Leap chapter 4 - I hope he has nice eyes

[amhran_comhrac]

Title: Leap: chapter 4 "I hope he has nice eyes"
Game: Dragon Age 2
Pairing: Mage f!Hawke/Anders (eventual)
Rating: T for now, eventual M
Wordcount: 3000
Summary: "Watch for that moment...and when it comes, do not hesitate to leap." Malina has spent her life hiding from the Templars, but she's starting to realize fear can be just as much a prison as the Circle.





Edit: Somehow my formatting became a hot mess. Hopefully fixed now.

22 Harvestmere 9:27 Dragon
Lothering, Southern Bannorn, Ferelden

Acting without thought, Malina retraced her footsteps. When she reached the freehold she froze, staring at the front door. After a moment spent gathering her nerves, she began to pound.

No one answered.

Filling with rage, she held her hands out, summoning energy from the fade. Lips moving silently, Malina pulled her hands back and then thrust both arms forward, energy crackling in the silence of the early morning. The door flew open, hanging at a crazed angle.

A terrified looking man stood clutching a fireplace poker; it was the same man she had seen her father with at Dane's Refuge. Malina waved her arm, knocking him to the ground with another burst of magical energy, and walked over. Kicking the poker from his hand she glared down. "You set him up," she hissed through clenched teeth.

"What?" he said.

"You. Set. Him. Up," she repeated, teeth clenched. "You set my father up."

To her annoyance, he began to cry. "I had no choice," the man sputtered. "My wife was sick. They told me they'd find me a healer, I just had to let them bring him back to the Circle after."

She laughed bitterly. "Bring him back to the Circle?" Malina said, disgusted. "He's dead."

"But the templar told me—"

"My father hasn't been in the Circle since before I was born," she snapped. "They killed him. That's what they do to people like us!"

The man continued to cry. "Are you going to kill me?" he finally asked.

She thought about that, even going so far as to summon lightning at her hands. "No," Malina said finally. "Only because he wouldn't want me to." Shaking her hands, she put a hand on her hip. "He helped you. He did it to be kind. And you decided thank him by getting him killed. I want you to remember that. I hope the templar gold feels good in your pocket, asshole." Spitting on him, she turned and left.

It was after dawn when Malina got home. Her father's body was gone from the road where he had died, to her confusion. His bloodstain remained, though. She gave it a wide berth , trying to force herself not to cry as she passed.

The door flew open when she turned the knob, and her mother rushed forward. Through her tears Malina could make out the words 'father,' 'found,' and 'bandits.' Carver was sitting in the front room, face ashen as he stared blankly forward. Bethany was sobbing into his shoulder. He had an arm around his twin, halfheartedly patting her shoulder.

She thought about telling them the truth. Bethany would become more nervous, and start talking about how maybe the circle wouldn't be 'so bad' with even greater frequency. Carver would find a way to blame her. Her mother would be destroyed, and probably insist they move. He wouldn't have wanted any of that to happen.

Maybe it would be better this way.

Finally allowing herself to cry, Malina fell into her mother's arms.

Days later, standing with her family at the pyre, she was surprised and proud by how many of the locals had come out to see her father off. Malina sagged with exhaustion, leaning subtly against Carver. Bethany stood on his other side. To anyone who didn't know them he would look like the supportive brother. And he was, in a way. It's just that at this point his support was in the form of keeping them both from falling over. The diluted magebane they had drunk that morning to suppress any trace of magic they might give off was taking its toll. Without it neither would have been able to stand as close to the templars as they had to for the ceremony, though. Malina couldn't help noticing Ser Robert glancing at both of them in confusion. He must have wondered why they didn't seem to be mages any longer.

A steady stream of neighbors poured into their house for the rest of the day. Offering kind, meaningless words and slightly more useful gifts of food, she got the distinct impression they were mostly pleased it wasn't someone from their own family.

It will be soon enough, she realized. With no village healer, well, the next person in need of healing would simply die. She could always step into her father's role but… they had been fortunate enough not to get caught as it was. She wasn't sure the family could hide from the Chantry forever, and that would be a sure way to draw attention to both her and Bethany.

When everyone had finally left, Malina dropped into a chair at the kitchen table. "Here," her mother said, sliding a small bottle across the table. Uncorking it, her eyes widened. "To counter the magebane. Carver already brought Bethany one."

