Cont.
Part one
.-:+:-.
He was shaking so badly that he didn't even see the Shade behind him. I cast an ice spell, one of the ones I'd gotten well-practiced at. He'd turned around then, at the sound, and I saw the way his face was tight, the tears he was holding back. I don't know if anyone else would've noticed- Maybe his Anders, I had to admit it, if he were even there. Where was he?
"Garrett?" I asked, and he ran to me, snaring me in his arms and bringing me to a close embrace. "What's going on? Why are there shades, and what happened to the Chantry?"
"Blondie happened," Varric grumbled from behind us, and Garrett held me closer. I looked down, hoping for clarification. "Blondie happened in a big way."
"'Blondie'?"
"The abomination," a man that I didn't recognise explained, stepping up behind Varric. He was an archer just like Commander Howe and oddly just as attractive to me, something about his bearing and demeanor more so than his actually striking looks. I'd put money he was some bann's son, estranged nobility same as me, with a bit of a past, and combined with the archery he’d be exactly my type. Except Commander Howe had kissed me on the corner of the mouth after we met up with Garrett in the Deep Roads, said that Anders had warned him not to let a pretty girl out of his sight, invited me to dinner and fully intended to court me the noble way and left me giggling and talking aloud to my memories of Mother about how I'd found that noble-born man she'd wanted me to marry, I'd become the little girl in those playtimes even if it came with the Taint and the Calling and the Deep Roads. It was almost a shame I'd finally gotten my girlhood fantasy just to find the more attractive version only weeks later.
Only weeks later. Weeks ago, Anders had been by Garrett's side, holding his hand in front of his old friend and the two of them smiling and so much in love, too in love to stop Anders from giving his friend advice on dating himself, positively doting on each other like schoolkids with play yard crushes the entire time even after three years. Hadn’t they been?
I stopped musing on it when the pretty noble continued, "He planted a bomb and killed innocents who only sought to aide others. Hawke did the right thing, in the end."
"The right thing?" I pushed Garrett away, but he didn't go far back, busy pawing at my neck, tugging up Mother's locket. What could possibly be the right thing to finding out the man you'd adored was a war criminal?
"He executed the murdering bastard, and left his body to rot." This from the elf I remembered Garrett helping hunt for slavers, the one with the lyrium implants, right before he spat on the ground. "Hopefully he'll finally come to regret his mistake of ever trusting the mage."
With his back turned to them, they couldn’t see the pain on his face, the lines as his eyes shut tight and he thumbed the locket cover slowly. He was trying so hard to be strong and collected for these people who were more than willing to strangle the last bits of composure he had. And that's when I knew it was absolutely true, that Anders was dead, that my brother had been the one to strike the blow and watch just to make certain there was no more of the man he was.
Killing his own lover, a man who'd drawn as pure emotion as our parents had had and had comforted every pall on his soul, had been the last break in a long line of hard cracks, of Father and Lothering and Carver and Mother and even myself. But Garrett knew he needed to stay together, that he had work to do still, and it was taking all he had just to ignore the pain without their help.
"He doesn't need you," I snapped. "Not if you're going to slander the man he loved."
"Sunshine, look around," Varric said, his hands held in display. "It's not slander when there's proof ten times over. And a confession to boot."
"He still loved him!" I snapped. "He doesn't need to hear him belittled!” Varric astounded me by nodding, just slightly, eyes meeting mine with the unspoken accord.
"It's alright, Bethany," Garrett shushed me, his voice wavering just that little warble that told me nothing was alright, not at all. "Anders deserved nothing else. He killed innocent people, destroyed a large portion of Hightown, he started a war and forced the Right of Annulment on the Kirkwall Circle. If there were a way to execute him for each of those crimes, it would still be the right path."
"You don't believe that," I whispered. "You wanted to forgive him."
