fic: Carved Vhenadahl Ring (1/4 Run Rabbit)
last week i stayed up late practicing some writing. these are the fruits. not sure if i like them but they're almost canon in my headcanon...
Carved Vhenadahl Ring
Summary: A gift is just a gift. A sigh is just a sigh.
A/N: Anders/m!hawke, Anders/f!Tabris.
Bioware owns dragon age. First part of Run Rabbit shorts.
Hey rabbit
You’ve had it
Your fingers are in
The coin disposal
Fionn Regan (Hey Rabbit)
He rolls the little wooden ring in his palm again, wondering how such delicate wood never fractured under the carver’s chisel. From the smooth texture he can tell it has been sanded and polished with the greatest of care and expertise by hands he will likely never know. How it came to be down so deep under ground, so far from the trees of its heritage he has no idea.
He asked for this. He actually asked Hawke for it. Anders sighs deeply, rubbing his thumb against its curved edge. He’s going mad.
“Are you going to stare at that all night?”
Hawke shifts against the wall a little ways down and Anders looks up. He’d thought Hawke had fallen asleep with the others an hour ago, but as always, it seems he isn’t as good at reading the red-haired man as he likes to think.
Anders closes his fist around the ring and flips the catch to his pouch open, trying his best to look casual and disinterested.
“What are you doing up?”
Hawke raises his brow and from the time it takes for Gryff to stretch his legs out against the stone floor and twist to face him properly Anders knows he isn’t strictly awake as it is.
“Hard stone floors aren’t as comfortable as they look.”
“Tell me about it,” Anders agrees, scowling at the cavernous space around them. He’s said it before and he’ll say it again. “Maker, I hate the Deep Roads.”
The mage says nothing in response but studies the friends he’s made. Anders watches his face carefully as Gryff’s gaze falls on the sleeping elf. Fenris is lying facing the opening to the caverns off the main corridor and all they can see is the back of his snowy head poking out of a blanket that rises and falls steadily with each breath. There’s something about the way the little wrinkles in the corner of Hawke’s eye relax that makes Anders’ heart sink and beat harder all at once. His hand goes to his pouch without thinking.
“I’m starting to realise why you’d leave the Wardens.” Hawke shifts again to rub his lower back with an amused smile on his sleepy face.
Anders doesn’t laugh. He turns back to look at the ground between his legs. “Yeah.” Sometimes he wishes he wouldn’t sound so much like her.
“Are you alright?” Hawke asks at last.
And there it is. Hawke takes on everyone else’s problems as if they’re his own. Anders knows Fenris hates it and he wonders, not for the first time since they set camp if the elf is listening in to their every conversation and judging. So what if he is? Anders thinks, crossing his arms as his back straightens against the wall they share.
“I’m fine,” He says anyway. He thinks of the scrap of torn paper that rests inside his pouch now alongside the new ring Hawke gave him. “Just fine.”
“You’ve been kind of… different since we got sealed in.” Hawke observes diplomatically. They both know he’s been sullen and silent, sticking to the back of the group. Hawke doesn’t know he’s been trying to sense Wardens amongst the myriad of darkspawn signals and he thinks its best if it remains that way. Anders looks over at the mage and sees him leaning an arm on one leg, watching him with a steady look he recognises as genuine care. The man cares too much, it’s almost a weakness as much as it is a strength.
Anders nods slowly, leaning his head back against the stone. Carver snores deeply beside Hawke, rolling over onto his back, his mouth ajar. Hawke smiles fondly for a moment and Anders doesn’t understand how forgiving one man can be.
He knows he has become anything but forgiving.
“You can tell me anything, you know.” Hawke’s voice is a little softer than before.
Anders can’t meet his eyes this time. “I do.” He wouldn’t even know where to begin even if he could. “Thank you, Hawke.”
“Anytime.” The mage smiles, slumping a little further backwards against the wall, pulling his blanket up higher. They’re lucky it’s so warm this far down for the blankets Bartrand supplied are thinner than his scarf. Anders looks to his own blanket still folded neatly by the makeshift fire near Varric. There isn’t much need for a watch when Anders can sense any approaching darkspawn but it makes Hawke feel a little better and for a man who’s never seen the Deep Roads before Anders is willing to go with a little less sleep.
