building here, all this time. So she can listen quietly, leaning back against the wall, shirt pulled up and breastband pulled down, Malcolm cradled in her arms and sucking with practiced enthusiasm.

The not-a-story isn't the sort of thing that invites comment or questions, and she spares him that. It wasn't for her, anyway; she's to guard it until it can be passed on, years from now. She nods slowly, an acknowledgement, I'll remember this, I'll be careful with it, and lets it go in silence. Malcolm's finished with one breast and been switched to the other before she says anything, and she jumps back to earlier, smaller topics. "You look like you've been on the road for years. What have you been doing with yourself?" He knows what she's been doing, after all; that's self-evident, not just in her arms but written all over the room.

Re: 2/2

[birdhousesoul]

For his part, Anders thinks there'll be no reason for Malcolm to imagine his father rejected him, because he assumes Hawke's fundamental honesty will preclude that, and she'll tell him the reason his father isn't with them is that she went to great lengths to ensure he wouldn't be with them. He also thinks what he's been doing should be self-evident. "Looking for you," he says. "The station left months ago. I've got a communicator, which sends to the only ansible in the capital city, and when the ansible operator gets around to it, they'll transmit whatever I'm sending to the station." Anders accepts the entire concept of the ansible as magic. His chief fear where this is concerned: that the communicator will get wet, or that one of his own spells will fry it. Even so, if something terribly important happened, he could make his way to the capital and prevail upon the ansible operator directly, unless there's such a state of unrest as to make this impossible, and in that case there's not much good a message to the station can do. It's not for his own sake he wants the connection, it's for the revolution. If anything happens that affects the resistance, he needs to be able to tell them.

If anything happens, on this backwater feudal planet, important as a source of food and raw materials for the station, hardly a hotbed of multiversal intrigue. A big if.

"I've no idea when they might be back. If you're staying on this planet with him, I'm not going anywhere, anyhow. Not to plague you; I'm aware my sudden appearance can't have been a pleasant surprise, given the trouble you took to make sure you'd never need to have anything to do with me again. I'll be elsewhere, keeping myself busy. I'm good at that. But if he shows signs of magic, anything, I need to know. You'll need to send for me then. For his sake, if not for yours, so I can teach him how not to kill anything unless he means it. An untrained hedge wizard is a hazard to everyone, most of all himself. Please, believe me when I say this is important. You can't learn this stuff unguided from books alone, though I'll write ... something ... if there's no other recourse. A book's better than nothing."

And that thought makes him angry all over again. This time he's really angry with her and not just with himself. She's an apostate's daughter and an apostate's sister. She knows the risks. How could she be so selfish? "I knew I wasn't your favorite person in the universe," he says tautly, "but do you really despise me so much you'd risk our child's life to be free of me? With the lineage he has, with the likelihood he'll be a seriously powerful mage? Why did you do this, Hawke? How could you?"

[questionablewit]

Hawke sighs, looking down at the top of Malcolm's head. He has his eyes closed, concentrating fully on the task at hand. "It was a matter of weighing danger against danger," she says. "It wasn't to get away from you, not exactly. It was to escape certain possibilities, which won't apply out here, or at least are less likely to apply." She adjusts her arms, gets one free so she can brush fingers against soft baby-hair.

"Think about the station. It's huge, it's populated, it's a city that moves through the Void, but for all that, it's a cage. Worse, one with a great big target painted on it. Living in that neither-here-nor-there place just on the outskirts of war was tolerable when it was just me. It wasn't once I knew there was more than me to consider." She smiles down at her son; even after this much time it's still tinged with a bit of faint wonder, in addition to the other emotions there. There is no doubt that Hawke loves this child, with every atom of her being. "This is my priority now, right here. Doing the best I can for this little one. Magic may be a problem in time, and one I don't intend to ignore, but it wasn't the first problem.

"As for why I didn't tell you..." Another pause, another deep breath. "The war is your passion, Anders. It became your cause as soon as you arrived. And that's fine, I don't blame you for that at all, it's a war worth fighting. But I'm done with war. I don't have any heart left to offer that fight, no matter how worthy it is. Think less of me for that if you will, but I can't change it. I did try. There might come a day when Malcolm's part of that war, or another war, and I'll do everything I can to make sure he's prepared for it, but it will be his choice." Her gaze turns to steel. "What I won't allow, ever, is for him to be used unwittingly as a tool for war himself, the way you used me. You can't tell me it wouldn't have been a possibility, in the right--or wrong--circumstances, if the situation was dire enough. That's why I left. Not to get away from you, but to take him as far away from the battleground and those sorts of choices as I could go. He's my first priority, must be, and I know he can't be yours. Just as I never could be, no matter how much we wished otherwise. I'm surprised you were able to get away from the war long enough to come looking for me, to be honest."

