My first sentence set for the 1sentence community on Livejournal. These things are astonishingly addicting! Also, credit where credit's due: the title is from the eponymous song by The Cinematic Orchestra, which was on repeat for most of this fic; in addition, Jade Sabre's achingly beautiful DA:O fic, Legend, was a big influence on the tone of these sentences. I highly recommend it.
Lastly, these are not in chronological order and contain spoilers for the entirety of the Fenris romance.
Enjoy!
#01 – Ring
She ducks left instead of right and the flat of the templar's sword slams into the side of her head; she drops like a stone and, deafened by the ringing in her ears, dazedly watches Fenris's mouth shape her name: "Hawke."
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#02 – Hero
"Tall, dark, and handsome," she answers Varric without thought, draining her tankard as Isabela decides on smoldering eyes and a fast boat; then the door to The Hanged Man opens and Hawke's eyes flick up to meet his as he enters, and she can't tell if it's his green gaze or the alcohol that brings the flush to her cheeks.
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#03 – Memory
It is the memory of his home that he chases away from her that night; three years go by before he remembers where he found it.
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#04 – Box
Fenris never does tell her what he hoped had been in that stupid chest.
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#05 – Run
The Blight comes and sends Hawke running—from the darkspawn, from Lothering, from a country torn apart by civil war—so they cross an ocean to Kirkwall, and yet she finds herself running still, this time from her grief, from Lowtown and the spectre of poverty, from the templars that dog her steps at every turn—and then one night an elf steps right into her path with his skin glowing and his fingers clawed and his eyes afire and—
—she stops.
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#06 – Hurricane
Isabela jokes once that Hawke is a storm on the summer sea, leaving a swath of devastation in her wake; Hawke laughs, but Fenris sees her face cloud over as she turns away, and he wishes he could tell her you are not the storm, you are the eye of it, you calm me, you teach me peace.
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#07 – Wings
She watches the hawks as they wheel in their sky-circles above the city, and she wonders: how it would feel to see her falconer beckoning her home, to swoop down in a rush of feathers and whirling winds, to come to rest on his gauntleted arm and know without doubt that she is safe?
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#08 - Cold
The ice falls from Hawke in great chunks when the last blood mage is slain, and even as she staggers sideways and curls into herself with a shudder, Anders is there with his cloak, wrapping his arms around her until she is swallowed by them; Fenris stands back, unmoving—he has nothing to offer.
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#09 - Red
He wears it in place of his onetime shackles, a talisman to ward against those memories—and a reminder of others—and a promise.
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#10 – Drink
The evening after he leaves her, alone, she presents herself to Isabela and proceeds to get so blisteringly drunk on cheap liquor that she can't spell her own name, much less remember the feel of his fingers in her hair or the quiet coolness of his skin, glowing softly, pressed against hers in the dark.
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#11 - Midnight
The fireball explodes spectacularly behind him, lighting up the streets of Lowtown like a beacon and once again destroying any tactical advantage they'd ever had against these thugs, and Fenris sighs—mages.
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#12 - Temptation
Hawke knows that the Veil is gossamer-thin in Kirkwall and that her dreams may never be trusted, and yet the only demon's ruse to ever nearly take her is the most transparent one of all: Fenris smiles at her with open eyes, unhurt, unafraid, unreal.
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#13 - View
He says he likes the view and that's not untrue, but more than that he values his mansion's proximity to Hawke's, because she still won't post a guard to her estate and as long as she refuses, he will be the wolf at the door instead.
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#14 - Music
"I do not know the steps," he says when the first strains of the Fereldan folk tune float through The Hanged Man, but Anders is already pulling Hawke away from the table, and it does not escape him that the mage holds her a little too close, that his hands linger a little too low on her waist, that his lips brush her cheek as he whispers in her ear and makes her laugh, giddy and bright.
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#15 - Silk
She starts making Fenris take off his gauntlets as soon as he enters the house; she's never gone through so many robes so fast in her life.
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#16 – Cover
Fenris doubts her, she knows, but she remains undaunted as she opens the book and begins to read: Being an accounting of the Beloved, Andraste, and of the elf Shartan, and of the war they fought that the people might become free.
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#17 - Promise
"I swore—I swore—that I would—protect her—" Hawke gasps into his chest, her tears long ago run dry; Fenris allows his arms to tighten around her shoulders and thinks that in this, at least, they are alike—their words are worthless.
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#18 - Dream
He is still there when she wakes up.
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#19 - Candle
She twists the stick of wax in her fingers until it softens in the flame, then dangles it over the envelope, letting the thick scarlet drops seal her word and her allegiance; when she presses down on the crest of her mother's family the wax spills over the edges onto her thumb, hot, like blood.
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#20 - Talent
Fenris has always had a knack for languages, but when the monstrous spider drops upon them in the Deep Roads, the tongues Hawke swears in leave even him impressed.
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#21 - Silence
The first time they meet after that night is so excruciating that not even Varric can manage equanimity; at last, Hawke ventures a safe, empty comment on the weather that Fenris responds to with equal caution, and slowly, word by word, they learn to speak and say nothing.
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#22 - Journey
Hawke stills when she hears his step behind her, her hands fidgeting on an unpacked shirt, and then she says, I have to go, and Fenris does not hesitate as he moves to her side and answers, then I will go with you.
