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ineedmyfics2011-09-14 05:16 pm
ineedmymods) wrote in ineedmyfics2011-09-14 05:16 pm
Entry tags:
Kirkwall Love Song
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lostinapapercup
From:ashavah
Title: Kirkwall Love Song
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: R
Author's Notes: I'm becoming increasingly fond of Fenris, so I jumped at the opportunity to explore him a little more. I didn't quite get to explore the period after All That Remains because the story wanted to end there, but I hope you enjoy! Many thanks toalemara and geo_chick for their beta skills.
I never expected that day to be as momentous as it was. Of course, I almost never expected any day to be as momentous as it turned out. Varric always liked to tease me about that, but honestly, It's not like you wake up in the morning, get out of bed, pull back the curtains and think hmmm, today looks momentous, I wonder what's going to happen? Well. I don't, anyway. I suppose I can't speak for anyone else; some of those mages can get pretty weird sometimes.
That's not to say I necessarily thought things would go smoothly. I was taking Merrill back to Sundermount to plead with Keeper Marethari for something I didn't understand that she wanted to use on a mirror she wouldn't explain to me, so I had plenty of misgivings. I just didn't know my life was going to change because of our little excursion. If anything, I expected to wind up mediating between the two of them: Merrill appeared utterly convinced she needed this ancient relic of her clan and equally certain that her Keeper was never going to give it to her. But she was my companion, so we were going, however ill-advised I thought her plans were.
I could hear my companions for the day downstairs as soon as I closed the door behind me, my soft leather boots nearly soundless as I stepped down the stairs in my satin finery. The dog heard me in his accustomed spot by the fire, looking up and wagging his stumpy tail, but the others were in the midst of what was going to rapidly turn into an argument.
"So, Daisy, what exactly is this mirror that you're so interested in?" Varric was asking, settling Bianca against his back as he waited.
"It's the past of my people," Merrill said, as earnest as ever. How does she manage to be so earnest so early in the morning? I'll never understand that.
"What, all of it? In one little mirror? You Dalish have weird history books, Daisy."
"Oh! I didn't mean, not like that, it's not a book, obviously, it's --"
"-- It's blood magic." Fenris' voice came from across the room, and my gaze went to him as he turned, slowly, away from the corner behind the fireplace, his eyes hard on Merrill. Even angry, his voice still made me shiver, deep and sometimes rough and always far more imperious than you'd expect from a former slave. He caught all my attention for a moment before I realized I should step in.
I rolled my eyes. This argument again. Time to intervene before Fenris and Merrill wound up having yet another fight and expecting me to take sides when I didn't agree with either of them. Whenever Merrill asked my opinion, I heard my sister's voice whisper in my mind that blood magic was evil, and whenever Fenris appealed to me to side with him against mages I remembered the fear she'd lived in all her life. Oh, Bethany. How I missed her.
"Well!" I said, my voice artificially bright as I clapped my hands together, stepping lightly down to join them. "It's so nice to hear people sound so cheerful!" Merrill paused in mid-turn, her gaze trusting as she smiled at me. Varric seemed relieved at my intervention, and he nodded to me as I strode across the room to collect my pack and the leather satchels that strap onto my armour. I'd laid everything out the night before: potions, a few surplus trinkets and some junk to sell on the way out, food, poisons, and all the other little necessities I took with me when we travelled outside the city limits. Everything was still in order; all I had to do was put on my armour and collect my weapons and we were ready to go.
The others bickered, as they always did, as we passed through the streets of Hightown. The sun was bright on the stone all around us, setting the shields that flanked my front door gleaming and making the trees and vines look verdant and healthy, a word that in all the city could only ever be applied to Hightown. We headed off past the Merchants' Guild, flagstones smooth under our feet until we jogged down into the marketplace, where they became uneven, plants sprouting in place of some. Varric and I gave a wave to Worthy the runesmith across the square and I spared a nod for Hubert as we stopped to sell off some of the junk I'd picked up last night in Darktown as we fought the gangs there; I didn't have much time for the man personally, but he was my business partner and I owed some of my ongoing prosperity to that fact.
Nothing went wrong until we were well out of the city, our path winding north along the coast. The slavers seemed to come from nowhere, blocking the path up ahead as it narrowed into one of those rocky gullies that so characterises the coast of the Free Marches. The mercenary mouthpiece stepped out onto a rocky outcrop that overlooked the path, a position of command and advantage he'd picked just right. He accused me of possession of stolen property; my eyes narrowed as I guessed what was coming. If the arrogance in the man's tone hadn't been enough to set off my temper (and it was), what he said next was: he demanded I hand over the slave and my hand tightened on the hafts of my weapons.
"Fenris is a free man!"
I stood side by side with Fenris, drawing as the mercenary shouted down to us, and I was right behind him as he charged to the attack, my blades glittering as I danced across the impromptu battlefield, moving from one slaver to another, backing him up as he took on the magister. I span and turned, hitting first one mercenary, then another, then appeared from nowhere at the magister's back, my strike deep and true. However much power and magic he had at his command, my blade was stronger.
It hardly seemed to take any time at all; whatever flaws our little group may have had when it came to playing nicely with each other, especially where magic was concerned, we were a brutally efficient war machine.
