Who: Hawke & Isabela What: 'All That Remains,' the OC Edition - Hawke's mum is found too late When: This evening Where: A madman's house Rating/Warnings:Very high; gore, blood & blood magic, references to kidnapping, just awful things overall Status: Complete!
In the waking world Hawke could still smell it, the stench of rot. Decomposing flesh, blood, urine, shit. As if the Dark Foundry in Lowtown hadn’t reeked enough of it, but there was very little room for quips and wisecracks about the unfortunate condition of Kirkwall’s cesspool. There wasn’t even a lick of humor, a sly grin from this usually not-so-serious bearded mage - it was unsettling silence instead, a rage searing across the surface of his skin like fire.
Zatanna’s cards. Nightingale’s intel. His dreams. It all came spiraling down with unmistakable clarity - what the white lillies had meant, why those flowers had bothered him so much. It was a link between both realities. A clue, an omen of death itself, and he had failed to see it before it was too late and in one world, Leandra had died in his arms. A gruesome death, her head the final piece to a macabre human puzzle meant to resemble a fucktrumpet’s deceased wife. It’d all been linked to Emeric’s investigations, Ninette from three years prior, and if only he investigated harder, if only he pushed on and found this irredeemable shit stain of the human race this wouldn’t have happened.
Isabela’s relay of information had come right as he awoke from that nightmare - it was midday in the new home he’d gotten for his family, and his first order of business was to locate his mother to assure her safety and then track this sorry fucker down and rip him limb from limb.
Yet let it be the joke of the cosmos that his mother wasn’t around and according to Carver, she’d been out all day. Something with her anonymous suitor, you see, and the sensation of wrath and fright grasped at him tighter. That’s how it all started, didn’t it? His mother being gone, off with him. Hawke remembered following the blood trail, coming across that underground hovel of decaying terror. He couldn’t let the twins know. Not yet, not until he knew, but he made sure they were taken care of even if they were adults themselves. That they wouldn’t be alone in case he didn’t come back that night.
Address obtained, Bela had come with him. There was a trick of blood magic that he did first, however - in the scenario they wouldn’t find Leandra at this home of a goddamn mortuary, but the spell had led them straight to a house that looked poorly maintained. Weeds growing everywhere, windows covered in filth and the subtle odor of something foul. Like a dead animal, only worse.
“I’m going to be under the assumption he has some kind of basement for his Frankenstein experiments,” Hawke choked out, and it wasn’t tears his voice was trembling with - Maker, no. It was anger, raw and barely contained. His father’s staff was with him, and he didn’t know if it’d be more satisfying to hike Quentin’s head on the tip of the Andrastian-inspired weapon or make him bleed from the inside out, organs rupturing one by one in a slow and painful crawl to death. “You see my mother, you grab her and you get her out, Isabela.”
He swung with his staff and a gust of telekinetic force rippled through the air. It swung the front door open, right off its very hinges and splintered the wood. Entrance to the musty house that was littered in medical books, old lores of resurrection and body reanimation, and portraits of a woman whose features resembled Leandra’s.
Immediately, Isabela felt her stomach begin to turn queasily, as soon as they entered what was clearly some mad scientist’s lair. She had not one, not two, but all three daggers with her now, two sheathed on her back in a criss-cross like she wore them in Kirkwall and the other, the Dagger of the Four Winds, strapped to her hip. She’d dreamed about following the trail of blood to the Foundry about the same time as Hawke, and the puzzle pieces slotted in right before that too - the white lilies, the DuPuis estate, blood magic, Leandra going missing. She’d died there too, held together by crude stitches and the arcane, and there was nothing any of them could do except stand beside Hawke and watch as his mother perished in his arms.
Maker, she hoped it wasn’t too late again. As soon as Leliana told her what had been found, as soon as Bela remembered, she’d gone to Garrett and they made the trip over because time was of the essence. They had none to waste.
“I promise you I’ll get her out,” she said, stepping carefully - the place was old and dusty, who knew how sturdy the ground was (she could accidentally put a foot through the rotted wood or something) and something that smelled of decay was seeping up through the floorboards. Which led Isabela to believe that the basement theory was entirely correct. “Here, down below...”