Her gaze flickers up to meet his. "This wasn't some sort of sadistic test, before you wonder. You've always told me you couldn't offer me a normal life. It followed that you couldn't offer him one."

She looks back down, and her voice is very quiet as she finishes. "But I've never despised you. Not for a minute."

[birdhousesoul]

"That's a far stretch, Hawke." He doesn't raise his voice. No need. Each word is soft and sharp. "I may be an unscrupulous man. I may plan badly. But even I am hardly likely to pack our son's nappies full of gaatlok. If your intent was to make him resent me as much as you do, so that if I ever did find him he'd deplore any cause I stood for, then I suppose your choices could make a twisted sort of sense. It doesn't seem your style, and yet I can't think of a logical reason you'd have found it more expedient, more practical, to take all the steps it must have taken, flee into this forsaken wilderness, start over with nothing, than to face me and tell me what in the Void we'd managed to do. I would have been afraid, yes. You're right that a station at war is no place for an infant. It's why I knew I never could have a family. I'd always be at war. You should have told me anyhow, because it would be right. And who do you think I was fighting for, in the first place? Mages who couldn't have children for fear of the fate they'd be consigning them to. Mages who did have children, only for the Templars to tear them away. Mage children born outside the Circle, stolen from their families and put in a bloody prison. I was fighting for him." He stares at their son, as though he's seeing a mirage, something he wants desperately and knows he'll never reach. "I wouldn't have been happy, if you told me, no. But I would have been glad."

[questionablewit]

Hawke closes her eyes, pained; Malcolm finishes his meal, and perhaps he senses her feelings or hears the sharpness in his father's voice, or perhaps it's just wind. Regardless, he makes obvious sounds of discomfort, and she places him over her shoulder, rubbing his back gently. "I know you were. I'm putting this badly. But you were fighting for me once too, for us, for mages to be able to fall in love without fear of being torn apart. It didn't stop you from using me and us, because it was necessary in your eyes in order to give that freedom to everyone else. I don't resent you, Anders, whatever you might think, and I don't intend to accuse you. But how could I have been sure it would never happen again, unless I left the battleground? You've always been able to put the greater good above the personal. I don't do that. A flaw in me, perhaps, but not one I want to change, selfish as it is. And I had to be sure, once it wasn't just me I was risking." It's always been one of her flaws. The greater good would have given Isabela to the Qunari, would have strapped Merrill to a chair until she swore to give up blood magic, would have executed Anders, would have a done lot of things that Hawke didn't do. But then, Hawke doesn't have Anders' conviction that she can recognize what the greater good is, and she knows it. She just does what she can, always.

"It wasn't just you. It wasn't even mostly you. I wanted out of the whole war, something I couldn't imagine you understanding or respecting. To you, my coming out here seems like running from something and into nothing, clearly. To me it's the other way around, always was. You were the only thing it hurt me to leave about that place. To you, this might be a forsaken wilderness; to me it's freedom."

Malcolm coughs, and she halts this line of thought for a moment, making soothing noises, nuzzling him and adjusting his position before she resumes.

"I wasn't running from you, Anders. I know what it looks like. I should have told you. I've regretted not telling you, for what little that's worth. You deserved to know. I don't know what I was afraid of. That you would try to stop me leaving, perhaps, or treat me as a traitor. Or that I might ask you to come with me and be refused." She looks up at him, entirely serious. "And the very fact that you are here shows how badly I misjudged you in that respect. I'm sorry. None of it is an excuse, I know, and I can't make it up to you."

[birdhousesoul]

Anders listens. That's all he can do. He's tired. He's spent months looking for her, and he's found her, and the quest is over, taking all its momentum and force and nervous energy. What to do when the quest ends? He's got what he came for: he knows why she left, and knows she's not unwell or in danger. To all appearances she's thriving.

"All this because you wanted freedom. Well, you certainly have it. I didn't come here to talk you into going anywhere or doing anything, and I'm aware that if I'd harbored any such intentions, I'd have been a worse fool than I am. I'll do what I can for Teo, and I'll be on my way. When I'm someplace I expect to stay longer than it would take for a message to reach me, I'll send word. Only promise you'll contact me at once if there's need. Don't be too proud. A mage child can't control his magic. You don't want him striking down the neighbors with lightning, or setting fire to someone's roof. He'll be the most distressed of all, because he won't have meant to do it, may not even understand how it happened. If you love him, you'll send for me when it's time."

[questionablewit]

"You, of all people, can't begrudge a need for freedom." Her voice is mild, even if the words aren't. She doesn't need to say more.

I'll do what I can for Teo, and I'll be on my way. Despite the open longing in his eyes as he looks at Malcolm, despite the fact that he let the station leave him behind on a planet he couldn't even be certain she was still on, all to look for her.