"Maker's breath, Hawke! You do get results!" Varric said, surveying the bodies of the slavers all around us. But there was one still alive, and he was the one Fenris went for, tugging back his head to interrogate him.
He'd thought Danarius must have come for him, at least, but it turned out to be Hadriana, his former master's pupil. We'd thought that after three years in Kirkwall since driving Danarius out, the magister must have had enough. I say we, but maybe it had just been my hope. Fenris had never seemed convinced, but I'd desperately wanted it to be true. I'd wanted to believe he could really be free, that he could move on from his past to a new life, even if that past would never leave him. Whose would? But it seemed I was wrong and Fenris had been right to be anxious. Danarius had only been biding his time.
I'd expected Fenris' rage when we arrived at the old slaver pens. He still carried it around with him everywhere he went, as obvious to those who knew him as the sword slung across his back or the lyrium burned into his skin. He would never forgive the magisters for what had been done to him and even I, as the daughter of an apostate and the sister and friend of others, could hardly blame him for that. Perhaps this would help to give him some of the peace he so desperately needed, but I wasn't truly naive enough to believe that.
That would take Merrillesque levels of naivete.
I knew what Fenris would do to Hadriana when I passed her fate to him. He was never going to let her live, and whatever my own personal feelings about mages and no matter how much I'd always wanted my sister to be free, I couldn't tell him he should have done differently. Never, when he had so much to bear and it was the magisters' fault. What I didn't know was that he'd take all that anger coiled up inside him out on me. All it took was a hand on his shoulder and he snapped like a frayed bowstring, wheeling on me. I took it without comment, standing back and letting him rail against the mages, letting him turn it on me in place of Merrill, and letting him storm out even though watching him go and knowing he must be hurting made my heart ache.
I stared after him, silent, until Varric stepped up beside me, swinging Bianca up easily to rest on his shoulder. He didn't have to say anything, just looked up at me, questioning.
"Come on," I said. "Let's go."
We still had a trip to Sundermount to take, and I couldn't disappoint Merrill just because we'd lost Fenris. Maybe I should have. In the end, I disappointed her more by continuing than I could have by turning for home. I refused to give her the Arulin'Holm. She'd been outraged, demanded I give it to her, telling me that I had no right to it. But I couldn't give it to her, not when the Keeper had begged me not to, and not when she'd gone so far down the path of danger and darkness with this mirror already.
It made me miss Bethany, because if she'd been there, I could at least have looked to her for advice I could trust.
By the time we got back to Kirkwall, it was just Varric and me. I was looking forward to taking myself and my despondency home for a while and just shutting out the world. Fenris and I had always had a complicated friendship, but I'd hoped for more from this, insofar as I'd hoped for anything. Could he not find a way to move on from his past? Would it always chase him? Would Denarius remain in Tevinter and send slavers and mercenaries to hound him for the rest of his life? I had no answers, but my thoughts weren't hopeful.
When we arrived in the city, Varric went back to the Hanged Man and I wandered through the streets of Lowtown, eyes downcast in thought. I knew the city so well I could have found my way home without even looking. Fenris made an impression on me from the first moment we'd met. Some people just have a way of doing that, and I've always been able to attract them. Bethany used to tell me that it was the result of my unique charms and I'm sure she didn't mean it as a compliment.
Fenris, well, he'd made a more lasting impression than most. It wasn't just the party trick with crushing his enemies' hearts, either, or the fact that he'd deceived me to get my help against the slavers and his former master. I couldn't have put it into words back then, but he'd fascinated me in a way nobody I'd ever met had. It wasn't just the appearance, the spiky armour or the white-blond hair or the silvery markings etched into his very skin. It wasn't even the way his deep eyes sometimes seemed to see straight into my soul in a way nobody else's could.
It was his pride, the way he valued himself and his beliefs so highly that he wouldn't compromise, though nobody in his life had ever given him any reason to believe he was worth that. It was the way he'd snatched his freedom and clung to it so determinedly that he made me believe one day he'd truly possess it and could stop living in fear. It was the way all that stoicism would fade away and burn into fierce conviction when he was defending an innocent. It was the way he never sought sympathy even when he was at his most miserable.
Later, it was the way his eyes seemed to soften when they met mine. It was the gentleness he only ever showed to me, only ever when we were alone in his dusty old mansion. It was the way something would spark into life in his expression when I cracked a joke around him. It was the way he'd lived up to his own tentative quip and practiced his flattery for my benefit and the way I felt like I didn't have to live up to anything when I was around him.
For three years, we'd been friends. For three years, I'd hoped for something more, something that had never eventuated, that we'd only ever danced around. It was the one thing in my life that made me hesitant. I could face down blood mages and angry Dalish and Anders when he got all glowy. Bandits? A breeze. Demons? No problem. Rogue Coterie members? Consider it done. Political posturing by the Qunari? Even the Viscount called on Hawke. When it came to my own feelings about one of my dearest friends, though, it was nothing doing.
I didn't expect to see him waiting in the entrance hall when I got home. Hadriana's fate was about the only thing about this that I had expected, and the surprises kept coming: he told me more about her and about how much he wanted to break free of the hatred that dogged him. His words were soft at times, hesitant, and in those moments I could feel my heart pounding almost painfully in my chest as I longed to reach out, to help him, to tell him that it didn't have to be like this.
