Who: Hawke & Anders What: Discussing Thedas over drinks while Midna destroyed a sex toy shop When: During Midna's Spider Wreckage Where: A bar far, far away from said spider wreckage Rating/Warnings: Low Status: Complete!
It had been years since Anders had last seen Hawke, and he was looking forward to it. A little nervous, but mostly excited, giant spiders rampaging through the OC again aside. Maybe the giant spider would make things easier, really. A nice lead in to “someday, you might dream of killing human-sized spiders regularly!” Garrett Hawke and Marian Hawke from his dreams had some fairly obvious differences, but more than enough similarities. Once he had actually sat down and thought about it, once other people from his dream world had told him they dreamed of a male hawke, he realized that it wasn’t just the strange family connections; they seemed to be pretty close personality-wise as well.
Which meant that Anders really should sit down and talk about the dreams with him. He didn’t know for sure that he’d dream of Thedas, but it seemed extraordinarily likely. He’d picked him up, managing to avoid the crazed drivers and the giant spider, and had just finished ordering a round.
“So, giant spiders. That seems about right for an introduction to the Orange County.”
Giant spiders. Ugh, put him out of his misery now, will you? Not that he’d run screeching the opposite direction at the literal sight of it, but Hawke had never been a fan of creepy-crawly things. Seeing a gargantuan one thrashing about was less than desirable, caused a public riot, prompted the desire for a drink, but all things considered?
He accepted the circumstances fairly well.
“Aside from the network, I assume,” he scoffed, passing his hand over the prickly scruff of his beard. They hadn’t run into that thing on the way here, thank heavens. “I’m not an idiot. I’m fairly literate, and I already know about this place. Dreams, monster tantrums, so forth.”
Most of the information was accessible through the website anyway. Open to be analysed and interpreted. No need for him to be in denial of it all, when he already experienced the oddness.
“Oh, so you’re up to speed then,” Anders said, smiling a little as their beers came. He could have one, maybe he could push two before he’d have to stop. Justice didn’t let him get drunk anymore, and while Anders could see the logic in not dulling his senses, he still kind of missed it. Especially now that he was sitting here with Hawke. “You’d be surprised at how many people don’t read through the Network when they first arrive.”
A tall glass of alcoholic piss. Hawke had never seen anything more beautiful, and even if it had a little too much foam on top than preferred, he chugged it with a thirst. It’d been awhile since he actually sat down with someone (and an old friend at that) to even sort of relax - he’d been forced to be very frugal with his money, but it wouldn’t hurt to throw a couple bucs in the direction of things that’d keep his sanity in tact.
“I’ve known about the dreams,” he told him. “Partly because the lady running the club experiences them, partly because I’ve experienced my own.” There, he said it. Hawke had a couple odd ones. The difference between dreams and Dreams was a very succinct thing, he thought, and he always had a very practical approach to most situations. All he needed to do some research, talk to a couple people, and he was convinced - there was a suspicious amount of ‘drugs in the water’ stories he hadn’t bought. He picked his pint up again, mouth curving into a smile, his usually hidden dimples peaking through. “You’ll tell me yours? The ones that plague you at night about another life, Anders, not your hopes and aspirations in life.”
"You've had your own?" Anders asked, and took a sip of his own beer. "I'd be happy to tell you mine, though I'd like to hear of yours first. Do you dream of Lothering?" He knew that dreams didn't always come in order - he had dreamed of his escape attempts from Fereldan's Circle before he had ever dreamed of being taken away from his family in the Anderfels, but it seemed like a good place to start.
Ah-hah. Lothering did indeed ring a bell, and something told him this discussion would segue into Anders explaining his odd behavior. And questions, he’d been asking some bloody weird ones. Hawke sipped his beer with hesitance this time around, and licked that residue foam from his upper lip. “Funny you mention that,” he chuckled, stroking his facial hair pensively. “I have. Bits and pieces about Thedas, Ferelden.”
Curiously enough, he’d read other people mentioning such places too. Not anyone he knew, and Hawke wouldn’t pester them about it quite yet. There was the whole mage issue that raised concern. He hadn’t decided how he wanted to approach that. Right now his safest route was to poke the beast and test the waters with someone he knew.
Internet strangers could wait.
“If you couldn’t guess yet, I also dream of Thedas.” He frowned to himself, not quite sure how to continue. It had taken Anders a few dreams to finally grasp the bits of history to Thedas that everyone should know - the Blights, how magic worked, the history of the Circle - and he had no idea how much of all of that Hawke knew. He could talk about escaping the Circle, of joining the Grey Wardens after the Blight, but most of it would likely fly right over Hawke’s head.
Had Isabela had this much trouble when she had been talking to Anders about his dreams? Maker, he wished she was still around. “What all have you dreamed so far? Do you know of the Blight?”
