Chapter Text
A year passed quickly, the family having integrated into the village of Lothering. Bethany spent a lot of her time at the Chantry, learning healing from the cloistered sisters and memorizing the faces of the templars. Garrett spent his time wooing the locals and doing odd jobs for coin and reputation. Carver, for his part, took a lot of time to train his sword work and started making noises about joining the King’s army to make a name for himself out from under his family’s shadow.
Desmond, meanwhile, spent an almost indecent time at the Chantry library, reading all that he could about this new world he’d ended up in, studying the history of the place. Granted, everything he read had a hint of propaganda to it, but Desmond was more or less able to parse his way through the things that seemed to be written by the victors. He also spent a lot of time learning how the Eye had changed his body, and it definitely had.
Since arriving in this world, nothing has been too much. He could run for hours and not break a sweat, lift anything that wasn’t implanted into the ground. He would heal within seconds to minutes, depending on the severity of the wound. With Eagle Vision, he was seeing magic, including the magic imbued into objects. And most surprisingly, he had some sort of future sense.
It wasn’t anything to write home about, to be honest. Just sometimes he would look at someone and know that they were going to die. He usually didn’t know when, but occasionally he would see someone walking around and between heartbeats, he would get a flash of their throat cut, limbs torn off, an axe embedded in their head. It was disorienting and rather upsetting. It made talking to people difficult when just moments before he had seen them as corpses.
Sometimes he would look at Bethany and her head was smashed in. He didn’t like to think about it.
A more useful skill that came with the future sense, was occasionally, when sparing with Garrett or Carver, Desmond got a sort of premonition on what movement they were going to make a split second before they did so. It was very distracting at first, but the more he sparred, the more he got used to it. It enhanced his reflexes by an unholy amount, and he ended up always winning the training sessions without even the slightest injury to show for it, unlike the brothers.
He had no idea what sort of fuckery the Isu did to his body, but he seemed to be overpowered as fuck. He didn’t know how he felt about it, but if it kept this newfound family safe, then he would use the gifts given to him.
But all the fighting in the world couldn’t help when Malcolm Hawke got sick a year and a half into Desmond’s stay with the family. It came upon them suddenly and without warning. One moment the man was fine, joking with the rest of the family, and the next he was convulsing on the ground, skin pale and clammy.
Bethany and Desmond scoured the Chantry library for any sort of healing magic that would help. The cloistered sisters, priests, and mothers of the Chantry couldn’t do a thing to heal the man, and within two weeks, the family was mourning the passing of the man who, on most days, kept them all together.
Desmond felt the loss like a knife to the gut. He hadn’t known Malcolm as long as the rest of the family had, obviously, but the man had taken him in when he had no one and treated him like his own son. He was a much better father than William Miles had ever been. He was half convinced that without Malcolm, the rest of the family would kick him out.
But, contrary to his expectations, the Hawke family brought him closer. Leandra called him her son, and the children claimed him as their brother. Desmond didn’t know how to handle the fact that he had to die and go to another world entirely before he found a family that actually cared about him, beyond what he could do for them.
In Malcolm’s absence, Garrett took up the mantle of being the family’s rock. He kept spirits up with lighthearted jokes, teasing Bethany until she smiled, poking and prodding at Carver until he dropped the wall he’d built around himself, and bringing things for Leandra to find hobbies as a distraction from depression. Desmond, for his part, helped Garrett where he could. While the eldest Hawke child focused on bringing his family together, Desmond made sure they didn’t starve.
He did odd quests here and there - finding lost items, collecting herbs for the local apothecary, clearing out bandits. Of course, he tried to spend time with the family, showing that he was there for them in their time of need, but there was only so much he could do, and someone needed to make sure they stayed afloat.
A month after the death of Malcolm Hawke, Carver left to join the King’s army. There were whispers of a Blight on the horizon and the King had plans to make a stand against the darkspawn horde at the ruins of a place called Ostagar. Leandra begged him not to go, but Carver was insistent. Desmond was convinced that if Garrett wasn’t a mage, he’d be joining up as well. As it was, he couldn’t risk his magic being discovered.
Desmond researched as much as he could about the Blight as soon as the first refugees started showing up. There wasn’t too much information beyond the Chantry’s ideas that teetered on the verge of being bullshit. The books Desmond could find said that the first Blight started because of the hubris of men. They thought they could break into the Golden City, where the throne of the Maker resided, and overthrow God. From that one moment, the Golden City became the Black City, and the humans that dared enter it were cast out and corrupted, thus becoming the first darkspawn.
Obviously, Desmond didn’t know how this world worked, but from what he’d seen and read so far, the Chantry was a lot like the religious institutions back in his home world. Creating stories that fit into their worldview so they could brainwash people into following their plans, giving them money, and hating on those that the church didn’t deem worthy.
Desmond didn’t have a problem with religion as an idea. People could believe what they wanted, and if it brought them hope and peace, all the more power to them. It was when that belief became fanatical and hurt people, either themselves or others, that it became a problem. And institutionalized religion had a habit of creating that sort of environment.
So maybe he was just biased against the Chantry from the similarities between it and his home world, but he wasn’t inclined to believe much that they said. He wasn’t completely convinced about the Chantry’s version of the First Blight, but it still gave him valuable information such as - the corruption was contagious, the darkspawn had a hive mind, and the Blight would only end if the archdemon, the leader of the hive, was killed. An archdemon could only receive the death blow from a Grey Warden, which was an elite organization of warriors that had the sole purpose of protecting the land against Blights.
Desmond hoped there wasn’t a blight coming. It was too close to a zombie apocalypse for his comfort. And yet the refugees arrived in droves until there were people camped in the Hawke’s yard, banditry and crime happening everywhere, fear and desperation creeping into the little village of Lothering like a plague.
“We should be prepared to run,” Desmond said one day around a tense dinner. “Pack the essentials. So many people in one defenseless village are bound to attract unwanted attention.”
Leandra’s face crumpled, “This is our home,” she protested, looking around the small hovel. Desmond knew what she meant. They had been here for over a year, and it was the place they had built with Malcolm. It had become a home to the Hawkes more than anywhere else they had lived previously.
“Des is right,” Garrett said with resolution. “We can always rebuild, but we can’t do that if we die here.”
Leandra shook her head, “I know, but we have to wait for Carver. He won’t know where to find us otherwise.” Desmond winced but kept his thoughts to himself. Word had come through the refugees that the battle at Ostagar was lost. It was unlikely that Carver had survived since the majority of the King’s army had been overrun. Betrayed by the Grey Wardens, which didn’t sound right, but what did Desmond know? He couldn’t imagine that a group dedicated to stopping the Blight would jeopardize a chance to end it before it began. But he didn’t know all the facts, so he reserved his judgment for now.
Nobody argued against Leandra, not wanting to shatter the tentative hope that he was still alive. So they stayed, Desmond squirreling away their coin, some food, and clothes, just in case they needed to leave at a moment’s notice.
That moment came when Carver opened the front door with a bang during breakfast, completely out of breath, yet he still managed to gasp out that a horde of darkspawn was heading right to Lothering, and they needed to leave that very second.
Desmond grabbed his pack and his weapons, which he had stored near the front door, and the family started moving.