"Thanks," Malina said, downing the lyrium potion and feeling refreshed within seconds. "Maker… what will we do now?"

Her mother shrugged. "We'll live our lives," she said. "He wouldn't want us to just curl up and die." She put her face in her hands, elbows on the table. "As tempting as that is right now."

Malina got up, moving over to sit next to Leandra. Putting an arm around her shoulder she fought for something to say. "Mother, why don't you get some rest?" was what came out after she decided there was nothing she could say to make this better or easier.

"No," Leandra said, sitting up again. "I… I can't try and sleep in that bed. Not without him. Not yet." She bit her lip, staring forward. "All I could think last night was how it smelled like him and how the next time I change the sheets even that will be gone."

"I suppose you can just… not change your sheets?" Malina said.

She looked over at Malina, a sad smile on her face. "At least I won't have to worry about missing your father's bad jokes," Leandra told her daughter. Leaning over, she kissed her on the forehead. "Go to bed, sweetheart. I think I'd like to be alone for a bit."

Malina nodded, embracing her mother before leaving the room.

The next day was no less chaotic. With her father gone the work of keeping the farm running fell to her; crop and animals didn't understand the concept of mourning. Carver and Bethany helped, of course, but they hadn't spent as much time in the fields as she had. She fell into bed too exhausted to even think about sneaking off for a card game at Dane's Refuge that night, and every night thereafter.

22 Drakonis 9:28 Dragon
Lothering, Southern Bannorn, Ferelden

He had been dead for almost six months when there was a knock on the door before dinner. Carver glanced out the window and hissed under his breath. "Templar!" Without a word, Malina and Bethany retreated to the kitchen, ready to dive into the cellar at a moment's notice.

"Ser Robert," she could hear her mother say from the next room. "This is unexpected."

The two spoke, her mother played dumb while Ser Robert danced around his point. It eventually became clear why he was there, though. With Malcolm gone the bribes had stopped. He wanted money.

"Screw this," Malina muttered, walking into the front room. He stood up straighter as she entered.

"My lady," Robert said, voice dripping with slime, "I must say, you look particularly lovely."

"I'm covered in dirt and smell like the henhouse," she replied. "You've got a strange definition of lovely, Ser Robert."

"Perhaps," he said. "Were you…aware of the arrangement your father and I made?" He turned to her directly, shutting Leandra out of the conversation. Malina could see her mother narrow her eyes. "It's no secret your family's… welfare fell to you with his untimely death."

She pushed an urge to fry him alive down, but perhaps not quick enough. The templar's eyes widened and he took a step back. "I was," she replied through clenched teeth. "It died with him."

He sneered at her. "Think carefully on that, mage. What will happen the next time someone speaks up?"

Malina folded her arms, smirking. "Why, you've already investigated the situation so many times, and so very thoroughly… I'd imagine you would want to continue to reassure your superiors that there's nothing at all unusual about the Hawke family. That is… unless you want someone to wonder why you simply never noticed anything wrong, and look into how something like this could have slipped past one of the Chantry's proud holy warriors for so many years." Malina grinned watching him squirm.

Ser Robert finally sputtered, face red with anger. "This isn't the last of it," the templar said, glaring at her.

"Oh, I think it is," she replied. "You have a lovely night. Maker bless!" With that she closed the door.

"I can't believe you did that!" Bethany said, walking out of the kitchen.

"Neither can I," Carver agreed. "You might have actually outsmarted him!"

"I have my moments," she said.

"Shame they're so rare," he replied.

28 Justinian 9:30 Dragon
Lothering, Southern Bannorn, Ferelden

To her amazement, Malina managed to keep the farm running for almost three more years without incident.

Well, without external incident.

"The son inherits!" Carver was fond of reminding her. While it made sense for the day to day running of the farm to fall on her in the first years after Malcolm's death, the twins had been only fifteen at the time, now that Carver had reached his eighteenth summer he seemed dead-set on reminding everyone who the man of the family was.

"There's no law that says property goes to the male heir," she replied calmly, not stopping her work shucking peas at the kitchen table. "Technically, the farm still belongs to our mother, you know."

"Don't give me that," he replied. "I'm a grown man, I won't live under my sister's rule forever."

She looked up. "Under my rule? Was that you up at dawn with me to tend the chickens? Wait, no, that was Bethany. That must have been you who got up in the middle of the night to deliver the calves. Wait, no, that was mother and I. Did… did I order you to spend all your time making eyes at Peaches and fooling around behind her father's barn? I can't see how that would benefit us…. Unless…." She paused thoughtfully. "Oh, right, I really wanted to be an aunt!"