“Not…” A squint, while he thought it over. “Much.” Mostly he dreamt his upbringing, in which his nuclear family remained the same. First and eldest son to Leandra (Amell) and Malcolm Hawke, the twins arrived, his father also met death there too. Add the socials stigma of being born a mage, the outlaw title of ‘apostate’ for him and Bethany - he knew it wasn’t the run of the mill sort of thing. Everything was spelling out a story. A very specific sequence of events.
A life once lived, a different version of himself, who knew. Hawke was sure people dwelled on the philosophy of it and if there had been an actual explanation, Wisdom would have said something. “The Blight, it’s the dark spawn zombie apocalypse, isn’t it? I’ve dreamt the very beginning but nothing after. We cross paths at some point, I’m assuming?”
“Kind of, I think,” Anders said, frowning to himself and taking another sip of his beer. “In my Dreams, I’m a mage. I escaped from the Fereldan Circle just before the Blight, and then joined the Grey Wardens right after. I ended up leaving the Wardens after not too long, and made my way to a cheery little city-state in the Free Marches known as Kirkwall. There, I met a woman named Hawke, who had fled Lothering from the Blight with her younger sister, Bethany, and her mother, Leandra.”
Well, he was familiar with some of that but most of the backstory went over his head. Circle mages, he knew of, considering his Thedosian upbringing consisted of him and his father (and eventually Bethany) keeping quiet about their magic to avoid Chantry and Templar scru--
Hawke choked on his beer for a second, excuse the unattractive sputtering and coughing and glistening scruff. A woman named Hawke. With a younger sister, and her mother Leandra. “The bloody fuck,” he gasped after his throat cleared. “Is that why you asked me about a Marian?? Do I have to ask my mother about some estranged sister??”
And what of Carver? He was a bit of snot there too, and most of his disgruntled attitude came from the ‘hiding mages’ bit. Even if it involved his very own siblings, the plonker.
“That’s why I asked about a Marian,” Anders echoed, smiling behind his pint. Hawke’s reaction was all he could have asked for
His mother would smack him all the way back to England if he even insinuated there was an illegitimate Hawke out there in the world, somewhere. Even then it didn’t seem likely. He couldn’t expect everything in these things to exactly mirror this waking world. A few curious questions rose, though. “I’m sure I don’t,” he insisted, stormy eyes squinting. “You mentioned the lovely females of my life, yet nothing about my brother? Bethany’s twin?”
Likely, Anders dreamt about some other Hawke. Maybe in some other existence he was some voluptuous bird with a fantastic set of tits. How fascinating. He’d have to poke and prod and maybe even pick Anders’ brain about this Marian.
“I’m sure you don’t either,” Anders said, laughing. “I think perhaps you two might be the same person, perhaps in different timelines?” He wasn’t exactly a fan of comics or things that used mediums like that, but with the dreams he’d done a bit of reading on wikipedia. “You two are actually very similar once I thought about it, and other people who dream of Thedas also dream of a different Hawke than I do.” It was kind of weird, but it wasn’t much weirder than the fact that he was now a co-pilot with an angry spirit of Justice because he dreamed of being a mage in another world.
At the mention of Carver, Anders frowned. “It wasn’t an easy journey from Lothering to Kirkwall,” Anders said after a moment. “I’m afraid Carver didn’t make it with you.”
Balls. Dare he ask about this ominous journey from Lothering to this Kirkwall place?? And dare he ask about his brother - whom always shamelessly engaged in pissing contests with him here for the sake of arguing - who had apparently died? Hawke wasn’t to that point yet, clearly, but there was dread in knowing that he could maybe dream of that too.
Or not. Maybe his would be different. Anders already had blatant differences. He’d keep his fingers and toes crossed, that was certain.
“I’ll have to thank my mother for choosing this lovely place to move to,” he chuckled, tiredly, and wiped the last rivulets of beer from his facial hair. “I don’t have the income for all the drinking this will have me doing. You’ve been well, though? With…” A hand motion. “All this?”
“It’s the number one travel destination for refugees everywhere,” Anders said. It wasn’t like there had been much of a choice with everyone leaving Fereldan at the same time. As far as Anders knew, the other cities along the Waking Sea had also been filled to capacity with people fleeing the darkspawn.
At Hawke’s question, Anders pursed his lips and thought about how to answer. The dreams made him miserable, though at the same time he was more driven than he’d ever been in his life, and his healing magic had come in handy more than once with his job as a doctor, and he really did love magic. He was happy to be having drinks with Hawke again, and he didn’t really want to bring down the mood, but Hawke would likely see soon enough. “The dreams have not been kind to me,” he said after a while. “I don’t think anyone who dreams of Thedas has an easy go of it, but when you’re a mage, they can be especially rough. I’m not sure if I’d be able to get through it without my girlfriend to help me.” At least, probably not with his sanity intact.