"My crime,” he agreed, putting his forehead against mine. "That will always be my crime. But in the end, I still did it. Because as much as hurt, Bethany, it was what was right. What was just." He spat out the last word, like it was curse stronger than any other. His fingers clumsily fumbled the latch, bending it, and flipped to the picture he’d sent along with the locket. Him, proud and in clear bliss, his arms wrapped around a smiling but somewhat flustered Anders who was nonetheless kissing his temple. It was a beautiful scene to depict them, one Garrett himself had forgotten by the way he choked when he touched it. I knew if I said anything, if I tried any sort of comfort, the tears would fall, so I ignored him, let him take the portrait. I watched him tuck it securely into his armour, watched him break without letting the cracks show and idly mused just how hollow he was inside. "He didn't trust me," he confessed, loud enough for the others to overhear but they had the courtesy to pretend they didn't. "Six years in love, three years in my home, my bed, and he never once trusted me. And still I hate myself for not forgiving him."
"Do you need me, brother?" 'I'm coming anyway. You were always so strong for me, and not once did I see you falter. But he'd become your light, the only one you let show your weakness too, and he'd taken that burden so much you don't have the strength to carry your own burdens anymore, much less Kirkwall's. Oh, Garrett, you poor thing... I'll be your strength now.'
He nodded, taking my hand. "She's right, Fenris," he snapped. "You don't even want to be here anyway. I'm siding with the mages, with my sister and my father, if not with Anders."
Fenris narrowed his eyes, debating between pity and spite and wrath. "No. I'll still come," he chose, even if the words were bitter and rank enough to leave a sour taste in the back of my own throat.
"Then you'll come without saying another word about him. Or you, Sebastian."
"Sebastian, as in Sebastian Vael?" I giggled. Oh, was he a pedigree! Wherever had Garrett found him?
"Don't you have a Warden-Commander to fuck back in Amaranthine?" Garrett snarled, and that's when I knew where the alliances he'd made truly fell- In pieces, cut out of his life like the man he'd killed. And if I wasn’t careful, he'd just as easily shove me away, too. Perhaps easier, since I would return to the Wardens once I was done with this.
'Oh, brother mine, don't let yourself be angry. Don't let yourself be sad, either.' I touched his cheek, lingering until he turned away from me and drew his sword with the hand not tightly wrapped around mine. It was the wrong choice, I knew even then, but I’d hoped so strongly the mild comfort would finally be accepted, would help at all.
Then there was the fighting, the long, arduous fight against blood mages and abomination horrors and the eerily possessed Knight-Commander that Garrett screamed and slashed through with a fury I'd never imagined capable of him, and I'd known him my entire life, he'd always had a bit of an anger streak to him. I kept myself back, healing and freezing and barricading him off as he attacked, slicing through anything he could manage in one swipe and pummeling and stabbing and kicking and punching the rest until it fell, all while Fenris had to protect me from stragglers, while Sebastian and Varric provided covering fire for him that he didn't even notice.
When it was done, he didn't say anything, just grabbed my hand again and took me home. He let me take my pick of the estate, except for a single satchel he started to shove things inside. "You take Puppy," he insisted as he raided the closet in his bedroom, while I stood in his doorway hoping my silent admonishment would convince him to stop being so rash. "She'll be happier with you, and Mabari are good against Darkspawn. She’s already been exposed, and she’s fine."
"And you'll be alone then?"
His fingers lingered on a dust-coloured leather coat hanging in the closet, a coat I remembered from the Deep Roads so long ago. "Better to be a lonely man left only with his memories," he muttered softly, "Than a man crying into his dogs' side for days on end." He tore the coat down with an anguish scream. "Maybe I'll even get a cat! He liked cats, he always wanted a cat, maybe I'll get a cat and give it some stupid name and maybe it'll be enough!" he shouted as he kicked at the coat, tore at it with his boots. He ripped down more clothes, shouting about how Anders had especially liked the way he'd looked in this, or how Anders used to borrow that and wrap himself in it, or how Anders had sodding knit this, or how Anders had begged for so few clothes and that was one of them. He'd gotten to an uncomfortably familiar set of blue-green Tevinter robes that made me blush when I placed them, and cracked again, looking down in shame at his own doing, falling to his knees among all the memories he'd destroyed as quickly as he brought them to light.