"Hey!" he snapped, "what I do with my time is—"

"Painfully stupid," she cut him off. "You're eighteen, you're too young to be a father, and you couldn't support a wife and child anyways."

"No, I couldn't," he snapped, "since my sister got the farm!"

Malina narrowed her eyes. "Oh, that's it, then? You want to put me, Bethany, and mother out so you can play house with Peaches?"

"What?" he looked shocked. "No, I didn't mean— I'd never say that! I just… I don't know what I'm supposed to do with myself. I don't have anything."

"Neither do we!" she said. "All we have is this house and the land it sits on. What, you think I've got a bag of gold under my bed?"

"I know that," he said, calming. "Look, just… don't you think pop would want the farm to go to someone who would pass it on, keep it in the family?"

Malina's hands froze in the bowl, green shells falling from her fingers.

Carver was on his feet a moment later, moving to her side. "Malina, I'm sorry," he said quickly, hand on her shoulder. "I didn't mean it like that. Really."

"Oh, no," she said. "Of course not. I'm sure that was the brilliant lead up to telling me about a new friend who has a secret love of illegal mages. Does he have nice eyes? I hope he has nice eyes." Carver didn't seem to know how to respond. He looked at her, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot. "No? Oh well… worth a shot."

"Sorry," he said.

"Yeah, me too," she replied.

"I have to think about my future," he finally said after a long silence.

"I wish I could help you," she said with a sigh.

One evening, when leaving Dane's Refuge after one of the rare occasions she snuck away to see her friends, Malina saw several men in armor enter.

"Ser?" she called to one before going out into the warm summer evening. "Is something wrong?"

"War," he replied, regret in his voice. "We're looking for volunteers to join the king's army."

"Orlais?" she asked in horror.

The man shook his head, a brief look of horror slipping past his brave facade. "The one thing that's worse," he said grimly. "Darkspawn."

She stared at him blankly for a moment. "You're kidding me. Darkspawn? Didn't the Grey Wardens finish them off years ago?"

"I've seen them myself," he said. "Wouldn't have believed it myself otherwise."

Malina sucked in a breath. She may have been a farmer's daughter from the hinterlands, but her parents both possessed some of the finest educations the Free Marches had to offer. She knew her history. "Is..is it..." Taking another breath, she forced herself to say the word. Not speaking it would have no bearing on if it was the truth. "Is it a Blight?"

"Maker help us, I just don't know," the man said. His blue eyes were filled with a fear that told Malina what he thought about it, though.

Thanking him for his time, she ran home to tell her family.

"A Blight," her mother shuddered at the word. "What if it's true?"

"We've gotten pretty good at running and hiding over the years." Malina smiled, hiding her fear. "Standard templar procedure should work. But, you know, multiplied by about a thousand. Templars don't generally travel in hordes, after all."

"Where?" Bethany asked.

"Tevinter?" her sister suggested.

"You would say that," Carver said, finally breaking the silence he'd maintained most of the night. "I've got enough trouble being second class in my family. I don't want to make it a legal reality, too."

"Poor Carver, never having to fear for his life. What a nightmare it must be."

He rolled his eyes. "Oh yes, since harboring an apostate is perfectly fine. Right. I forgot the Chantry changed that bit."

"Enough!" Malina finally said. "Right now picking where to go is the least of our worries."

"Maybe we'll think of something by morning," Bethany suggested.

"Maybe," Malina agreed.

When she got up it was without any nighttime epiphanies. Not knowing what else to do, she went into the fields like any other day. Her mother's scream brought her running back into the house.

"What? What's wrong?"

"Carver!" she said, thrusting a paper at Malina.

"Oh Maker," Malina said, reading the note.

Bethany thundered up the back stairs a moment later. "What's wrong?" she called.

"Carver joined the bloody army!" Malina thrust the paper at Bethany.

"He did what?" she said, horrified. "But… he never even told me!" She covered her face for a moment. "Now what should we do?"

"Wait for him," Malina said.

Bethany nodded. "Well, I'd better check on the hens. I'm sure they miss me."

Leandra wrung her hands together, standing in the doorway watching as her daughters returned to work.

---

New AOA this weekend, probably. It requires a bit too much concentration to write on my lunch break.