He only has one certain thought: I’m going to die.
The Champion has fought all manner of beasts and demons and humans and walked out with the scars to prove it. But this--- he fights a creature unlike any within its own domain, where it’s the strongest, while old and new companions flee from the ethereal realm as he fends off the Nightmare with only his magic and sheer willpower.
He thinks of the colorful crew he formed during his time in Kirkwall, he thinks of his father, his mother, his sister, his brother ( oh, Carver, please don’t hold this against me ). They will mourn him, of course they will, but he hopes that when he’s gone they can still remember him fondly.
By some miracle, or the Maker or Andraste or whoever playing some sort of cruel prank on him, he lives. Soaked in his own blood, of course, but he lives. The battle was painful, terrifying, all of his fears flooding his mind, the demon taunting with whispers of death, destruction, a fall from grace ( as if he hasn’t already fallen ). And now he doesn’t know how long he’s been walking through a world so much different than his own, tinted deep greens, grays, black.
Blood drips into his left eye from a gash above his brow, his vision is already blurred. Hawke walks, and walks, and walks. The murmurs of spirits guide him, Compassion tugging him along with gentle words, soothing hands. Occasionally, he thinks he hears the distant voices of his lost family, but perhaps it’s just his imagination. Maybe being on the brink of death does that to you.
He thinks he sees a light ahead of him, bright, blinding. He squints.
Then everything, everything, everything goes black.
When the careful hands of the Dalish curiously, cautiously handle his large, limp form, he doesn’t move. They speak in hushed, hurried tones, but everything is so foggy he can’t make out a single word. When he is carried by Halla and an aravel up a high mountain to a looming fortress, the same fortress the spirits were guiding him to all that time, he doesn’t move. It could just be a dream, distant and hazy, before he falls into a quiet death. So he does not speak, move, open his eyes.
There are voices again, rushed and frantic. There are many hands on him now. When he’s lifted up Hawke coughs, wheezes, and hunches over to empty the little contents left in his stomach: just a mix of water, blood, and bile. How long have I been gone? It’s hard to tell, what felt like hours in the Fade could have been days, weeks out here, in the mortal realm.
Everything goes black again. For three days he is unconscious, constantly monitored by healers, no one else allowed access to the room unless they had good reason to be there. It would be too easy for a far-too-daring young Templar to think he has the chance to strike the Champion, a prominent voice in the mage rebellion, down for good if there were no eyes around to watch him do it.
When he finally wakes up, his limbs weak, his vision blurred, his head pounding, he knows he isn’t alone. But the presence he feels in the room is not the same as the presence of the healers he had unconsciously picked up. Hawke coughs again, tries to move his arm, but the muscles scream in protest and he groans.
@asteeledheart / sorry for the length i love u :*