What would have happened if he'd just given love a chance instead?
I thought I'd pushed him too far when he got angry and frustrated again and I asked him not to leave. My hand touched one of his markings as I reached for him in supplication. The lyrium glowed, Fenris glowed and the next thing I knew, I was pressed against the wall, his hands holding me there, firm. My breath was shallow, rapid, as I stared at him. He seemed to be battling himself, staring down at a patch of the wall like he wasn't sure why he'd pinned me there and it was suddenly more than I could bear. I kissed him, deep and desperate, and all the loneliness and longing of the past three years exploded into passion.
When I woke, I was alone in the bed, the sheets smooth against my skin and that was enough to make me wary, to make me roll over, still sleepy-eyed, to find him staring into the fire. I tried to cover with a joke, teasingly asking if it had been that bad. I wasn't ready for the response I got, for the crushing blow of the single word fine. He retracted it just a moment later; he must have seen the look on my face, but I knew then that it was all going wrong. I tried to understand, I tried to sympathise, but when he strode out the door, it felt like the flickering flame he'd kindled in my heart had been smothered.
I woke to sunlight shining on my bed, the fire burnt down nearly to ashes, and stared at the empty space beside me where Fenris had lain. In just one night, three years' worth of hope had been realised and then crushed. I felt like I couldn't face the morning, but there were … things I had to do, and I thought I could hear voices downstairs. It was Anders, wanting help going after that templar he thought wanted to make all the mages Tranquil. I'd been planning to take Fenris along with me when we tackled that particular problem; he mightn't like fighting for the mages much, but his strength would be needed if it came to a fight against templars. Looking into Anders' face as he pleaded with me to hurry, I knew I'd have to go, for his sake, and I'd have to go without Fenris.
I couldn't look him in the face after last night.
"Come on. Let's go find Aveline and Varric, then."
That day felt like I was walking in a dream. I felt as disembodied as I had in Feynriel's dreams in the Fade, like I was just going through the motions and the rest of me was somewhere else, watching on in detachment, even as I reasoned with Anders and faced down Justice to save that mage girl's life. It should have been a distraction, and it was, but that didn't make the day any easier. Nor did getting answers from the Harimanns for Sebastian the next day. Nothing did. Day after day melded into each other and day after day, I asked Aveline to join me and avoided Fenris, averted my steps from the area up past the Chantry where he lived, avoided lingering in Hightown any more than necessary.
He'd said as he left that he felt like a fool. I kept hearing those words over and over again whenever I stopped to think, so I tried not to give myself time to do that. I'd given Fenris everything I had. Oh, not my body: it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. I'd opened up to him over the last few years, this year in particular, and I'd shown him more of myself than I'd shown anyone beyond my family. I'd thought he understood me, in a way. We were both outsiders. All I had to do was open my mouth and people knew I was a refugee, even the ones who didn't know me by my reputation. Fenris just had to walk into a room: as an elf and bearing those marks, he was set apart from anyone, especially in the exclusive area of Hightown he was squatting in.
I'd never needed to prove anything to him and he'd never needed to prove anything to me once he'd established his loyalty. Recently, we'd been spending increasing amounts of time in that musty old mansion of his. We'd lay the Book of Shartan I'd given him open on the table and he'd bend over it, his strong, broad brow furrowing as he stared at the words, my fingers passing light over the paper as I pointed them out. He'd been making huge improvements; he'd been reluctant to learn to read at first, but in the end, he'd grasped the idea with the sort of tenacity he showed in so many other situations. Secretly, I thought he liked the idea precisely because it was something a slave was forbidden to do in Tevinter.
He'd have to learn on his own, now, because I couldn't bear the thought of being alone with him. I couldn't even bear the thought of seeing him. He'd been the one I'd told the things I missed about Ferelden, in my more contemplative moments. He'd seemed to invite confidences from me by the way he listened so attentively when I spoke, and I'd shared them with him, over wine in my estate or by candlelight in his. I'd been the fool, not him. I'd reached for him without knowing what would happen and he'd twisted out of my grasp and left me lonely and heartsore.
Fenris wasn't the only one who was proud; Gamlen always used to complain about the pride and stubbornness all around him when Mother and Bethany and I were still living with him. It's a fine Amell tradition, and I'd been working at making it a Hawke one, too. Could any woman share so much of herself with someone only to have it rejected and not feel her pride wounded? If so, she's a more forgiving person than I. Forgiveness has never been one of my strongest traits.
It's not like I'm the sort to open up easily. The Blight and that year in servitude and the way I'd had to claw my way up from Lowtown to get where I was had made me hard, wary of trusting anyone, even my closest friends, with my feelings. I always did guard them more closely than my life. I'd opened up to Fenris, let him see past the sly jokes that were my shield, and he'd turned my back on me. If he knew me at all, if he cared in the slightest, he had to know what that would do to me. He'd been one of my closest friends and in one night everything had changed. He hadn't even given me so much as an explanation.
It stung every time I thought about it. I wasn't about to be the one to make the first peace offering. No matter how much I might have longed every night for a reprise of what had passed between us.
