DA2 Fic - SPOILERY

[miri1984]

Title: (is a bit spoilery)
Characters: Anders, Sebastian, Hawke
Words: 1200
Summary: A few years post endgame.

The Cost of Betrayal

The house was small, dark, humble - nothing like what he would have expected. And yet the village was untouched by the war ravaging around it - nestled in the mountains as it was. Whispers of the apostates had reached him, so difficult to track, no one was willing to name them, or tell him where they had gone. Not even his most expensive contacts had been forthcoming. In the end he'd had to bribe and cajole those few in the Chantry who were not hiding or desperate. The glass vial they carried had cost more than the most expensive piece in the Starkhaven treasury.

It had been worth it.

He was still skilled enough to break in on his own, but he wasn't prepared for magic, even with his Templar companion. Not prepared for her magic, any way, which always had the element of the uncertain about it, as though she'd been half rogue rather than all mage.

The Templar died silently, the poisoned blade sinking into his paralysed flesh, but he… he she spared.

He knew it was her, despite the near pitch-darkness. He recognised the sound of her breath, the scent of her. They had been close, once. Before she'd turned on him. Before she'd sided with him.

"Sebastian, I knew you'd come."

His eyes could still move, but she was silent, and deathly, and he wanted to know who had taught her these skills when he had not. There was a flare of power and he could move his head, although the rest of him stayed frozen.

"I told you I would."

She snorted. "You told me you'd raise an army against Kirkwall. Did you?"

"No."

"Ah, the things we say in the heat of hate."

"I'm here for justice."

The black shadow that was her moved to sit in a chair by the dying embers of a fire. It didn't give enough light to show her face, but he caught the glint of red in her hair as she rested her chin on her chest. She chuckled.

"You won't find any here. Or did you mean Justice? Have you finally grown brains enough to realise who killed your precious cleric?"

"Do not dare to say her name!" the anger burned bright hot and urgent that she would mention her.

"Elthina!" she spat. "You know, I never told you I thought she might have fallen victim to a demon of sloth."

"How dare you…" she waved a hand and his tongue was suddenly glued to his mouth.

"Be silent," she said. "You abdicated all right to talk to me that day in Kirkwall. I helped you. I trusted you, and you… you were always ready to stab me in the back for what I was. Anders was right."

"Hawke…"

"You came here to kill me."

"I did."

"Kill my husband."

Husband … "He still lives then?"

There was a glint of white as she showed her teeth. "Oh yes. He lives."

The surge of anger, of hate was so fierce he thought for a moment he would be able to break his bonds, but her magic was sure, and strong. The way it had always been.

"You're a hypocrite, and an idiot," she said, but her voice had lost the sting of a few seconds ago. Instead it held a world of melancholy, and sadness. What has he done to her? the pity gripped him, surprising in its intensity. He had to remind himself that she was as much at fault as her…husband. "Anders paid for his crime. A thousand times over, he paid. He was paying before it even happened, and he will continue to pay until he dies. A simple death - a clean death - what you offer him? Would have been a reward."

"He still needs to die."

Light filtered into the room from a doorway behind him. "As my wife said, you truly are a hypocrite, Sebastian. At least Fenris cursed me to my face. You dressed it up with trying to save me."

The light was coming from him, in blue waves interspersed with darkness. His eyes, though, were still human. That's how Sebastian knew it was the man, not the demon, who spoke.

The bonds were secure. Hawke would not let him free to kill the man she loved. The abomination. The murderer.

"What are you going to do to me?"

"A few years ago I might have killed you," Anders said, and his voice was light-hearted now, in direct contrast to the hard, fierce look Hawke was giving him from the chair by the fire. Her face had lines he didn't remember, and there was something else… something he couldn't quite place. Anders, however, stepped in front of her, his face - so kind, even after all he'd done - tilted to one side, as though Sebastian was a patient in his clinic, someone with a disease the apostate could cure.

"And now?"

"Give me the phylactery," Anders said, holding out one long fingered hand, "and I'll let you go."

"Anders…" she didn't want to forgive him. Of the two, he would never have thought that her desire for vengeance would be greater than his.

"No," Sebastian said. His voice firm. He would not give up the only thing that had got him this far.

Anders shrugged. "Well. Considering I know you don't have it, it doesn't really matter," he flashed a grin at Sebastian before kneeling by the body of the Templar. "Did you have to kill him, love? Templars are in short supply these days."

Hawke smiled, a sly look with enough heat in it to make Sebastian blush. His vows were still intact, no matter how much he'd been tempted to break them. With her.

"Automatic reaction, Anders," she said softly. "I'm acting on instinct a lot these days."

The blond man clicked his tongue as he searched the body, standing up with the faintly glowing vial in his fingers. "Maker's breath," he said, matter-of-factly. "Do you know how often I've dreamed of holding this in my hands? You have my thanks, Sebastian, for bringing it to me. It must have cost you a pretty penny."

"I would have paid anything," he spat. "Anything to see you dead."

The man's eyes flashed blue and Sebastian braced himself for his own death, but the voice that emerged, though booming and obviously not Anders' own, was simply sad.

"Vengeance serves no purpose, Prince of Starkhaven," Justice said. "You would do well to abandon it." With those words, there was another flare of power, and the vial with its contents was consumed, crumbling to ash and dust. "Now leave us."

The green glow of magic surrounding him was extinguished and Sebastian reached for his bow, thinking to strike now while he had the chance. But there was another flare of power and his bow dropped from his fingers, white hot. It lay on the floor of the house, radiating heat but still whole.

"One templar would never have been enough," Hawke said softly, and her voice had an element of sadness to it now, too. She stood, moving to Anders' side, taking his hand in hers. And standing, he could see what had been concealed when she was in the chair by the fire. "For the sake of all we shared, Sebastian. Go. Don't make us kill you."

"Holy Andraste," he breathed. "You would trust him… with this?"

She laid a hand on her belly. "I would trust him with anything, Sebastian. Will you kill us now? Or try to? Rest assured I have no compunction about striking you dead. You have threatened me and my family for the last time."

He backed towards the door, panic welling in him. Why it should make a difference, that she was carrying his child… the child of a murderer… he wasn't sure, but to kill her now…

He stumbled out of the door and into the night, mind reeling, without purpose.

Defeated.