Quickly, she found the concealed lock and plate on the floor, taking care of it with lightning fast rogue hands. Everything appeared to be clear, nothing was setting her off in terms of traps on the horizon - there was just that feeling of dread that weighed down her bones, that’s all.
Oddly, the promise almost eased him. Perhaps because he could almost believe the delusion of it, that Leandra was whole, breathing, waiting for her rescuers to burst in and tear her away from this nightmare. To bring her back home under the safety of her own roof, to the arms of her children, and it’d be one of those things where things could be different here - it’d prove they weren’t cursed to follow the same fate their other selves had.
But the reality of death weighed down on his bones instead, and once they descended down the flimsy wooden stairs, it only cemented the feeling. If he hadn’t expected the rancid miasma of spoiled flesh he could have gagged, perhaps vomited. Most of the basement was lit with old, buzzing lights flickering on its last leg. There were two large fridges meant to store meat, diagrams of the human body, more pictures of this woman who held striking similarities to his mother. Old, dark blood had seeped into the porous stone ground, and there were cages fit for dogs that held remains. Of missing women, whose family still had no clue what fate their loved ones met.
At the very end, up by the opposite wall, was a table. A table with a body sewn together, Quentin next to it and stroking this put together corpse like his creation truly was his lover. He looked no different from what they dreamt. Older man with sunken, pale eyes, and a mouth curved in the most tenderest of smiles for the abomination his sick, twisted mind caused him to put together.
His skeletal fingers stroked the contours of the face they knew all too well, but the body was not hers. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” whispered the madman, careful to brush his fingertips along the sutures on her neck. “Her nose, the tilt of her lips - she had the most perfect hands I’ve ever touched. So delicate.”
Quentin knew he wasn’t alone. And just like in Thedas, he supposed there was a God that wanted him to do this. A God that wanted him to get caught so he could be stopped and punished for all he had done.
For a second, Hawke thought he could vomit. He felt the bile in his throat and the air sucked from his lungs and his world had stopped spinning. Everything was at a standstill.
The smell. Those fridges and the macabre, telltale bloodstains on the floor. Isabela was close to gagging herself - she covered her mouth with her hand, but the other reached back and unsheathed her dagger. Silently, a predator, the flint in her eyes struck gold - bright and angry, because how unfair was this? There was no way Leandra was still alive. Hawke wouldn’t even get to say goodbye. The complete and utter madman, he had taken her already and she had died far too soon without her loved ones near, in this dank and gory nightmare - but for what reason?
It was awful. Truly awful, she couldn’t really think of anything worse when it came to fucking parallels.
She wouldn’t kill Quentin herself though. No, that was reserved for Hawke and Bela wouldn’t get in his way. Rather, she just stepped closer to cross the room toward the table with the Heartbreaker at the ready, wishing that Leandra was still with them but there was no chance. In the dreams, magic had been the only thing keeping her alive for those final moments - when her killer perished, so did she. But here it was different - that wasn’t even her body. Wasn’t even her.
Color had completely drained from his face - perhaps he looked like a corpse himself. Was it foolish to wait just one more second, to see if his mother would rise? That maybe there’d be a chance in hell some kind of magic had seeped over to mock him even further, to reanimate what had become of her just so he could hear those last words from her mouth? My little boy has grown so strong. I love you. You’ve always made me proud.
Nothing dangerous emerged from the ether to threaten their lives. There weren’t any demons, no crazed necromantical sorcery spewing from Quentin’s hands. At least if there were, Hawke would have been able to unleash that erupting grief and destroy everything around them in some flashy battle. All of that anguished honed in on so much violence; it had been almost satisfying.
But there was only one target for his hostility. One target to zero all that anguish towards, and Garrett only needed one thing from his staff to handle this. The tip, because it’s sharpness was what sliced a line down his palm. Blood was freed and the aurum metal hit the stone ground with a clank. It was then that he finally took a deep, deep inhale of malodorous air.
“Please find what’s left of her,” he instructed Bela with such startling calmness - the quiet waters before a storm wrecked everything within its path. Yes, obviously, they knew where her fucking head was but now that this worthless fucktwat forced his hand into eventually planning a burial for his own mother, Hawke would make sure they would have all of her, not just some’ limbs here and there. One of the fridges, perhaps? “Quentin’s mine.”