So, instead of going to Fenris' mansion to read with him, I spent my evenings drinking with Isabela and Varric in the Hanged Man, and if the topic of Fenris happened to come up, which it did, curse it, I laughed off the references and drained my mug and headed back to the bar for more. Varric took it upon himself one night to point out to me that a man in spiky armor is hardly the most stable relationship choice, but I'd just arched my eyebrows and laughed that crazy has never been a turn-off for me, and that seemed to settle it. More than once, the two of them had to help me back to Hightown late at night, a risky endeavour made safer since we dealt with that particular area's gangs. Isabela always seemed amused when they had to do that, but if they had any suspicions about my changed habits or my drinking, they were smart enough to keep them to themselves.
It was Aveline who first asked me about what had happened, though with her usual tact, she didn't put it like that. One afternoon as we sat in her office, her on her chair and I leaning on the desk, she asked if there was a reason I'd been taking her out with me so much recently. I laughed it off and said that I had to try to get some time with her without Donnic around. She hadn't believed me, of course; that was clear in the way she turned her head and the skeptical look in those eyes. I never could fool Aveline. I could make her drop a topic, though, by stubbornly refusing to say anything about it, and that was what I did. I pretended to have no idea what she meant when she said she hadn't seen much of Fenris lately and asked if he'd finally decided to lay low in his appropriated mansion like she'd been advising him to do for years. After that, she'd been forced to let it lie.
I took her with me again when we went searching for Emeric the templar, and that was the start of one of the most horrible nights of my life. With the twins gone, Mother was all that I had left of my family. (I didn't count Gamlen; I rarely ever did, even at his best moments, which were rare.) I'd thought she'd be safe in Kirkwall. Losing Bethany had been sudden and surprising, but it had always been a threat while we lived in a city with a Knight Commander as powerful as Meredith. But Mother … I'd never thought anyone would hurt her. She was the dearest of women; just the previous day, she'd been telling me she thought she might remarry, hinting that Fenris and I wouldn't want to be trying to live our lives around her. I'd smiled at the light in her eye when she mentioned Fenris, unable to dash the twinkling hope there that I might have found someone.
At least Mother never judged me for that; she murmured her concern occasionally when I passed, but to her, love was love and it didn't matter who Fenris was if we meant enough to each other.
She died so horribly. I'd held her in my arms with her murderer's blood drying on my weapons and I'd tried not to cry, and then she'd gone and I was alone in the world. That night tested my resolve worse than any. That was the night that Fenris came back.
I could hardly believe it when I heard his voice from the door. I didn't bother to ask who had told him; nothing seemed to matter now. I was sitting on the bed, staring into the fire, everything inside me dulled and numb from a pain it seemed had settled, too deeply embedded in my soul for me to be able to feel anything except its ache.
"I don't know what to say, but I am here."
I looked up, blinking away anything that might have looked like a tear, finding my breath catching in my throat at the sight of him. I hadn't laid eyes on him since that night and I realised, dully, that he was wearing the red scarf I'd given him tied around his arm. That made something tighten in my chest; why would he wear it, why would be have my family crest on a little shield on his belt, when he'd been the one who'd left? He'd ended it, he'd left me alone and cold and hadn't bothered to seek me out since.
I almost couldn't stand the sight of him, but when I spoke, it was soft, and I hated that I could hear my own agony in my voice. I wanted his comfort, but I didn't want him to see my pain. How ridiculous was that?
"Just say something," I said, my voice slow and thick. "Anything."
As my head dropped, my empty stare going back to the fire, he padded across the room to the bed, his bare feet silent on the floor.
"They say death is only a journey. Does that help?" He sounded hesitant, his voice wavering as he searched for words, and any other night I would have laughed. It didn't help, not really, but it didn't have to, and he knew it as well as I. "To be honest," he said, his voice soothing even now, "I don't think there is much point in filling these moments with empty talk."
He was right, and he sat silently beside me, close enough for me to long to reach out and hold him again. But he didn't invite it, and I couldn't without that invitation. But oh, Maker, I wanted him to stay that night, I wanted to feel his arms strong around me, to just be able to let go for a while and feel something that wasn't the mix of this grief on top of the ache of missing him, as potent as any poison.
He didn't. Eventually, the logs on the fire burned down and he pointed out that I should sleep and carried my boots across the room to set by the door for the morning. Never once did he touch me and never had I felt so alone as when he left. If I needed any proof that was it, that his feelings were never what I'd hoped they could have been, surely that was it. He'd been wearing my scarf around his arm, but he'd offered me nothing.
That night, for the first time since the night Fenris and I spent together, I cried. And nobody knew that Mother was only half the reason for the tears.
lostinapapercupFrom:
ashavahTitle: Kirkwall Love Song
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: R
Author's Notes: I'm becoming increasingly fond of Fenris, so I jumped at the opportunity to explore him a little more. I didn't quite get to explore the period after All That Remains because the story wanted to end there, but I hope you enjoy! Many thanks to
alemara and geo_chick for their beta skills.I never expected that day to be as momentous as it was. Of course, I almost never expected any day to be as momentous as it turned out. Varric always liked to tease me about that, but honestly, It's not like you wake up in the morning, get out of bed, pull back the curtains and think hmmm, today looks momentous, I wonder what's going to happen? Well. I don't, anyway. I suppose I can't speak for anyone else; some of those mages can get pretty weird sometimes.