A hard thing Hawke has had to learn and adjust to about Anders over the years: he doesn't ask for things. His life hasn't taught him that asking is an option. You can't ask for things in the Circle, except the smallest minutae of day to day life. Nothing important, none of the things that make life worth living. If Anders sees what he wants as possible, he'll take steps, he'll fight for it, but if not he'll treat it as already denied to him, the battle lost before the combatants have stepped onto the field. It can feel like a rejection, and she's not always good at remembering it isn't, not exactly. And in this case there's good reason for his assumptions, given her actions; she recognizes that. Such isn't always the case.

He won't ask, never does. But she can offer. She hasn't pride to lose, not where he's concerned. There's far too much water under the bridge between them for pride to be a factor.

Hawke looks at Anders, over Malcolm's head. "There's space for you here, if you want it. In my life, in his. If you want to stay, you can stay. If you need to go, it'll be here for you to return to, no matter how long a time that is. Even if you can't forgive me for leaving, I'd rather you were nearby, given the choice. I'd rather Malcolm was able to know his father as his father, not just as someone I summon to teach him, years from now. He deserves more than that, and so do you."

She bites at the inside of her lip. "I can't say I was wrong to leave. But I should have told you the truth of it, asked you to come with me. Let me ask now? I wanted freedom, yes. But it was never you I wanted to be free of." Words he's said to her, in the past. Funny how old sins echo. "If it's too late for that, if I've broken things beyond any mending, so be it. Even so, there's a place for you here if you ever want to claim it. That won't change."

Malcolm, who clearly has no sense of the gravity of the conversation, chooses this moment to get bored with being balanced over his mother's shoulder and makes a grab for her hair, pulling it hard. Hawke winces, attention distracted as she reaches up to pry his fingers loose. "You certainly remind me why I used to keep my hair short, squirt," she mutters, shifting him back around to her front. He keeps tight hold of her thumb and gurgles, trying to look around the room. "Also, you have no sense of timing."

[birdhousesoul]

He'd like to believe it, and at the same time, he's almost insulted by the notion he should be expected to believe it. "Right," he says flatly. "You didn't want freedom from me. And you went to such lengths to conceal your whereabouts why, then, exactly? I know: it's because the Resistance takes such care to force its former members into co-operation. Moonshine would've come after you with bloodhounds, I'm sure, on the orders of the Acting Temporary Commander with Immediately Recallable Authority Given Provisional Trust." He pronounces each word of the title with crisp precision. The anger's draining out of him, and there's only weariness left. "I'm sorry. I can't do what you want. I can't live with you and raise a child with you and be your old friend whom you fled but now you're quite happy to have around the place."

[questionablewit]

"Moonshine, no. Sheeana, possibly. Anna, possibly. Zevran, possibly. The Fay'lia, very possibly." She rubs her forehead. "I set several leads suggesting I'd hopped planets particularly for them. I really didn't want a representative to show up and ask me for information about the station's capabilities. By now hopefully they'll have decided anything I know is too out of date, and leave me alone."

That's not the point, and she's evading the issue. She takes a long, ragged breath. "I didn't say it'd be easy for me either, just that I wanted to try. But if you can't, then you can't. I know what that one feels like." Faint hope, quickly extinguished, and she's surprised how much it hurts for something that not an hour ago wasn't even an option. "I couldn't, there. Couldn't anything. I say I wasn't running from you because I know I was running from myself, all the time I spent on that station I was running from myself, from who I'd turned into. Someone I couldn't stand being."

She's holding Malcolm with only one practiced, careless arm now; the other is free to rest by her side, dig fingers into the bearskin. "How can I explain? I can't. You and the war and my own half-crazed despair, it was all bound together. I had to get away from everything before I could even start to sort it out. You had a cause to fill your life, you didn't need me. I honestly thought that, it's what I'd learned from our last night in Kirkwall. One thing I learned. And if I told you what I planned--" She laughs, without humor. "If I'd just told you I was leaving, without bringing up Malcolm, you would have let me go, wouldn't have argued, would have thought it just. You'd made that clear more than once. I was your penance, and the weight of it was more than I could stand. So you did need me, in a way, to be something you couldn't have. I did run from that. I couldn't fill that role for you anymore, couldn't even find words for it until I was gone."

She clutches Malcolm close for a moment, then puts him back down in the cradle. He moues, but finds something to distract himself, a dust-mote in the air. Teo, who's been half-dozing next to the cradle during all of this, lifts his head and places it on the cradle's edge; Malcolm kicks a foot up, trying to reach for the dog's head and missing.

