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

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.