That's not to say I necessarily thought things would go smoothly. I was taking Merrill back to Sundermount to plead with Keeper Marethari for something I didn't understand that she wanted to use on a mirror she wouldn't explain to me, so I had plenty of misgivings. I just didn't know my life was going to change because of our little excursion. If anything, I expected to wind up mediating between the two of them: Merrill appeared utterly convinced she needed this ancient relic of her clan and equally certain that her Keeper was never going to give it to her. But she was my companion, so we were going, however ill-advised I thought her plans were.
I could hear my companions for the day downstairs as soon as I closed the door behind me, my soft leather boots nearly soundless as I stepped down the stairs in my satin finery. The dog heard me in his accustomed spot by the fire, looking up and wagging his stumpy tail, but the others were in the midst of what was going to rapidly turn into an argument.
"So, Daisy, what exactly is this mirror that you're so interested in?" Varric was asking, settling Bianca against his back as he waited.
"It's the past of my people," Merrill said, as earnest as ever. How does she manage to be so earnest so early in the morning? I'll never understand that.
"What, all of it? In one little mirror? You Dalish have weird history books, Daisy."
"Oh! I didn't mean, not like that, it's not a book, obviously, it's --"
"-- It's blood magic." Fenris' voice came from across the room, and my gaze went to him as he turned, slowly, away from the corner behind the fireplace, his eyes hard on Merrill. Even angry, his voice still made me shiver, deep and sometimes rough and always far more imperious than you'd expect from a former slave. He caught all my attention for a moment before I realized I should step in.
I rolled my eyes. This argument again. Time to intervene before Fenris and Merrill wound up having yet another fight and expecting me to take sides when I didn't agree with either of them. Whenever Merrill asked my opinion, I heard my sister's voice whisper in my mind that blood magic was evil, and whenever Fenris appealed to me to side with him against mages I remembered the fear she'd lived in all her life. Oh, Bethany. How I missed her.
"Well!" I said, my voice artificially bright as I clapped my hands together, stepping lightly down to join them. "It's so nice to hear people sound so cheerful!" Merrill paused in mid-turn, her gaze trusting as she smiled at me. Varric seemed relieved at my intervention, and he nodded to me as I strode across the room to collect my pack and the leather satchels that strap onto my armour. I'd laid everything out the night before: potions, a few surplus trinkets and some junk to sell on the way out, food, poisons, and all the other little necessities I took with me when we travelled outside the city limits. Everything was still in order; all I had to do was put on my armour and collect my weapons and we were ready to go.
The others bickered, as they always did, as we passed through the streets of Hightown. The sun was bright on the stone all around us, setting the shields that flanked my front door gleaming and making the trees and vines look verdant and healthy, a word that in all the city could only ever be applied to Hightown. We headed off past the Merchants' Guild, flagstones smooth under our feet until we jogged down into the marketplace, where they became uneven, plants sprouting in place of some. Varric and I gave a wave to Worthy the runesmith across the square and I spared a nod for Hubert as we stopped to sell off some of the junk I'd picked up last night in Darktown as we fought the gangs there; I didn't have much time for the man personally, but he was my business partner and I owed some of my ongoing prosperity to that fact.
Nothing went wrong until we were well out of the city, our path winding north along the coast. The slavers seemed to come from nowhere, blocking the path up ahead as it narrowed into one of those rocky gullies that so characterises the coast of the Free Marches. The mercenary mouthpiece stepped out onto a rocky outcrop that overlooked the path, a position of command and advantage he'd picked just right. He accused me of possession of stolen property; my eyes narrowed as I guessed what was coming. If the arrogance in the man's tone hadn't been enough to set off my temper (and it was), what he said next was: he demanded I hand over the slave and my hand tightened on the hafts of my weapons.
"Fenris is a free man!"
I stood side by side with Fenris, drawing as the mercenary shouted down to us, and I was right behind him as he charged to the attack, my blades glittering as I danced across the impromptu battlefield, moving from one slaver to another, backing him up as he took on the magister. I span and turned, hitting first one mercenary, then another, then appeared from nowhere at the magister's back, my strike deep and true. However much power and magic he had at his command, my blade was stronger.
It hardly seemed to take any time at all; whatever flaws our little group may have had when it came to playing nicely with each other, especially where magic was concerned, we were a brutally efficient war machine.
"Maker's breath, Hawke! You do get results!" Varric said, surveying the bodies of the slavers all around us. But there was one still alive, and he was the one Fenris went for, tugging back his head to interrogate him.
He'd thought Danarius must have come for him, at least, but it turned out to be Hadriana, his former master's pupil. We'd thought that after three years in Kirkwall since driving Danarius out, the magister must have had enough. I say we, but maybe it had just been my hope. Fenris had never seemed convinced, but I'd desperately wanted it to be true. I'd wanted to believe he could really be free, that he could move on from his past to a new life, even if that past would never leave him. Whose would? But it seemed I was wrong and Fenris had been right to be anxious. Danarius had only been biding his time.
I'd expected Fenris' rage when we arrived at the old slaver pens. He still carried it around with him everywhere he went, as obvious to those who knew him as the sword slung across his back or the lyrium burned into his skin. He would never forgive the magisters for what had been done to him and even I, as the daughter of an apostate and the sister and friend of others, could hardly blame him for that. Perhaps this would help to give him some of the peace he so desperately needed, but I wasn't truly naive enough to believe that.