"I can ask...what I asked, now, because things aren't as they were. Not just Malcolm. Because I've had that time and distance to recover myself. Because you were able to come here, which I didn't think you'd be able to let yourself do, for so many reasons. If I could have said all this before, known myself and you well enough to say it before, I would have. I'm sorry, love. I wish things had happened differently, I wish I'd done things differently, been stronger, chosen better. Since I didn't, this is what we have to work with." Hawke makes herself look at him. It isn't easy. "What can I give you, that you'll accept from me?"

[birdhousesoul]

"Actually, by running, you made yourself more thoroughly something I couldn't have than you'd ever been on the station," Anders points out. "You did a fine job of that, but then, you've always had a way of getting things done. I'll say this much: you've set us on level ground, you've evened it out nicely. You couldn't trust me then, and now I can't trust you."

He stands, more slowly than he'd like, muscles sore and knees protesting. Too long in one place and now he's stiff. "I can't leave my own child. That has nothing to do with what I want or don't want, or what you think I should want. When you decide you want to be rid of me again, you'll have all that work to do over, laying false trails to follow. Until then, I need to be where Malcolm is. But not in your house, Hawke. Don't ask that of me. I'm done with penance now."

[questionablewit]

Hawke could point out the difference, which for her is key: this way she was an active participant, as opposed to an object he used for his own suffering. But there's been enough, and more than enough. There was a time when the statement I can't trust you would have been one of the worst possible condemnations; now she nods, accepts it.

"If you want to stay in the village it's safe enough, I'm not down there very often. If that's too near, then...where you wish. But if you ever want to see him, you can. With or without me around." That's a gesture of good faith, if he wishes to accept it, that she'll trust him alone with their child.

Hawke gets to her knees and picks Malcolm up again, juggling him a bit and holding him so they're face to face. He spits up a bubble, making nonsense sounds. "You haven't been properly introduced yet, you know. It's all been one way. Malcolm, this is your father. I've told you about him, and now you can meet him for yourself."

She rests her forehead briefly against her son's, speaking quietly. "He's a good man, one of the best I've ever known. For all the problems we've had, I've always thought that, even though we don't always agree on things. And I love him very much, even if it doesn't seem that way. It's important you know this, that you were born from love, and nothing else." She keeps her eyes closed. "It's something you'll have to learn when you're older, one of the worst lessons the world has, that it's possible to love someone very much and still hurt them, that love isn't always enough. That's something I hope you're spared for a long time. But nevermind that just now. He's here, and I promise he'll love you as much as I do. You should get to know him. He's worth knowing."

She kisses Malcolm's forehead, then holds him out to Anders, if Anders wants to take him again.

[birdhousesoul]

He could point out the inconsistency — interesting that she'll trust him alone with their child now, when she's declared she had to flee in order to prevent him from somehow involving their child in his war: what I won't allow, ever, is for him to be used unwittingly as a tool for war himself, the way you used me — but it wouldn't give Anders any satisfaction. She's holding out the baby to him, and he's not going to refuse.

He takes Malcolm in his arms and turns him to rest the baby's head on his shoulder, half-expecting protest. If the child takes after Anders at all, he ought to be yowling, unhappy to be taken from his mother. That doesn't happen. Anders instinctively sways a little, a soothing motion.

"It's not usual for Wardens to have children, you know. I always thought it highly improbable. I knew it couldn't be impossible, otherwise there wouldn't be much point in letting a Warden be king of Ferelden when he's expected to provide an heir and all." Fereldan politics are the most irrelevant thing in the world just now, and he has to chuckle at himself, a tired and anemic sort of chuckle, not much joy in it but no bitterness at least. "This ... I'm not sure I've conveyed just how much of a shock this is, for me. I didn't expect anything remotely like this. I wasn't sure what to expect, looking for you, but it wasn't this. It will take some time to get used to this. And to get used to the idea of staying on this planet more permanently, which I'll admit I hadn't planned to do."

She would have to choose the closest equivalent of the blighted Anderfels, wouldn't she?

"Just ... give me time. He's young enough yet, he won't remember anything of this first year or so. By the time he's old enough to understand people much, things ought to be friendlier between us, you and I. More civil, anyhow. I don't intend to make him suffer for his parents' mistakes."

[questionablewit]

For Hawke, the inconsistency isn't there. She can trust Anders with Malcolm here, because the war isn't here; similarly, she can say she didn't leave false trails to keep him away because she didn't think he'd be one of the ones who'd come looking, and that the reasons she left are more myriad and complicated than just that one possibility (never a certitude even in her head, but the possibility was enough), though it was the one that frightened her the most. All things she'll need to try and unpack later if he'll allow her, on some other day, though she's aware it still may not help.

For now, Hawke just nods. "I can do that." She smiles, not without irony. "Time is one thing I have a lot of, here. It's taken some getting used to." She bites her lip a bit, and if she's steeling herself, she tries not to let it show. "I have some traps set up I should go check, if you want some time with him just now."