A Future to Be Had (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

The Father-Daughter Dance

Hawke shifted uncomfortably. The chains were heavy on her, and her head felt muzzy and strange. She couldn't remember the last time she'd eaten, but she felt more nauseous than hungry. The movement beneath her and the smell of salt water and tar told her she was still aboard a ship. Bound for where? The voice of the man who had taken her ... No, it was lost in the fog that filled her brain. Fenris, she thought. Bianca. Varric. Where were they? She tried to think back to what had been happening before she was taken. Something wrong with Fenris, yes, but more than that. What was it?

The effort to remember exhausted her, and her attention wandered as she stared up at the ceiling of the cabin.

Voices intruded on her, and she lay listening to them idly.

"I've paid you for the voyage already. Not another copper!"

"You paid me to take a political prisoner." The second voice had a familiar accent. Who spoke like that? Someone she knew, but the name wouldn't come to her. "You did not tell me that prisoner was going to be the Champion of Kirkwall!"

'Champion of Kirkwall'? That was her! Evelyn closed her eyes so she could focus on the conversation, fighting the fuzziness in her head.

"What difference does it make to you who you carry? It is not your job to ask questions."

Damn it, she knew that voice. Where had she heard it before?

"You had an obligation to tell me." The second voice was more subdued now; the first voice was making him back down. Evelyn wondered how—did he have a sword to the man's throat? That's what she would have done. She wished she had a sword now. A long, sharp sword ...

The first voice cut in again, dragging her attention back to the conversation. "Quit your whining, Castillon. You've been paid more than generously, and the so-called Champion in there is nothing but an old woman. No one cares about her anymore."

Castillon? That was a familiar name. It was connected to someone she knew. Who could it be?

There was dark laughter in Castillon's voice when he responded. "You are very wrong about that. Having the Champion in chains on my ship is asking for serious trouble from someone very powerful; the owner of the second fastest ship in all the seas of Thedas. It is fortunate for you, Ser Templar, that you are on the only ship that is faster."

"I'll assume you know your own business." He sighed. "Perhaps there could be a bonus once we reach our destination. Assuming we do so very quickly and without being hassled by this other ship."

"Trust me, I have no wish to be caught by the Temptress at any point. Far less so right now."

Hawke wondered who the temptress was. Something about the word was nagging at her, but she was so tired from the strain of paying attention to the conversation. She let the motion of the ship beneath her lull her back into a deep sleep.

Bianca tossed restlessly on the hammock she'd been relegated to. Her former cabin had been given over to her aunt Varania and to the strange, silent, glowering woman who accompanied her. No one thought it appropriate that she share a room with them; no one had been precisely enthusiastic about the idea that she share the captain's cabin with Bethany and Isabela. There was no question of her sleeping with the crew, the way Freddy and Kethali were, and she had absolutely refused to share the same cabin as her father and Varric. No one had quite known where Orana slept until she showed them the small alcove in the hold, and Bianca had been allowed—told—to hang her hammock there.