He smeared the crimson against his other palm, rubbed it between his fingers. It was warm, the force of life, and it had the power to control and corrupt. This killer, so once cleverly titled ‘the Butcher of Lowtown’ bled from his nose. It wasn’t anything he noticed until specks of red fell onto the body he pieced together with thread and needle, but it hadn’t stopped there either - the white in his eyes became bright and bloody, gums swelled the same color. Blood from his ears, his mouth. Quentin was hemorrhaging.
“Now take a step towards me, you sick sack of shit,” the blood mage commanded, and his puppet listened. “Aren’t we doing a stellar job listening? I hear you like to hack at things, so I’m going to let you do exactly that, mate.”
“You sick fuck,” Bela uttered under her breath, in a growl, and she couldn’t even begin to feel any remorse for what happened next - for what was going to happen. Garrett needed to do this, he needed to take care of his mother’s murderer how he saw fit and Isabela wasn’t about to stop him. Instead she, with her velvety silent steps, slunk back into the shadows to begin a thorough search of the space. Those fridges, they’d be a good place to start.
The cages were a last resort. She didn’t want to contemplate the rest of Leandra being in those. But they smelled vile and like the remains had been rotting for awhile, attracting all sorts of vermin - she’d leave them be.
To the fridges it was, and she forced her muscles to move, to work on autopilot, because never in a million years did she think she’d be searching for the headless corpse of her boyfriend’s mother but to turn and run right now, when Garrett needed her - no, she’d promised to come through for him. And that included everything, from the most lighthearted moments to the most repulsive, to the most sorrowful.
She coughed as she discovered the corpse - stuffed and folded awkwardly into one of those fridges, chilled and stiff, there was Leandra. The wound on her neck, head separated from body, nearly caused Bela to gag again but she was careful as she got a good grip on her and gently slid what was left of Hawke’s mother down to the ground. There had to be something to cover her, at least, to preserve modesty - she found a sheet, and used that as tears prickled her lashes.
It was a bit dangerous to look into Hawke’s eyes. There was a thrall, some kind of hypnosis that sung to blood, and the sound of hearts pumping had been the loudest noise in his ears. There was a tray of such delicate medical equipment meant for stitching things, and next to it an impressive supply of meat butchering equipment. Bone saws, some powered tools, like the women he’d ripped from their homes were chunks of animal flesh to be shipped off to fucking meat delis. They weren’t the most sanitary looking things, but judging from the condition of this shithole it was clear that sterilization wasn’t high on the list of Quentin’s priorities.
And speaking of Quentin, a cat must’ve caught his tongue; all that manic rambling ceased, and he was dazed as his feet shuffled across the stained floors. The disturbed fuck wasn’t even there in the head anymore, driven to his own delusion that his wife would return to him if he committed all these heinous acts and Hawke knew that he deserved what was coming to him. This was for Leandra, for every woman he tore from their families - every mother, wife, sister, friend and then some.
Best part was, Garrett didn’t even have to touch that vile waste of life.
“The bone saw,” he motioned - it looked particularly disgusting, and dull, not sharpened recently. Good. It’d hurt that much more. “Make a grab for it. There you go, Quentin, who’s a good boy?” This kind of control, this power. It was what made Thedas so afraid of this kind of magic, the kind tied to all things physical. It wasn’t anything he ever wanted to indulge in but sometimes, sometimes the situation called for it. And what would ever beat the fact that his mother was decapitated and her head was sewn on a mish-mosh of other women’s body parts?
Most of the distance between them was closed when Hawke forced those couple steps closer. A good, hard look at the fucker that took his mother not only from him, but Bethany and Carver as well. From Gamlen. From Bela, because Leandra had grown to love her like one of her own. “You’re going to start off with your feet. You’ll cut them off and take your time. Then your free hand, because who the hell needs two of them? Certainly not you. Then you’ll take it to your throat, and you’ll saw and saw, and you won’t stop until you’re dead.”
His words cemented the purpose into his psyche, sealing his fate. There was no struggle or look of terror. Quentin nodded numbly, and he walked away to sit down, and started to slowly take off his shoes to get started on his own self-dismemberment. Maybe he’d bleed to death before he went anywhere further than his own feet, but either way, the process would be agonizing. Slow. Self-inflicted wounds to himself so no forensic evidence could be used against him, because this had to go to the police. Everybody needed to be identified. And every family who’d lost someone because of this madman would receive their closure.