That would take Merrillesque levels of naivete.
I knew what Fenris would do to Hadriana when I passed her fate to him. He was never going to let her live, and whatever my own personal feelings about mages and no matter how much I'd always wanted my sister to be free, I couldn't tell him he should have done differently. Never, when he had so much to bear and it was the magisters' fault. What I didn't know was that he'd take all that anger coiled up inside him out on me. All it took was a hand on his shoulder and he snapped like a frayed bowstring, wheeling on me. I took it without comment, standing back and letting him rail against the mages, letting him turn it on me in place of Merrill, and letting him storm out even though watching him go and knowing he must be hurting made my heart ache.
I stared after him, silent, until Varric stepped up beside me, swinging Bianca up easily to rest on his shoulder. He didn't have to say anything, just looked up at me, questioning.
"Come on," I said. "Let's go."
We still had a trip to Sundermount to take, and I couldn't disappoint Merrill just because we'd lost Fenris. Maybe I should have. In the end, I disappointed her more by continuing than I could have by turning for home. I refused to give her the Arulin'Holm. She'd been outraged, demanded I give it to her, telling me that I had no right to it. But I couldn't give it to her, not when the Keeper had begged me not to, and not when she'd gone so far down the path of danger and darkness with this mirror already.
It made me miss Bethany, because if she'd been there, I could at least have looked to her for advice I could trust.
By the time we got back to Kirkwall, it was just Varric and me. I was looking forward to taking myself and my despondency home for a while and just shutting out the world. Fenris and I had always had a complicated friendship, but I'd hoped for more from this, insofar as I'd hoped for anything. Could he not find a way to move on from his past? Would it always chase him? Would Denarius remain in Tevinter and send slavers and mercenaries to hound him for the rest of his life? I had no answers, but my thoughts weren't hopeful.
When we arrived in the city, Varric went back to the Hanged Man and I wandered through the streets of Lowtown, eyes downcast in thought. I knew the city so well I could have found my way home without even looking. Fenris made an impression on me from the first moment we'd met. Some people just have a way of doing that, and I've always been able to attract them. Bethany used to tell me that it was the result of my unique charms and I'm sure she didn't mean it as a compliment.
Fenris, well, he'd made a more lasting impression than most. It wasn't just the party trick with crushing his enemies' hearts, either, or the fact that he'd deceived me to get my help against the slavers and his former master. I couldn't have put it into words back then, but he'd fascinated me in a way nobody I'd ever met had. It wasn't just the appearance, the spiky armour or the white-blond hair or the silvery markings etched into his very skin. It wasn't even the way his deep eyes sometimes seemed to see straight into my soul in a way nobody else's could.
It was his pride, the way he valued himself and his beliefs so highly that he wouldn't compromise, though nobody in his life had ever given him any reason to believe he was worth that. It was the way he'd snatched his freedom and clung to it so determinedly that he made me believe one day he'd truly possess it and could stop living in fear. It was the way all that stoicism would fade away and burn into fierce conviction when he was defending an innocent. It was the way he never sought sympathy even when he was at his most miserable.
Later, it was the way his eyes seemed to soften when they met mine. It was the gentleness he only ever showed to me, only ever when we were alone in his dusty old mansion. It was the way something would spark into life in his expression when I cracked a joke around him. It was the way he'd lived up to his own tentative quip and practiced his flattery for my benefit and the way I felt like I didn't have to live up to anything when I was around him.
For three years, we'd been friends. For three years, I'd hoped for something more, something that had never eventuated, that we'd only ever danced around. It was the one thing in my life that made me hesitant. I could face down blood mages and angry Dalish and Anders when he got all glowy. Bandits? A breeze. Demons? No problem. Rogue Coterie members? Consider it done. Political posturing by the Qunari? Even the Viscount called on Hawke. When it came to my own feelings about one of my dearest friends, though, it was nothing doing.
I didn't expect to see him waiting in the entrance hall when I got home. Hadriana's fate was about the only thing about this that I had expected, and the surprises kept coming: he told me more about her and about how much he wanted to break free of the hatred that dogged him. His words were soft at times, hesitant, and in those moments I could feel my heart pounding almost painfully in my chest as I longed to reach out, to help him, to tell him that it didn't have to be like this.
What would have happened if he'd just given love a chance instead?
I thought I'd pushed him too far when he got angry and frustrated again and I asked him not to leave. My hand touched one of his markings as I reached for him in supplication. The lyrium glowed, Fenris glowed and the next thing I knew, I was pressed against the wall, his hands holding me there, firm. My breath was shallow, rapid, as I stared at him. He seemed to be battling himself, staring down at a patch of the wall like he wasn't sure why he'd pinned me there and it was suddenly more than I could bear. I kissed him, deep and desperate, and all the loneliness and longing of the past three years exploded into passion.
When I woke, I was alone in the bed, the sheets smooth against my skin and that was enough to make me wary, to make me roll over, still sleepy-eyed, to find him staring into the fire. I tried to cover with a joke, teasingly asking if it had been that bad. I wasn't ready for the response I got, for the crushing blow of the single word fine. He retracted it just a moment later; he must have seen the look on my face, but I knew then that it was all going wrong. I tried to understand, I tried to sympathise, but when he strode out the door, it felt like the flickering flame he'd kindled in my heart had been smothered.