He held the robes up to his cheek, nuzzling them as he continued to shake like before. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent, as if trying to burn it into his memory forever, which, perhaps he was. "He'll never wear them again, never wear any of it. He looked so, so good in them, so free and strong, like the mage heroes you read about in the pulps, but he never was a hero at all. He was an abomination, a demon, a sodding monster, yet I loved him, idiot I am, loved him more than, than..."
Garrett lifted his chin, tossing the robes at me. "You'll have happier memories of this than I will," he cursed. "And they cost seven sovereigns. You might as well wear them, they're the real thing. He never cut corners, my Anders, never once. Knew exactly what needed to be done and did it, whether it was in war or in bed or in death."
I caught them, holding them warily. I remembered all too well what had gotten on them the first time Anders had worn them, and possibly hundreds of times more in the three years since. But they felt warm, they were enchanted and soft as they looked, and I couldn’t help feeling a guilty perverse pleasure as I imagined them on my body, the same way I sometimes guiltily imagined the man they belonged to's hands. Perhaps I would wear them for Nathanial, reenact that night fully.
Garrett looked at the piles of now-ruined clothing and kicked it all away, then snatched a pillow off the bed and shoved it in the bag, and a few pages off the desk. "Give the journal to Varric, he'll get some use out of it I suppose. Make him swear not to fake me a happy ending, and once he does you can hand it over," he ordered. "And never follow me. Never contact me. The estate is yours, keep it or sell it or give it to the bloody Wardens, I don't care. I love you, Bethany, but the last thing I want in my life right now is someone else I love."
Puppy whined at his heels. He gave her a forlorn, apologetic pat. "At least let me make you some snacks for the road. How about some sandwiches?" I insisted. "I know how you like them-"
"I like them with Anders," he corrected, words spiteful and hard and I knew then he'd never, ever forgive me then, that he was gone forever from me and perhaps the world. "After a solid fuck up the arse and him telling me he loves me as he holds me against him and I'm the happiest person in Thedas laying there sweat-soaked and panting and gasping and needing only him, only ever him, only ever him. And our own private little joke after, I was just so very clever and he actually pretended he found it endearing, or maybe, and this is almost worse, maybe he actually did. That's the part of us you didn't watch, wasn't it? You saw how he'd take me, how I'd beg him to take me, oh yes strong and mighty warrior Garrett Hawke begging for an underfed apostate's cock but oh how I'd yearn for it, hunger for it, Bethany, I always preferred it that way but I felt like I needed him inside of me more than I needed air, that's what you saw. And you saw the bloody sandwiches, you saw our stupid little tradition, my stupid joke. But we didn't get to do the part in between that night because you were there, watching and wanking and imagining my love touching you, imagining yourself in my place and in another bed all at once. You missed the most important bit, the bit I craved more than his cock, the bit where he lied to me that he loved me, Bethany. Every night I lay there in his arms, with his head against my chest, above my heart, and had him calling me love so often I foolishly believed it every single time, had him telling me I was the one thing in his life that he still felt was worthwhile. And I guess, even if he did by some sodding chance mean it every time he said it, every time he made me hope that this was the rest of our lives, even then, I just wasn't worthwhile enough, was I? No, Bethany, I don’t think I'll be needing sandwiches for the road." He hefted the satchel over his shoulder, opposite his sword, and walked out of the room, out of my life.
I held the robes, lifting them up to my own nose. There was a heady, musky smell that was probably Anders, and the familiar, expected traces of sweat and Garrett, but underneath that, I could just faintly place blueberries and sex embedded in the silken, lyrium-woven fibres.