Maker’s breath, the sounds of everything. No one could safely assume that sawing off your own feet would be like a fine aural symphony, but Isabela hadn’t imagined this - the sick sounds of skin separating from skin, snapping tendons and muscles, bones breaking, the crunch of it. She’d hear them echoing on and on and on, all in her nightmares - the visuals of it too, along with Leandra’s headless body, the smells of this room burned into her brain in searing, horrific prints.
Careful, as if handling delicate china, Bela picked up the sheet-covered Hawke matriarch (what was left of her) and carried her. The colour had drained from her face too, she looked as white as what shielded Leandra from view, ashy beneath the golden pallor to her skin. “I’ve got her,” she told Garrett. “We should go.”
There was no need to stay and watch all of this. The proceedings, Isabela felt like she could do without. Quentin wouldn’t be leaving this room, but they would. “We can hit 911 on our way out?” There had to be a working phone upstairs. That way the police would arrive, and by then the murderer would be dead - or right on the doorstep.
No, Hawke didn’t care to watch the process or stay until the end. He had sealed Quentin’s fate in making him experience just an ounce of what he’d put everything he’d taken through. Their families, every single loved on around them, because Maker, he had to tell Bethany and Carver, didn’t he? And Gamlen, that deadbeat. As annoying as he was he knew he loved his sister despite the arguments that caused rifts between them. There’d be preparations, questions, and what about her things? They’d kept intimate mementos of his father, but the man was never a materialistic person, there wasn’t much, but everything in the house they had now had his mother in everything.
Quentin was nothing to him now. Dead. Those sounds hadn’t registered, because now his eyes fell on the covered corpse of his mother being carried by the woman he loved and he couldn’t - how the bloody hell did it all come to this?
“No, it’s -” Garrett inhaled shakily. This can’t be fucking real. “I’ll take her.” Yes, he needed to - that was his mother, and she had been killed gruesomely in this world and the other. Bela had seen enough, and he tenderly reached over to transfer the body from her arms to his, almost like she was still breathing. But it was stiff, and cold, and lifeless.
He didn’t have it in him to break down; his throat felt thick, olive eyes watered, and he could feel the hum of blood in her coagulating. “Last thing she said to me was to pick up milk, you know. That soy vanilla shit that never expires,” he forced out, brows furrowed. “And I forgot.”
It was an odd thing, perhaps, or maybe not - maybe it wasn’t so strange to think about your last moments with your mother while she was still alive. Bela was right, though.
They needed to go.
Isabela didn’t think it was odd. Garrett would hold onto that moment, the last moment - he’d hold onto all of them, every single one. She sniffled and reached up to cradle the back of his head, after the sheet-covered body had been passed between them, and kissed his temple - a tender display of affection, in such a horrible place. There weren’t any words she could think of, nothing that was right - people usually said ‘I’m sorry’ during times like these, but that just seemed so bloody wrong. Bland, somehow. Because nothing could make up for this, and nothing could make this better.
“I’ll miss her,” she said, and her heart broke when she realised just how much. Bela never had a mother - a woman who had given birth to her, sure, but she’d sold her own daughter to a man for a bride price. That wasn’t what a mother was supposed to do. Leandra, the short time she’d had with the woman, had been a taste of what it felt like to be a loved daughter.
She was probably going to cry. But not here, not now. They had to leave first. Up the stairs, and she found a landline - 911 was dialed, then hung up. No words spoken, nothing said. Just something to get the police here and that was all.
It wouldn’t take long for the blaring sirens to be heard in the distance, nearing in - and it meant a storm of a clusterfuck, with detectives and police, forensics and medics, news reporters waiting to sink their wolfish teeth into the juiciness of this story. It’d make the news and then some, and his mother’s name would be on a long list of victims; the last one.
“You should go.” Hawke struggled to let out the words, but he did his best to sound sure of what he was telling her. His face was a bit wet now, with tears unleashed. “To Bethany and Carver. I need to - her head is still on that body, Isabela.” Perhaps it was best for the authorities to find her entire body and then have it released to him whole. “I’ll come up with something. It’ll look like he killed himself, and that I tracked her down here and found it all like this.”