It’s not like he gets much of any these days as it is.
“Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d stayed in Ferelden?”
Hawke blinks himself a little more awake. “I don’t know. I don’t think there was anyway we could have ever stayed. It’s never seemed like a real possibility so I guess I’ve never really thought about it.” Anders realises he doesn’t know much of Hawke’s circumstances before he came to Kirkwall but he doesn’t take the risk of asking lest Gryff find it reason enough to push a little harder for answers to the questions he keeps providing.
“I suppose if I stayed it would have been to fight the darkspawn. Still seems like there’s plenty here, though.” Hawke’s smile is always gentle and Anders knows it is slowly replacing another’s smile when he falls alseep.
“We always thought they’d return to the Deeps faster than they have.”
“I guess even Grey Wardens can be wrong.”
Anders snorts quietly. “You have no idea.”
“How long were you one?”
The rebel mage closes his eyes and squeezes his hand to stop it reaching inside the pouch. “About a year.” It wasn’t nearly that long when he thinks about it but considering some of the most significant things that have happened in his life occurred in that past year he thinks that maybe it’s a fair estimate.
“Were you always going to run to Kirkwall?’
Anders twists his head to look over at Gryff. The fire is starting to die and the creamy colour of Hawke’s skin looks soft and smooth and for a moment, as the other mage watches the embers Anders thinks of Karl’s eyes, lost and empty.
“No.”
His head feels heavy as he looks at his hands and Hawke shuts his eyes, the late hour slowly taking him. Neither speaks for a long while and as the last flame licks around the black log held up on a bed of silver ash and glowing pieces of burnt-out wood Anders thinks Hawke has finally fallen asleep again.
A part of him wonders if there really is a need to be so mysterious, so allusive in his answers to Hawke. Poor Gryff is just trying to get to know him, and in all the time they have known each other, Hawke has proven to be a better friend than he deserves. He didn’t even think he’d make friends let alone one like Hawke.
Something inside him feels funny at the thought of friends in a place like this. Kirkwall is a city of chains, of high unscaleable walls with cuffs and gates. Mages are mistreated every which way he looks and even as the city sits miles above him Anders can feel his outrage burn. When they find their way out he knows he will forget darkspawn and lava, golems and ogres and return to the life of apostates and Templars. Of trying to run a refuge and clinic, stirring an underground movement into action and stalling the Templars after him at every turn.
It is strange to think he will still have friends though. Anders sees Hawke slumped against the wall, his foot by Carver’s head. It won’t take much more to convince the mage to help him, to help every fellow mage they can in Kirkwall’s gallows. The man has too big a heart, and is too much a part of it to say no.
Thinking it safe, Anders pops the pouch open and this time takes out both the ring and paper. The dried elfroot gets pushed aside and he tips the little scattered leaves collected on the parchment back into the pouch with a careful steady hand. He has felt something stirring in Carver since they fought the Rock Wraith and Anders knows better than to ignore his judgment.
He slips on the little wooden ring. It is only big enough to fit his pinkie finger and Anders tries not to stare at it too hard in the dying firelight. It feels strange, different to the other usual metal rings Hawke finds for them all in his travels. He doesn’t regret asking Hawke for it for a second.
It’s stupidly sentimental but it’s almost like a piece of her on his hand. Strong and light, curved and simple. It’s stupid, he repeats the thought in his head but doesn’t remove the ring from his finger.
Anders unfurls the tiny scrap of parchment and scoots down the wall a little. There’s no use sitting up now they’ll be rising in two or three hours. If he falls asleep with these things on him, then so be it. It is so late now that Anders is quickly losing the will to care.
Warden Commander Tabris
He reads the three words over and over, their tiny, pointed scrawl so much dearer to him than anything else he carries. It is foolish of him, he knows. It makes him feel less and less like he’s getting over this, moving on and being the man Justice is making him be, but for now, just in this moment he thinks maybe it’s alright to feel like this.
