Microfill for the kink meme: "Hawke dies, LI mourns in whatever way sees fit."

Isabela sewed the shroud of sailcloth herself; she made it simple, plain, practical, and nothing at all like the woman who would be buried in it. It was a shroud for a fine sailor and trusted friend, as Hawke deserved.

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"I can't imagine any higher honor than being your first mate," she said one night when they laid together sweating, gasping, and sated.

"Is that so?" Isabela laughed and took Hawke's hand. She pressed soft kisses to her fingertips, her palm, her wrist. She kissed her lips, her shoulder, her breasts, her stomach, her sex. Hawke gasped at that. Her legs spread instinctively, letting Isabela nuzzle warm musky curls. She grazed her nails down the undersides of Hawke's thighs. "I can think of one higher," she murmured, certain Hawke could not hear her, and slipped three fingers between still-wet lips.

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Hawke's complexion had grown ashen in death, but the shroud still stood stark and white against her dark skin and the battered black and red armor she wore in remembrance of Kirkwall. It had been a struggle to get her into the complex array of leathers and buckles; she had not and would not have asked for it, but Isabela insisted.

A man and a woman helped Isabela carry her on to the upper deck. Isabela had not been able to do so alone. They put her down gently and joined the rest of the crew that stood silently in a semi-circle around their Captain and her fallen right-hand.

Isabela knelt. She pressed a hand to Hawke's cold stiff cheek. She smoothed away a stray strand of hair. She did not kiss those closed dead lips. A minute passed, then two. Then Isabela undid the blue scarf that covered her hair and with it covered her lover's face.

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Disease took her in the end. Isabela sat by Hawke's side and watched her waste away, holding her hand and laughing at the jokes she made to the last. The red scarf Isabela had worn around her arm as a sign of Hawke's favor, she now used to dab the sweat from Hawke's brow.

In her final days, spent in delirium, Hawke told the same story over and over. It was about something foolish from those first few years in Kirkwall, before the war, when their friends were still there, alive, and hopeful. She always finished her tale with a weak wheezing laugh, and she would say: "It was good, wasn't it Izzy." And Isabela would force a chuckle and say every time as though it was the first: "Yeah, hun. It was good."

They had never wondered what would happen if one were to die before the other. They had always assumed they would go, violently, together. Hawke had a long life for the sort of life they'd lived, and she passed with wisps of grey at her temples. Isabela was glad for that, even as her chest clenched with loneliness.

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There were no prayers, save those few whispered under breath, when they eased Hawke over the side of the ship. There was no ceremony as the body, weighed down with chain, slipped beneath the ocean waves. But there was an air of reverence about the deck that made Isabela ache.

She blinked against the sudden tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. She took the red scarf, faded, worn, and precious, from where she had looped it through her girdle and wiped her eyes. She pressed the cloth to her lips and choked back the tears that threatened to fall again. One deep breath, to steady herself, and she returned Hawke's favor to her belt, taking care to tie it securely. Isabela would not wear this scarf again.

Then she turned back to her crew. She held her head high and her back straight. When she spoke her voice was strong and steady.

"That's it, people. Back to work."