The less involved, the better. And he needed a minute of with Leandra even like this. He’d meet up with Isabela when all this was over. “Tell them I’ll be home.”
“Garrett - “ she started, her voice cracking a little. Because she didn’t want to leave without him, didn’t want to face Bethany and Carver and relay what happened because they’d obviously notice something was wrong as soon as Isabela walked in. How was she supposed to even explain this?
But it was what he wanted, so she’d do it. She wasn’t about to protest anything right now. “Alright, I’ll...” She took a breath, then steeled herself - it wouldn’t do either of them any good if she started shaking and fell apart before those sirens even got here. And the story about tracking down his mother to discover the self-mutilation was decent enough; there were no signs of foul play that would point to him as the one who had done that to the fucking bastard. “I’ll go, and I’ll tell them.”
Time ticked away; soon, the police would be here. Before she left, she circled back to place a hand on Garrett’s bicep, kissing his shoulder. “I love you.”
It was a shame his arms were occupied - but he couldn’t bring to set Leandra down anywhere, not in this filth, even with the part battling him for comfort. Someone needed to be here, though. He needed to be here to identify his mother’s body, eventually get custody of the goddamn head that’d been ripped from her. Morbid responsibilities he had to think of, and he couldn’t leave her here like this - because after this, it was it.
It’d mark a life without one of the women he loved the most.
“I love you too,” Hawke responded, his voice pained, and for a couple moments kept his forehead pressed against hers, eyes shut to keep back hot tears. “Thank you. For coming.” For wanting to stay with him, for being there.
Because he didn’t know how he’d even start to get through this without her.
Leaving him there seconds before the onslaught of cop cars, flashing lights, and uniforms arrived on the scene was one of the most difficult things Bela ever had to do - but had to, and knew they were in for much more. She really had no idea how to handle helping him grieve - though her plan was to be there as much as possible, knowing Hawke well enough to be able to read when he needed her presence and when he needed to be left alone but she wasn’t going to leave him alone if she could help it.
Leandra was dead, she’d been brutally murdered. It kept ringing in her mind, over and over, the sound of a funeral dirge the closer she got to the new house - and she didn’t have answers for the why, even though she sorely needed them. Hating Orange County, hating the gossamer thin veil that separated this world from Thedas, she supposed she could do that - maybe it helped a little, to place the blame somewhere.
“Bethany? Carver?” she called when she stepped inside - they were home, just scattered. Dog was there, and she crouched to give him a few pets. No treats for him this time, yet he seemed to sense something was wrong too, judging by his low whines.
Bela having access to the house wasn’t something new to Bethany - she rather liked the sassy woman. As a friend, as someone who genuinely made her bearded older brother happy, and the only Hawke sister had always been an advocate of whoever made Garrett smile the way she did. Maybe down the road she’d cross the territory of sister-in-law material? A step in that relationship the little sunshine of the family eagerly waited for, and she knew her mother did too, but they wouldn’t push it.
They wanted to keep Isabela, not scare her off.
But the interesting thing about Bethany was that, out of the three, of course she’d inherit most of her mother’s features - those cheekbones, the shape of her mouth. Even the tones of their voice were similar, sometimes mistaken for one another over the phone. Gamlen had been outside with Carver, neither of them hearing her arrival, but she did. While she patiently and nervously waited in the kitchen, pressed up against the counter with her eyes glued to the phone.
Because something was wrong. Something happened, and they hadn’t been told what. Only to wait.
“Carver’s outside,” she called out, stepping out from the kitchen that held the aroma of spices - no more of that moldy cheese. “Where’s - where’s my brother? What’s going on, Bela? He didn’t sound right when he left.”
Oh, Maker’s ass, Bethany really did look too much like her mother. It made Isabela swallow thickly - felt like not just one frog was in her throat, but a whole croaking bunch of them. Carefully, she stripped down - well, only in terms of removing her weapons. The Dagger of the Four Winds came off, then she reached behind her to disarm and get rid of the Heartbreaker and the Backstabber. Everything was placed down onto the counter; a pirate without her stabbing tools, now this was big.