Hawke doesn’t even know he ripped the edge of the Wardens’ letter after they left it in the dead drop. It was easy enough to retrace their steps that day and pull it from the barrel, to run his fingers over something she touched, the ink she used, to see her handwriting. Anders face softens; she still wasn’t any good at writing. He didn’t think twice about ripping her signature from the letter and leaving the rest for the contact.
It wasn’t going to hurt anyone but him, and no one needed to know.
Justice had almost stayed his hand.
Anders runs his finger over her surname and idly wonders how long it will take for the ink to rub off if he continues to do this every night. It’s a habit and a sick one at that. Feeling guilty he rolls up the paper and stares at the fire instead, his fingers restlessly moving to touch the wooden ring, the parchment tucked safely in his palm.
The stone feels hard against his head but he breathes a sigh and reaches for his blanket. A moment later he has the paper put back in his pouch and the thin blanket over his long legs. It doesn’t reach to his shoulders but in this slouched position Anders almost believes he can make it work.
For one second he smiles. She always loved his height. He remembers her tugging on his sleeve as the four of them marched down the North Road, laughing over something Nathaniel said about Oghren’s breath. He remembers her standing on his toes to dance together in the hall during some nobles gathering. Her feet brushing his kneecaps as they lay tangled together in her big empty bed in the Keep.
Someone shifts and Anders turns to see Hawke watching him with hooded eyes, struggling to stay awake. He moves his fingers away from the ring and sees Hawke follow the action.
“One day you’ll tell me what it means,” he whispers.
Anders thinks of her face when he left her tent for the last time, her grey eyes looking anywhere but at him, the shadows of her tattoos in the dark. He silently lists the number of letters she sent to Denerim, the number of ribbons from the returning mail, her Sunday smiles when the king visited and they were sent for like chattel.
He has to leave this behind. He needs to.
He really can’t.
“I don’t think so, Gryff,” Anders whispers back, keeping his gaze on his fingers unable to face disappointing the man. Anders pulls off the ring and nestles it in his palm, letting the almost empty weight of it lull him ever closer to sleep. He can hear Hawke roll over, finally lying against the ground beside his brother and Anders stares unseeing across the corridor that once served as a dwarven road.
When he closes his eyes it isn’t her face he sees.
It isn’t anyone’s.
Carved Vhenadahl Ring
Summary: A gift is just a gift. A sigh is just a sigh.
A/N: Anders/m!hawke, Anders/f!Tabris.
Bioware owns dragon age. First part of Run Rabbit shorts.
Hey rabbit
You’ve had it
Your fingers are in
The coin disposal
Fionn Regan (Hey Rabbit)
He rolls the little wooden ring in his palm again, wondering how such delicate wood never fractured under the carver’s chisel. From the smooth texture he can tell it has been sanded and polished with the greatest of care and expertise by hands he will likely never know. How it came to be down so deep under ground, so far from the trees of its heritage he has no idea.
He asked for this. He actually asked Hawke for it. Anders sighs deeply, rubbing his thumb against its curved edge. He’s going mad.
“Are you going to stare at that all night?”
Hawke shifts against the wall a little ways down and Anders looks up. He’d thought Hawke had fallen asleep with the others an hour ago, but as always, it seems he isn’t as good at reading the red-haired man as he likes to think.
Anders closes his fist around the ring and flips the catch to his pouch open, trying his best to look casual and disinterested.
“What are you doing up?”
Hawke raises his brow and from the time it takes for Gryff to stretch his legs out against the stone floor and twist to face him properly Anders knows he isn’t strictly awake as it is.
“Hard stone floors aren’t as comfortable as they look.”
“Tell me about it,” Anders agrees, scowling at the cavernous space around them. He’s said it before and he’ll say it again. “Maker, I hate the Deep Roads.”
The mage says nothing in response but studies the friends he’s made. Anders watches his face carefully as Gryff’s gaze falls on the sleeping elf. Fenris is lying facing the opening to the caverns off the main corridor and all they can see is the back of his snowy head poking out of a blanket that rises and falls steadily with each breath. There’s something about the way the little wrinkles in the corner of Hawke’s eye relax that makes Anders’ heart sink and beat harder all at once. His hand goes to his pouch without thinking.