Mages did end up having the short end of the stick, didn’t they? He knew all too well of the injustices, having been one himself - him and his father, apostates, and Bethany followed pursuit. Magic was simply in their blood, but he wasn’t sure how much he wanted to delve into the entire thing. He trusted Anders, but Hawke wasn’t all that ready to discuss things all that deeply yet. Best to way for the rest of the picture to be properly painted to give it a proper analysis.
“Congratulations on the lady,” he commended, before his brows creased in concern. “If they’ve not been kind to you, then what have they exactly done to you?” Oh, this likely wouldn’t bode well but he was officially intrigued.
“Thank you,” Anders said. He smiled sardonically at Hawke’s question. “I think what haven’t they done to me would be the better question,” he said. Ever since he had dreamed of killing that poor mage girl, he’d been on edge and sometimes he was sure someone was following him. He was being paranoid, and he knew that, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched.
He wasn’t sure how much he wanted to get into it, but Hawke had been a friend and would very likely dream of it all himself soon. He didn’t have to go too far into detail about it, but ‘I have an angry spirit of Justice living in my head’ seemed like a prudent warning.
“When I was a Grey Warden, I met a spirit named Justice. And now he lives in my head.”
BALLS. Must he say things so nonchalantly yet bluntly, because it’d taken Hawke off guard so much he almost spat out another gulp of beer. It was very wasteful, so he made sure to not make the same mistake again and swallowed for the sake of ale integrity. “Forgive me,” he choked out after the painful gulp, and please, don’t mind that almost desperate gasp of air he sharply took in after the fact. “Did you just insinuate to me that you’re bloody possessed?”
Spell it out for him Anders, because that sounded ridiculous. And entirely possible. But also, yes, ridiculous, and it met the grounds of concern.
The bartender shot them a strange look and a curious head tilt. Hawke noticed, which is why he waved a hand and forced a brilliant smile. “No worries, mate, we’re LARPers, this is part of our game. Carry on.”
Anders snorted when Hawke said they were LARPers. Anders had never really been one for nerdy pursuits (though, he had actually started playing video games with Tink. He even had a WoW account which he had never thought would happen), and LARPing was an excuse he never would have thought to use, but it was kind of the perfect excuse when talking about dream shit.
“I wouldn’t say possessed,” Anders said, though it was mostly because he disliked the word. It made him think of demons, and Justice was no demon. He was lacking another term for it though. “In the dreams, Justice needed a new body because the corpse he was inhabiting was rotting out from under him. I happened to have a perfectly good body, and Justice thought with our powers combined we’d be able to help put an end to mage oppression.”
He’d sparked a Mage/Templar war which he had thought, when he first heard of it, was just the first step toward mage freedom. He wasn’t sure how much he could trust the word of a Seeker, but from the things Cassandra told him, it didn’t seem as though it was headed in that direction.
Hawke listened. He listened very intently, actually, carefully processing just how serious it truly was to have someone else be harbored up in your head. Something without a physical form, no less. “So…” A thoughtful hum as he tapped his fingers against his chin. “You’re possessed, then.”
There wasn’t any other term for it. If there was Anders was most certainly welcome to explain, but, no. That sounded like possession. “But anyway, continue - did you two manage to end this mage oppression? Or is it a work in progress? Or should I hush up and not ask for spoilers?”
If Anders could think of a better word than ‘possessed’ he would have corrected Hawke, but none came to mind and he was willing to let it drop. There was no point in starting an argument over technicalities.
“It’s still a work in progress in my dreams,” Anders said. “I’m not there yet, but others have told me that I may have sparked a Mage-Templar war though.” He couldn’t help the touch of pride that came into his voice. Maybe it hadn’t ended up the way that he had hoped such a war would, but the fact was that mages as a whole were fighting for their freedom instead of quietly suffering through the Templar’s abuses. “Apparently, I blow up a Chantry. Knowing what I know now though, about other people dreaming of different timelines, I don’t know if it will still come to fruition in my dreams.”
“You blow up a Chantry,” Hawke repeated, unsure if that was something to have a prideful tone about. He emptied his pint, craving something stronger. Something with a bit more bite. Didn’t matter if it was the cheapest will liquor they had, but aside from the giant spider rampaging about outside, this conversation alone was making his head spin. He ordered that next for them. “Maybe I should stop asking and see it unfold for myself. Knowing the full details would paint a better picture.”
Shot glasses filled with a gin that tasted close to piss, he slid the second one to his friend. “For old times, mate. Just one. I promise you won’t do anything questionable.”
“Allegedly,” Anders said. “I should warn you about the giant spiders though,” he said. “Thedas is lousy with them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any as big as the one rampaging around outside right now, but most of them are about man-sized with the occasional one as big as an elephant thrown in for shits and giggles.” At least he could give the man a heads up before he came across them.
He frowned a little at the shot that was put in front of him, and was nearly repulsed by the thing. But one shot wasn’t going to kill him or Justice and it sure wasn’t going to get him drunk, so he squashed down the feeling that he shouldn’t take the thing, and lifted it up for a cheers. “To old times.”