My Warden (COMPLETED)

Stay Safe

Lana glared through the rift splitting open the veil, the unnerving power of it felt as if something reached into the back of her head and yanked everything forward. It undulated just beyond their reach, the promise of Adamant's dark skies visible through the crack even from the distance. Terror demons lay in pieces at their feet, the final vestiges the fade dared to throw at them. They were finally free to get away from this nightmare and return to the real world, except for one small problem.

"How are we supposed to get past that?!" Hawke shouted. Her breathing caught as she tipped her head back to cut off a nosebleed. Above them towered the demon the Wardens tried to bring into the world, the creature that stirred the calling up inside all of their minds and drove them to madness. The reason Clarel finally saw through far too late.

The Inquisitor watched his people climbing up the hill towards the rift back to the real world. Cassandra had a grip upon Varric to hoist him up, while Dorian turned back for a moment his haunted eyes slipping over the last three left behind. The nightmare had no interest in them, only in the ones remaining cut off from freedom. A twinge ratcheted up Lana's side and she reached under her robes to massage it away. It must have happened when she flung herself in the path of a Pride demon's lightning whip. Dorian was stunned, too far away from anyone else to help, so Lana leapt in front, summoning a forcefield as quick as possible. Only the end of the whip snapped against her stomach, the rest ricocheting off her spell.

"One of us has to..." the Inquisitor gulped. The anchor embedded in his hand, the reason they walked in the fade to begin with, flared awake. "To distract it."

"It should be me!" Hawke shouted again. This wasn't her usual spunky response prepared to take on the world without a thought for her own well being. Something in the nightmare scraped away at her revealing the wounded warrior hidden below - the one she boisterously shouted over to keep anyone from ever finding. "Corypheus wouldn't even be here if I had finished the damn job."

Lana gripped tighter to her stomach and pain burst behind her eyes. Wetness clung to her fingers as she flexed them into the wound, the blood dribbling so fast it soaked through her thin gloves. She gritted her teeth trying to heal it, but her mana was low and the nightmare knocked around in her head. The spell slipped thrice through her fingers, and even then, she was uncertain if...

"I'll do it," Lana whispered. Her free hand gripped onto Hawke's arm, drawing her attention.

"Like hell you will," her cousin screamed, the voice snarling at Lana for even implying she couldn't get the job done. "The wardens are gonna need you to fix all the shit they broke. Which was a lot, by the way."

"No," Lana twisted her head, a small laugh rumbling in the back of her throat. All of this, every step through Adamant she strived to save the wardens from themselves, to prove they deserved it. Then to discover Corypheus didn't need a darkspawn army because he had wardens the whole time... She couldn't face her own people and they wouldn't listen to her. Lana was the warden who should not have survived, they'd never follow. "It should be you. They'll have to listen to the Champion of Kirkwall."

Hawke snorted, her shoulders poised as if she intended to rip the nightmare in half with her bare hands. The Champion herself snarled up at the demon moving at a glacial speed towards the rift, her bluster almost palpable. Then a foreign sheepishness crawled across her face. Her own past haunted her eyes as she broke her warrior's stance and whispered, "It should be me. I've got the big sword."

"And I've got the big stick," Lana laughed. Maker, in those first few days traveling the deep roads with that rowdy, rambunctious, infuriating woman she never thought she'd come to care so much for her. To find in her a family Hawke was so damn insistent upon. She wasn't about to let that last connection break now. "Go, just...you need to be there. To keep the Wardens in check, to keep them safe." Lana inched closer to her cousin and whispered, "To keep Anders safe."