“I’m starting to realise why you’d leave the Wardens.” Hawke shifts again to rub his lower back with an amused smile on his sleepy face.
Anders doesn’t laugh. He turns back to look at the ground between his legs. “Yeah.” Sometimes he wishes he wouldn’t sound so much like her.
“Are you alright?” Hawke asks at last.
And there it is. Hawke takes on everyone else’s problems as if they’re his own. Anders knows Fenris hates it and he wonders, not for the first time since they set camp if the elf is listening in to their every conversation and judging. So what if he is? Anders thinks, crossing his arms as his back straightens against the wall they share.
“I’m fine,” He says anyway. He thinks of the scrap of torn paper that rests inside his pouch now alongside the new ring Hawke gave him. “Just fine.”
“You’ve been kind of… different since we got sealed in.” Hawke observes diplomatically. They both know he’s been sullen and silent, sticking to the back of the group. Hawke doesn’t know he’s been trying to sense Wardens amongst the myriad of darkspawn signals and he thinks its best if it remains that way. Anders looks over at the mage and sees him leaning an arm on one leg, watching him with a steady look he recognises as genuine care. The man cares too much, it’s almost a weakness as much as it is a strength.
Anders nods slowly, leaning his head back against the stone. Carver snores deeply beside Hawke, rolling over onto his back, his mouth ajar. Hawke smiles fondly for a moment and Anders doesn’t understand how forgiving one man can be.
He knows he has become anything but forgiving.
“You can tell me anything, you know.” Hawke’s voice is a little softer than before.
Anders can’t meet his eyes this time. “I do.” He wouldn’t even know where to begin even if he could. “Thank you, Hawke.”
“Anytime.” The mage smiles, slumping a little further backwards against the wall, pulling his blanket up higher. They’re lucky it’s so warm this far down for the blankets Bartrand supplied are thinner than his scarf. Anders looks to his own blanket still folded neatly by the makeshift fire near Varric. There isn’t much need for a watch when Anders can sense any approaching darkspawn but it makes Hawke feel a little better and for a man who’s never seen the Deep Roads before Anders is willing to go with a little less sleep.
It’s not like he gets much of any these days as it is.
“Do you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you’d stayed in Ferelden?”
Hawke blinks himself a little more awake. “I don’t know. I don’t think there was anyway we could have ever stayed. It’s never seemed like a real possibility so I guess I’ve never really thought about it.” Anders realises he doesn’t know much of Hawke’s circumstances before he came to Kirkwall but he doesn’t take the risk of asking lest Gryff find it reason enough to push a little harder for answers to the questions he keeps providing.
“I suppose if I stayed it would have been to fight the darkspawn. Still seems like there’s plenty here, though.” Hawke’s smile is always gentle and Anders knows it is slowly replacing another’s smile when he falls alseep.
“We always thought they’d return to the Deeps faster than they have.”
“I guess even Grey Wardens can be wrong.”
Anders snorts quietly. “You have no idea.”
“How long were you one?”
The rebel mage closes his eyes and squeezes his hand to stop it reaching inside the pouch. “About a year.” It wasn’t nearly that long when he thinks about it but considering some of the most significant things that have happened in his life occurred in that past year he thinks that maybe it’s a fair estimate.
“Were you always going to run to Kirkwall?’
Anders twists his head to look over at Gryff. The fire is starting to die and the creamy colour of Hawke’s skin looks soft and smooth and for a moment, as the other mage watches the embers Anders thinks of Karl’s eyes, lost and empty.
“No.”
His head feels heavy as he looks at his hands and Hawke shuts his eyes, the late hour slowly taking him. Neither speaks for a long while and as the last flame licks around the black log held up on a bed of silver ash and glowing pieces of burnt-out wood Anders thinks Hawke has finally fallen asleep again.
A part of him wonders if there really is a need to be so mysterious, so allusive in his answers to Hawke. Poor Gryff is just trying to get to know him, and in all the time they have known each other, Hawke has proven to be a better friend than he deserves. He didn’t even think he’d make friends let alone one like Hawke.