.-:+:-.
He was shaking so badly that he didn't even see the Shade behind him. I cast an ice spell, one of the ones I'd gotten well-practiced at. He'd turned around then, at the sound, and I saw the way his face was tight, the tears he was holding back. I don't know if anyone else would've noticed- Maybe his Anders, I had to admit it, if he were even there. Where was he?
"Garrett?" I asked, and he ran to me, snaring me in his arms and bringing me to a close embrace. "What's going on? Why are there shades, and what happened to the Chantry?"
"Blondie happened," Varric grumbled from behind us, and Garrett held me closer. I looked down, hoping for clarification. "Blondie happened in a big way."
"'Blondie'?"
"The abomination," a man that I didn't recognise explained, stepping up behind Varric. He was an archer just like Commander Howe and oddly just as attractive to me, something about his bearing and demeanor more so than his actually striking looks. I'd put money he was some bann's son, estranged nobility same as me, with a bit of a past, and combined with the archery he’d be exactly my type. Except Commander Howe had kissed me on the corner of the mouth after we met up with Garrett in the Deep Roads, said that Anders had warned him not to let a pretty girl out of his sight, invited me to dinner and fully intended to court me the noble way and left me giggling and talking aloud to my memories of Mother about how I'd found that noble-born man she'd wanted me to marry, I'd become the little girl in those playtimes even if it came with the Taint and the Calling and the Deep Roads. It was almost a shame I'd finally gotten my girlhood fantasy just to find the more attractive version only weeks later.
Only weeks later. Weeks ago, Anders had been by Garrett's side, holding his hand in front of his old friend and the two of them smiling and so much in love, too in love to stop Anders from giving his friend advice on dating himself, positively doting on each other like schoolkids with play yard crushes the entire time even after three years. Hadn’t they been?
I stopped musing on it when the pretty noble continued, "He planted a bomb and killed innocents who only sought to aide others. Hawke did the right thing, in the end."
"The right thing?" I pushed Garrett away, but he didn't go far back, busy pawing at my neck, tugging up Mother's locket. What could possibly be the right thing to finding out the man you'd adored was a war criminal?
"He executed the murdering bastard, and left his body to rot." This from the elf I remembered Garrett helping hunt for slavers, the one with the lyrium implants, right before he spat on the ground. "Hopefully he'll finally come to regret his mistake of ever trusting the mage."
With his back turned to them, they couldn’t see the pain on his face, the lines as his eyes shut tight and he thumbed the locket cover slowly. He was trying so hard to be strong and collected for these people who were more than willing to strangle the last bits of composure he had. And that's when I knew it was absolutely true, that Anders was dead, that my brother had been the one to strike the blow and watch just to make certain there was no more of the man he was.
Killing his own lover, a man who'd drawn as pure emotion as our parents had had and had comforted every pall on his soul, had been the last break in a long line of hard cracks, of Father and Lothering and Carver and Mother and even myself. But Garrett knew he needed to stay together, that he had work to do still, and it was taking all he had just to ignore the pain without their help.
"He doesn't need you," I snapped. "Not if you're going to slander the man he loved."
"Sunshine, look around," Varric said, his hands held in display. "It's not slander when there's proof ten times over. And a confession to boot."
"He still loved him!" I snapped. "He doesn't need to hear him belittled!” Varric astounded me by nodding, just slightly, eyes meeting mine with the unspoken accord.
"It's alright, Bethany," Garrett shushed me, his voice wavering just that little warble that told me nothing was alright, not at all. "Anders deserved nothing else. He killed innocent people, destroyed a large portion of Hightown, he started a war and forced the Right of Annulment on the Kirkwall Circle. If there were a way to execute him for each of those crimes, it would still be the right path."
"You don't believe that," I whispered. "You wanted to forgive him."