“Carver’s going to need to hear what happened,” she started. “Your uncle too. It’s - “ This was impossible, it was bloody fucking impossible, and if Bela could kill Quentin eight times over she gladly would. But he was well beyond dead by now. “We found out something about your mum’s suitor. Something bad, I - “
Was her hand shaking, as she wiped her eyes? “Garrett wanted me to tell you he’ll be home soon.”
Oh, drat. Something was off. Bela wouldn’t be armed like she’d gone into battle otherwise, and she wasn’t a total idiot, Bethany Hawke. Or an idiot at all. A little hard to neglect the oddities of this place, the changes in her brother and his curious tricks, the nature of a hound that had spontaneously appeared in their lives. Dog had that otherworldly demeanor despite the copious amounts of thick drool expelled from those jowls - but he was loyal, and smart, and protective and very much theirs that she was accepting of all the peculiarities that came their way.
So long as everyone wasn’t harmed, that is.
“What about that bloody bloke?” White lilies, delivered not long ago, decorated an accent table in the hallway. Another gift from the aforementioned suitor, and Bethany inhaled deeply. Isabela’s glassy eyes, the way she quivered as she tried to utter the words. Right now her brother and cracked out uncle could damn well wait. “How soon? You’re not alright, don’t try and trick me. And where’s - where’s mother? She’s been gone all day, and -”
Leandra’s suitor. Something bad about him. Garrett not being home yet, Bela’s bizarre behavior. Dread was a heavy knot in her gut, and the littlest of the siblings put her hands on the pirate’s arms. “Talk to me. Where are they?!”
This shouldn’t be coming from Isabela. Your mother’s dead were not words that she wanted to utter to Bethany, ever, she knew the girl was steely - she wasn’t some milquetoast sorority bird, she was quite intelligent and brave, even in this world. It was a staple of the Hawke family (well, unless you were Gamlen). So it wasn’t a matter of wanting to coddle her, it was more like she just didn’t feel right about delivering the news - Garrett should be the one doing that, this was his family. Perhaps Bela was a part of it, but he’d obviously had more time with them. They were everything to him.
But then again, waiting would be hellish on the nerves, so there was that double-edged sword too.
“He...had to wait to deal with the police.” She took the girl’s hands and squeezed them, carefully, like oiling the cogs of something rusty - sisterly affection, to put a name to it. Bela sort of hated her sisters, but she’d always wanted one like Garrett’s sister. “That man...your mother went to see him today and...we tried to get there in time - ” Fuck it all, she couldn’t do this.
No, no. Bethany knew where she was going with it. Nothing good could come after ‘we tried to get there in time,’ and it had to be something catastrophic. Something devastating that’d put her in tears and would keep Hawke from coming here and explaining it himself. Wherever he was, he must have been with Leandra. Which was typical, because her brother was always glued to his mother’s side, whatever happened he wouldn’t -
Garrett wouldn’t leave her, no matter what.
It was a sharp inhale of breath she took, and a tremble rattled her body from head to toe. Carver and Gamlen, those two gits were oblivious to their conversation, still outside chatting among themselves - but Dog understood. Whined and whimpered, massive paws reaching for the two women that were crumbling before one another.
“What did he - ?” Did she want to know? Did she want Bela to say it? Because she didn’t have to, she didn’t have to go into detail what had occurred because it’d all lead to death, and it was written all over her face. Bethany pushed her fingers through her hair, painfully snagging a mess of knots but she was numb to it. “I think we...we should sit down, we should sit down, and…”
Tell the other two, perhaps have a total meltdown on the couch like when Malcolm passed. Father gone, now their mother, all when things were finally going so well for all of them.
A total meltdown seemed par the course. Bela couldn’t remember the last time she let herself cry - those golden eyes seem to have forgotten what tears even were. But they would flow today - they were already building, about to spill over. “Come sit,” she encouraged Bethany, leading her over to the couch. She had to have known what happened - it was obvious, but the details? Isabela didn’t need to go over those. Not right now.
Instead, she just settled on the sofa with Garrett’s sister and awkwardly put her arms around the girl - hugs for comfort, she was terrible at those too she thought, but she was here. She was here and she’d let Bethany literally cry on her shoulder.
That was what family did, blood or otherwise. And right now, they all just had to stick together.