Something inside him feels funny at the thought of friends in a place like this. Kirkwall is a city of chains, of high unscaleable walls with cuffs and gates. Mages are mistreated every which way he looks and even as the city sits miles above him Anders can feel his outrage burn. When they find their way out he knows he will forget darkspawn and lava, golems and ogres and return to the life of apostates and Templars. Of trying to run a refuge and clinic, stirring an underground movement into action and stalling the Templars after him at every turn.
It is strange to think he will still have friends though. Anders sees Hawke slumped against the wall, his foot by Carver’s head. It won’t take much more to convince the mage to help him, to help every fellow mage they can in Kirkwall’s gallows. The man has too big a heart, and is too much a part of it to say no.
Thinking it safe, Anders pops the pouch open and this time takes out both the ring and paper. The dried elfroot gets pushed aside and he tips the little scattered leaves collected on the parchment back into the pouch with a careful steady hand. He has felt something stirring in Carver since they fought the Rock Wraith and Anders knows better than to ignore his judgment.
He slips on the little wooden ring. It is only big enough to fit his pinkie finger and Anders tries not to stare at it too hard in the dying firelight. It feels strange, different to the other usual metal rings Hawke finds for them all in his travels. He doesn’t regret asking Hawke for it for a second.
It’s stupidly sentimental but it’s almost like a piece of her on his hand. Strong and light, curved and simple. It’s stupid, he repeats the thought in his head but doesn’t remove the ring from his finger.
Anders unfurls the tiny scrap of parchment and scoots down the wall a little. There’s no use sitting up now they’ll be rising in two or three hours. If he falls asleep with these things on him, then so be it. It is so late now that Anders is quickly losing the will to care.
Warden Commander Tabris
He reads the three words over and over, their tiny, pointed scrawl so much dearer to him than anything else he carries. It is foolish of him, he knows. It makes him feel less and less like he’s getting over this, moving on and being the man Justice is making him be, but for now, just in this moment he thinks maybe it’s alright to feel like this.
Hawke doesn’t even know he ripped the edge of the Wardens’ letter after they left it in the dead drop. It was easy enough to retrace their steps that day and pull it from the barrel, to run his fingers over something she touched, the ink she used, to see her handwriting. Anders face softens; she still wasn’t any good at writing. He didn’t think twice about ripping her signature from the letter and leaving the rest for the contact.
It wasn’t going to hurt anyone but him, and no one needed to know.
Justice had almost stayed his hand.
Anders runs his finger over her surname and idly wonders how long it will take for the ink to rub off if he continues to do this every night. It’s a habit and a sick one at that. Feeling guilty he rolls up the paper and stares at the fire instead, his fingers restlessly moving to touch the wooden ring, the parchment tucked safely in his palm.
The stone feels hard against his head but he breathes a sigh and reaches for his blanket. A moment later he has the paper put back in his pouch and the thin blanket over his long legs. It doesn’t reach to his shoulders but in this slouched position Anders almost believes he can make it work.
For one second he smiles. She always loved his height. He remembers her tugging on his sleeve as the four of them marched down the North Road, laughing over something Nathaniel said about Oghren’s breath. He remembers her standing on his toes to dance together in the hall during some nobles gathering. Her feet brushing his kneecaps as they lay tangled together in her big empty bed in the Keep.
Someone shifts and Anders turns to see Hawke watching him with hooded eyes, struggling to stay awake. He moves his fingers away from the ring and sees Hawke follow the action.
“One day you’ll tell me what it means,” he whispers.
Anders thinks of her face when he left her tent for the last time, her grey eyes looking anywhere but at him, the shadows of her tattoos in the dark. He silently lists the number of letters she sent to Denerim, the number of ribbons from the returning mail, her Sunday smiles when the king visited and they were sent for like chattel.
He has to leave this behind. He needs to.
He really can’t.
“I don’t think so, Gryff,” Anders whispers back, keeping his gaze on his fingers unable to face disappointing the man. Anders pulls off the ring and nestles it in his palm, letting the almost empty weight of it lull him ever closer to sleep. He can hear Hawke roll over, finally lying against the ground beside his brother and Anders stares unseeing across the corridor that once served as a dwarven road.
When he closes his eyes it isn’t her face he sees.
It isn’t anyone’s.