"My crime,” he agreed, putting his forehead against mine. "That will always be my crime. But in the end, I still did it. Because as much as hurt, Bethany, it was what was right. What was just." He spat out the last word, like it was curse stronger than any other. His fingers clumsily fumbled the latch, bending it, and flipped to the picture he’d sent along with the locket. Him, proud and in clear bliss, his arms wrapped around a smiling but somewhat flustered Anders who was nonetheless kissing his temple. It was a beautiful scene to depict them, one Garrett himself had forgotten by the way he choked when he touched it. I knew if I said anything, if I tried any sort of comfort, the tears would fall, so I ignored him, let him take the portrait. I watched him tuck it securely into his armour, watched him break without letting the cracks show and idly mused just how hollow he was inside. "He didn't trust me," he confessed, loud enough for the others to overhear but they had the courtesy to pretend they didn't. "Six years in love, three years in my home, my bed, and he never once trusted me. And still I hate myself for not forgiving him."
"Do you need me, brother?" 'I'm coming anyway. You were always so strong for me, and not once did I see you falter. But he'd become your light, the only one you let show your weakness too, and he'd taken that burden so much you don't have the strength to carry your own burdens anymore, much less Kirkwall's. Oh, Garrett, you poor thing... I'll be your strength now.'
He nodded, taking my hand. "She's right, Fenris," he snapped. "You don't even want to be here anyway. I'm siding with the mages, with my sister and my father, if not with Anders."
Fenris narrowed his eyes, debating between pity and spite and wrath. "No. I'll still come," he chose, even if the words were bitter and rank enough to leave a sour taste in the back of my own throat.
"Then you'll come without saying another word about him. Or you, Sebastian."
"Sebastian, as in Sebastian Vael?" I giggled. Oh, was he a pedigree! Wherever had Garrett found him?
"Don't you have a Warden-Commander to fuck back in Amaranthine?" Garrett snarled, and that's when I knew where the alliances he'd made truly fell- In pieces, cut out of his life like the man he'd killed. And if I wasn’t careful, he'd just as easily shove me away, too. Perhaps easier, since I would return to the Wardens once I was done with this.
'Oh, brother mine, don't let yourself be angry. Don't let yourself be sad, either.' I touched his cheek, lingering until he turned away from me and drew his sword with the hand not tightly wrapped around mine. It was the wrong choice, I knew even then, but I’d hoped so strongly the mild comfort would finally be accepted, would help at all.
Then there was the fighting, the long, arduous fight against blood mages and abomination horrors and the eerily possessed Knight-Commander that Garrett screamed and slashed through with a fury I'd never imagined capable of him, and I'd known him my entire life, he'd always had a bit of an anger streak to him. I kept myself back, healing and freezing and barricading him off as he attacked, slicing through anything he could manage in one swipe and pummeling and stabbing and kicking and punching the rest until it fell, all while Fenris had to protect me from stragglers, while Sebastian and Varric provided covering fire for him that he didn't even notice.
When it was done, he didn't say anything, just grabbed my hand again and took me home. He let me take my pick of the estate, except for a single satchel he started to shove things inside. "You take Puppy," he insisted as he raided the closet in his bedroom, while I stood in his doorway hoping my silent admonishment would convince him to stop being so rash. "She'll be happier with you, and Mabari are good against Darkspawn. She’s already been exposed, and she’s fine."
"And you'll be alone then?"
His fingers lingered on a dust-coloured leather coat hanging in the closet, a coat I remembered from the Deep Roads so long ago. "Better to be a lonely man left only with his memories," he muttered softly, "Than a man crying into his dogs' side for days on end." He tore the coat down with an anguish scream. "Maybe I'll even get a cat! He liked cats, he always wanted a cat, maybe I'll get a cat and give it some stupid name and maybe it'll be enough!" he shouted as he kicked at the coat, tore at it with his boots. He ripped down more clothes, shouting about how Anders had especially liked the way he'd looked in this, or how Anders used to borrow that and wrap himself in it, or how Anders had sodding knit this, or how Anders had begged for so few clothes and that was one of them. He'd gotten to an uncomfortably familiar set of blue-green Tevinter robes that made me blush when I placed them, and cracked again, looking down in shame at his own doing, falling to his knees among all the memories he'd destroyed as quickly as he brought them to light.