I woke to sunlight shining on my bed, the fire burnt down nearly to ashes, and stared at the empty space beside me where Fenris had lain. In just one night, three years' worth of hope had been realised and then crushed. I felt like I couldn't face the morning, but there were … things I had to do, and I thought I could hear voices downstairs. It was Anders, wanting help going after that templar he thought wanted to make all the mages Tranquil. I'd been planning to take Fenris along with me when we tackled that particular problem; he mightn't like fighting for the mages much, but his strength would be needed if it came to a fight against templars. Looking into Anders' face as he pleaded with me to hurry, I knew I'd have to go, for his sake, and I'd have to go without Fenris.
I couldn't look him in the face after last night.
"Come on. Let's go find Aveline and Varric, then."
That day felt like I was walking in a dream. I felt as disembodied as I had in Feynriel's dreams in the Fade, like I was just going through the motions and the rest of me was somewhere else, watching on in detachment, even as I reasoned with Anders and faced down Justice to save that mage girl's life. It should have been a distraction, and it was, but that didn't make the day any easier. Nor did getting answers from the Harimanns for Sebastian the next day. Nothing did. Day after day melded into each other and day after day, I asked Aveline to join me and avoided Fenris, averted my steps from the area up past the Chantry where he lived, avoided lingering in Hightown any more than necessary.
He'd said as he left that he felt like a fool. I kept hearing those words over and over again whenever I stopped to think, so I tried not to give myself time to do that. I'd given Fenris everything I had. Oh, not my body: it wasn't the first time and it wouldn't be the last. I'd opened up to him over the last few years, this year in particular, and I'd shown him more of myself than I'd shown anyone beyond my family. I'd thought he understood me, in a way. We were both outsiders. All I had to do was open my mouth and people knew I was a refugee, even the ones who didn't know me by my reputation. Fenris just had to walk into a room: as an elf and bearing those marks, he was set apart from anyone, especially in the exclusive area of Hightown he was squatting in.
I'd never needed to prove anything to him and he'd never needed to prove anything to me once he'd established his loyalty. Recently, we'd been spending increasing amounts of time in that musty old mansion of his. We'd lay the Book of Shartan I'd given him open on the table and he'd bend over it, his strong, broad brow furrowing as he stared at the words, my fingers passing light over the paper as I pointed them out. He'd been making huge improvements; he'd been reluctant to learn to read at first, but in the end, he'd grasped the idea with the sort of tenacity he showed in so many other situations. Secretly, I thought he liked the idea precisely because it was something a slave was forbidden to do in Tevinter.
He'd have to learn on his own, now, because I couldn't bear the thought of being alone with him. I couldn't even bear the thought of seeing him. He'd been the one I'd told the things I missed about Ferelden, in my more contemplative moments. He'd seemed to invite confidences from me by the way he listened so attentively when I spoke, and I'd shared them with him, over wine in my estate or by candlelight in his. I'd been the fool, not him. I'd reached for him without knowing what would happen and he'd twisted out of my grasp and left me lonely and heartsore.
Fenris wasn't the only one who was proud; Gamlen always used to complain about the pride and stubbornness all around him when Mother and Bethany and I were still living with him. It's a fine Amell tradition, and I'd been working at making it a Hawke one, too. Could any woman share so much of herself with someone only to have it rejected and not feel her pride wounded? If so, she's a more forgiving person than I. Forgiveness has never been one of my strongest traits.
It's not like I'm the sort to open up easily. The Blight and that year in servitude and the way I'd had to claw my way up from Lowtown to get where I was had made me hard, wary of trusting anyone, even my closest friends, with my feelings. I always did guard them more closely than my life. I'd opened up to Fenris, let him see past the sly jokes that were my shield, and he'd turned my back on me. If he knew me at all, if he cared in the slightest, he had to know what that would do to me. He'd been one of my closest friends and in one night everything had changed. He hadn't even given me so much as an explanation.
It stung every time I thought about it. I wasn't about to be the one to make the first peace offering. No matter how much I might have longed every night for a reprise of what had passed between us.
So, instead of going to Fenris' mansion to read with him, I spent my evenings drinking with Isabela and Varric in the Hanged Man, and if the topic of Fenris happened to come up, which it did, curse it, I laughed off the references and drained my mug and headed back to the bar for more. Varric took it upon himself one night to point out to me that a man in spiky armor is hardly the most stable relationship choice, but I'd just arched my eyebrows and laughed that crazy has never been a turn-off for me, and that seemed to settle it. More than once, the two of them had to help me back to Hightown late at night, a risky endeavour made safer since we dealt with that particular area's gangs. Isabela always seemed amused when they had to do that, but if they had any suspicions about my changed habits or my drinking, they were smart enough to keep them to themselves.
It was Aveline who first asked me about what had happened, though with her usual tact, she didn't put it like that. One afternoon as we sat in her office, her on her chair and I leaning on the desk, she asked if there was a reason I'd been taking her out with me so much recently. I laughed it off and said that I had to try to get some time with her without Donnic around. She hadn't believed me, of course; that was clear in the way she turned her head and the skeptical look in those eyes. I never could fool Aveline. I could make her drop a topic, though, by stubbornly refusing to say anything about it, and that was what I did. I pretended to have no idea what she meant when she said she hadn't seen much of Fenris lately and asked if he'd finally decided to lay low in his appropriated mansion like she'd been advising him to do for years. After that, she'd been forced to let it lie.
