o14. quasi closed.

[forgodssake]

CHARACTERS: Charles Xavier + Caprica "Natasi" Six + Garrett Hawke; and others.
LOCATION: Probably there are trees.
WARNINGS: TBA.
SUMMARY: The sad story how we became lonely two legged creatures.
NOTES: A series of pre-planned threads and a general catch all for October, so please, if you want to do something, shout at me!

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[judex]

[ Fenris' petting slows, then stops, and he puts his foot back on firm ground to frown at Hawke. ]

If.

[ He shakes his head a little. This shouldn't surprise him more than most things. And it hasn't quite registed that not making it to Kirkwall means died, but it still hurts, somehow, in a mild and remote way, to think there's a world where he never knew her. She was sweet. And strong. The only decent mage he ever knew. ]

She did, where I'm from. I didn't know you for long before they caught her, but she's--we're nearly friends.

[ Are friends, if he ever returns home and if he ever sees her again, but he's slow to admit that sort of thing with anyone, mage or not. ]

[queasycrow]

[ That should probably be inspiring a lot of questions by now, like how and why and what does that mean, but maybe the foreknowledge that none of them will be answered along with the way Hawke in general handles questions to which there are no satisfying answers kind of renders all of them to static grey. At least immediately. That neutrality shows in his face, but his gaze slants away, tension mounted in his shoulders.

He probably doesn't need to say out loud what 'if' means.

Nor is he inclined to, right away. He sets aside armor and cloth, rolling up to sit properly, a hand going out to snag Dog's back paw in idle fidget. ]

Perhaps they would have taken her and not me. I'm the one with all the luck.

[ That's less bitter than it looks on paper -- more wry, as if repeating something he's been told before. ]

That wasn't always the case. It didn't take a long time for her to start teaching me things about magic, and not the other way around, although Maker knew she would often make a point to. Stylist disagreements, [ he feels a need to add. ] She held opinions about how not absolutely everything needed to be set on fire to achieve the same effect, Garrett, or something about how most mages know better than to run right into the middle of a fight, Garrett, like how an archer wouldn't charge right in and start arrowing everyone in the face, now would they, Garrett.

[ He huffs out a breath, almost a laugh. ] Probably, I made a bad impression. She ran right at an ogre, back in Lothering. Saved our mother, but she didn't make it, herself.

That was a long time ago.

[ Or it feels longer than it was, less than a decade, but an awful lot happened. ]

[judex]

[ It's a story Fenris has heard before, but all wrong--not with Bethany's good sense and advice and bravery, but a young man's pride and stubbornness. And bravery. Of course. It runs in the family, like other things, and unlike those other things doesn't seem to have skipped any of them over. Perhaps it would have been better for all of them if it had.

Still, even dripping with references to magic, Hawke's impression of her makes Fenris smile, in his way. Which is to say it's only barely a smile, if it can be called one at all, before ogre fades it out entirely. ]

I'm sorry.

[ He means it. Evidence: he sits down, right there on the ground next to Dog, no longer a few easy steps from leaving if things turn sour. If he were fonder of this Hawke, he might add it wasn't your fault--but here they are in this uncharted, bizarre territory, where Hawke is someone Fenris knows well enough to know he won't believe it, but someone strange enough that pressing the issue on principle isn't instinct. ]

What of your brother?

[queasycrow]

Carver.

[ Hawke glances after where Fenris is settling, privately glad the elf isn't wandering off to leave him with his thoughts. He'll have to be alone with them, eventually, save for Dog. Dog, who apparently seems like a universal constant. ]

Oh, he made it along, complaining the entire way, and complaining once we arrived in Kirkwall. Complaining during our excursion into the Deep Roads, too. He was nearly killed, and made a Grey Warden, saving his life. The sort of thing we talked about as children. Grey Wardens, not dying in the Deep Roads.

I don't-- I didn't see much of him anymore, save for when the world's ending. He wrote letters. Complaining. It's been even longer since I got any, but I doubt his disposition is much improved.

You two got along like a house on fire.

[judex]

His fault, I'm sure.

[ Dog has Fenris' attention again. Or his gaze, at least, and both of his hands, one behind an ear and the other under his massive chin. He is listening to Hawke, though, as carefully as ever. When he glances up there's a line between his eyebrows--deep, a small sign that he's thirty (ish, probably) beneath his otherwise unlined elven face. ]

I never met him. He died in Lothering, with the ogre.

[ Is it comforting or depressing to think that there may have been no way to save both of them? Fenris isn't sure. But he isn't trying to comfort anyone, so it doesn't matter. ]

[queasycrow]

[ Well that's nice and symmetrical, isn't it.

No, there isn't any part of Hawke that would prefer to think of the inevitable death of either of them. There might have been small comfort to imagine a world where they're both alive, but the news of Carver's death else-universe equally feels distant and abstract and he kind of just-- his eyebrows twinge at the middle.

A beat, then; ]

I'm glad you met Dog, then. Really the best of us all.

[ He reaches across to roughly patpat Dog's flank. ]

And you were friends with an apostate named Hawke in both instances. Wonders don't cease, you know.