He held the robes up to his cheek, nuzzling them as he continued to shake like before. He closed his eyes and inhaled the scent, as if trying to burn it into his memory forever, which, perhaps he was. "He'll never wear them again, never wear any of it. He looked so, so good in them, so free and strong, like the mage heroes you read about in the pulps, but he never was a hero at all. He was an abomination, a demon, a sodding monster, yet I loved him, idiot I am, loved him more than, than..."
Garrett lifted his chin, tossing the robes at me. "You'll have happier memories of this than I will," he cursed. "And they cost seven sovereigns. You might as well wear them, they're the real thing. He never cut corners, my Anders, never once. Knew exactly what needed to be done and did it, whether it was in war or in bed or in death."
I caught them, holding them warily. I remembered all too well what had gotten on them the first time Anders had worn them, and possibly hundreds of times more in the three years since. But they felt warm, they were enchanted and soft as they looked, and I couldn’t help feeling a guilty perverse pleasure as I imagined them on my body, the same way I sometimes guiltily imagined the man they belonged to's hands. Perhaps I would wear them for Nathanial, reenact that night fully.
Garrett looked at the piles of now-ruined clothing and kicked it all away, then snatched a pillow off the bed and shoved it in the bag, and a few pages off the desk. "Give the journal to Varric, he'll get some use out of it I suppose. Make him swear not to fake me a happy ending, and once he does you can hand it over," he ordered. "And never follow me. Never contact me. The estate is yours, keep it or sell it or give it to the bloody Wardens, I don't care. I love you, Bethany, but the last thing I want in my life right now is someone else I love."
Puppy whined at his heels. He gave her a forlorn, apologetic pat. "At least let me make you some snacks for the road. How about some sandwiches?" I insisted. "I know how you like them-"
"I like them with Anders," he corrected, words spiteful and hard and I knew then he'd never, ever forgive me then, that he was gone forever from me and perhaps the world. "After a solid fuck up the arse and him telling me he loves me as he holds me against him and I'm the happiest person in Thedas laying there sweat-soaked and panting and gasping and needing only him, only ever him, only ever him. And our own private little joke after, I was just so very clever and he actually pretended he found it endearing, or maybe, and this is almost worse, maybe he actually did. That's the part of us you didn't watch, wasn't it? You saw how he'd take me, how I'd beg him to take me, oh yes strong and mighty warrior Garrett Hawke begging for an underfed apostate's cock but oh how I'd yearn for it, hunger for it, Bethany, I always preferred it that way but I felt like I needed him inside of me more than I needed air, that's what you saw. And you saw the bloody sandwiches, you saw our stupid little tradition, my stupid joke. But we didn't get to do the part in between that night because you were there, watching and wanking and imagining my love touching you, imagining yourself in my place and in another bed all at once. You missed the most important bit, the bit I craved more than his cock, the bit where he lied to me that he loved me, Bethany. Every night I lay there in his arms, with his head against my chest, above my heart, and had him calling me love so often I foolishly believed it every single time, had him telling me I was the one thing in his life that he still felt was worthwhile. And I guess, even if he did by some sodding chance mean it every time he said it, every time he made me hope that this was the rest of our lives, even then, I just wasn't worthwhile enough, was I? No, Bethany, I don’t think I'll be needing sandwiches for the road." He hefted the satchel over his shoulder, opposite his sword, and walked out of the room, out of my life.
I held the robes, lifting them up to my own nose. There was a heady, musky smell that was probably Anders, and the familiar, expected traces of sweat and Garrett, but underneath that, I could just faintly place blueberries and sex embedded in the silken, lyrium-woven fibres.