I took her with me again when we went searching for Emeric the templar, and that was the start of one of the most horrible nights of my life. With the twins gone, Mother was all that I had left of my family. (I didn't count Gamlen; I rarely ever did, even at his best moments, which were rare.) I'd thought she'd be safe in Kirkwall. Losing Bethany had been sudden and surprising, but it had always been a threat while we lived in a city with a Knight Commander as powerful as Meredith. But Mother … I'd never thought anyone would hurt her. She was the dearest of women; just the previous day, she'd been telling me she thought she might remarry, hinting that Fenris and I wouldn't want to be trying to live our lives around her. I'd smiled at the light in her eye when she mentioned Fenris, unable to dash the twinkling hope there that I might have found someone.
At least Mother never judged me for that; she murmured her concern occasionally when I passed, but to her, love was love and it didn't matter who Fenris was if we meant enough to each other.
She died so horribly. I'd held her in my arms with her murderer's blood drying on my weapons and I'd tried not to cry, and then she'd gone and I was alone in the world. That night tested my resolve worse than any. That was the night that Fenris came back.
I could hardly believe it when I heard his voice from the door. I didn't bother to ask who had told him; nothing seemed to matter now. I was sitting on the bed, staring into the fire, everything inside me dulled and numb from a pain it seemed had settled, too deeply embedded in my soul for me to be able to feel anything except its ache.
"I don't know what to say, but I am here."
I looked up, blinking away anything that might have looked like a tear, finding my breath catching in my throat at the sight of him. I hadn't laid eyes on him since that night and I realised, dully, that he was wearing the red scarf I'd given him tied around his arm. That made something tighten in my chest; why would he wear it, why would be have my family crest on a little shield on his belt, when he'd been the one who'd left? He'd ended it, he'd left me alone and cold and hadn't bothered to seek me out since.
I almost couldn't stand the sight of him, but when I spoke, it was soft, and I hated that I could hear my own agony in my voice. I wanted his comfort, but I didn't want him to see my pain. How ridiculous was that?
"Just say something," I said, my voice slow and thick. "Anything."
As my head dropped, my empty stare going back to the fire, he padded across the room to the bed, his bare feet silent on the floor.
"They say death is only a journey. Does that help?" He sounded hesitant, his voice wavering as he searched for words, and any other night I would have laughed. It didn't help, not really, but it didn't have to, and he knew it as well as I. "To be honest," he said, his voice soothing even now, "I don't think there is much point in filling these moments with empty talk."
He was right, and he sat silently beside me, close enough for me to long to reach out and hold him again. But he didn't invite it, and I couldn't without that invitation. But oh, Maker, I wanted him to stay that night, I wanted to feel his arms strong around me, to just be able to let go for a while and feel something that wasn't the mix of this grief on top of the ache of missing him, as potent as any poison.
He didn't. Eventually, the logs on the fire burned down and he pointed out that I should sleep and carried my boots across the room to set by the door for the morning. Never once did he touch me and never had I felt so alone as when he left. If I needed any proof that was it, that his feelings were never what I'd hoped they could have been, surely that was it. He'd been wearing my scarf around his arm, but he'd offered me nothing.
That night, for the first time since the night Fenris and I spent together, I cried. And nobody knew that Mother was only half the reason for the tears.
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I think my absolute favorite thing about this is how you've portrayed Hawke's humor; the hmmm, today looks momentous bit made me grin so hard that right from the start I knew you'd done a great job. Hawke's gorgeously three-dimensional: she has the humor, she has toughness and the hardened-by-necessity exterior but the camaraderie for her companions (whether she agrees with them or not) and the affection for Fenris, she has the wistfulness about Bethany and the incredible sorrow of losing her mom. I love all the sides of her you've shown.
I also love how she sees Fenris in this. I tend to think you've hit the nail on the head with a lot of what's there to attract her to him, and I really enjoyed her observations about him and how he carries himself. I'm also a big fan of the bit where she thinks in such a straightforward manner about how she can handle facing down blood mages and dealing with the Qunari but has less confidence with Fenris on a romantic level.
And Hawke's interactions with all the characters! I love the picture you painted of her teaching Fenris to read, the conversation between Varric and Merrill about the mirror, the idea of Varric and Isabela walking Hawke back to the estate after a night of drinking at the Hanged Man, and the read she and Aveline have on each other.
You've gone a long way to making me buy the three years! That one-two punch of Fenris leaving her after their night together followed by the painful awkwardness of him showing up to comfort her (while wearing her favors! I love that she noticed that detail!) but still holding back too much to repair their relationship had to hurt.
Thank you so much for writing this for me! I really enjoyed it! In fact, I'm going to read it again right now.
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I have a lot of fun exploring all the different layers to Hawke, so I'm so glad that it worked for you on that level because I know how much you love strong but flawed female characters.
It was my honour to try to explain those three years to you! Thank you for a wonderful prompt!
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And it was great to have an excuse to immerse myself in the game for a while, too ... ;)