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#23 - Fire
Anders sees how easily Hawke touches the elf, and the jealousy burns in the back of his throat; Anders sees the sorrow in Hawke's eyes, and his chest burns with bitterness that his hands are not the hands that comfort her; Anders sees Hawke's resolve wavering the deeper the elf's claws sink into her, and Justice burns like white fire in his head.
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#24 - Strength
"Behind you," Aveline shouts, and Hawke starts to turn but Fenris is already there, sword swinging in a silverflame arc into the mercenary springing at her heels; the man falls and Fenris stares at her after, checking her for injuries, and something flips in her belly—she has spent so many years protecting her family that she has forgotten how it feels to be the one protected.
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#25 – Mask
It's not that she sees under his mask, it's that she waits, so that he may learn how to remove it first.
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#26 – Ice
Hawke spins on her heel and stalks from The Hanged Man, dignity shattered in the face of her treacherously burning cheeks; "Mages always have cold feet in bed," Isabela says, laughing, and Varric sighs as he flips her a sovereign.
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#27 - Fall
The maul hits him square in the chest and the world goes black; the next thing he knows, there is a voice murmuring in his ear and cool hands cupping his face, gentle hands, hands he knows, hands he—loves—
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#28 – Forgotten
His memories are fragile things, flutterby wisps that dance on his fingers and then away, as elusive as starlight and the winds on his face, but there is a handful of memories that he holds tight, the precious things that he cannot forget: the glow in her eyes as he draws his hand along her cheek, the heady glide of her breath against his lips, the slow feathering sigh of her voice, whispering the sounds of his name.
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#29 - Dance
Hawke dips and his sword sweeps over her head; Fenris feels her hand press against his waist and slides left, away from the burst of ice that leaps from her staff; Varric shouts and they spin back towards him, moving with even breaths and even steps, death rehearsed in graceful tandem.
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#30 - Body
He likes the dryness of the Agreggio; it is clean and crisp and burns all the way down.
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#31 – Sacred
Fenris catches only a glimpse of Hawke on the bed—of the blood spreading thick and fast over her stomach, her eyes open wide and unseeing, of Anders's hands stained red and his mouth moving in breathless litany—before Aveline pushes him from the room; he stumbles through the city for an age, and somehow when it ends he finds himself lost in the Chantry, and though he feels as though his feet profane the ground he walks on—can he ask favor of a Maker he is not sure he believes in?—he closes his eyes and whispers, please.
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#32 - Farewells
Varric pointedly does not mention to the Seeker how lachrymose both he and Hawke were at their parting.
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#33 - World
It is astonishing how easily he can narrow her focus to a single point: the wry quirk of his eyebrow, the twitch of his lips when he smirks, the liminal brush of his hand against hers.
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#34 - Formal
"Look," says Hawke, leaning back in one of his less-rickety chairs, "I'm not saying you have to put up brocade drapes or run some scarlet carpeting down the stairs, but Fenris, it's been six years—don't you think it's time you got rid of that body by the door?"
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#35 - Fever
The city sets itself on fire, burning from the inside out, and when the price of her decisions is yet another soul, when her selfishness and impotent despair are greatest, she wonders with the quiet shame of unvoiced blasphemy: wouldn't it have been easier for them all if she had been the one who burned, if she, like Andraste, had died in the fire in their stead?
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#36 - Laugh
Merrill just sounds so earnest when she asks if he's slammed his fingers in a door, and Fenris's face is just so dour—Hawke doesn't laugh, not exactly, but she smiles, and for the first time since the night a sheaf of white lilies appeared in her home, she feels as though her heart might learn to lighten again.
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#37 - Lies
Kirkwall is made of murky greys, a city of two faces, and Fenris himself is the slave of a world built on shadowed half-truths and capricious deceit; he does not know how to reconcile these facts with this frank Fereldan woman, too honest to be believed, offering her aid without price.
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#38 - Forever
The future—the next week, the next year, the next moment—is the one thing that Hawke never allows herself to think about, not anymore; she has learnt too harshly that what is most precious to her is what she may never keep, so when Fenris bends over her as if the last three years might have been nothing but a stray thought and speaks of his future, with her, as if it is a thing that might become lasting and real, she stands and she kisses him with all of her grief and all of her joy and all of her love, so that even though the slow sure passing of time might steal him away through her fingers, she may look back to this moment and know that if her life never brings her another instant of happiness, that this will have been enough to last, enough for always.
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#39 - Overwhelmed
Fenris is aghast that he betrayed her so easily and furious that Hawke took him into the Fade at all; that he has grossly underestimated her constant struggle is bad enough—that she does not blame him is worse.
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#40 - Whisper
The three words are deep, and slow, and they seem to drop right into her chest, settling there and making no room for her vanishing breath; her heart skip-stutters that he could have given her something this dear, this cherished, so freely—no, she thinks, not freely, never freely, because she knows, she knows what those words must have cost him—and though her hand trembles as she touches his cheek, her voice is steady as she tells him, just as soft and just as true, "I am yours."
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#41 - Wait
Isabela tells her the first week is the hardest, and Varric says it takes six months, but in the end, it is Aveline who has the right of it, who tells her that it doesn't stop hurting, that in the end you just learn how to make room for it.
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#42 - Talk
"Darling, where are you?—oh, there you are—listen, darling, I met Lady Calla in Hightown this morning and she told me the most astonishing thing about that little Hawke girl next door—oh, you know, the one whose mother was the last of the Amells before she ran away—yes, well, anyway, she told me that according to Ser Vindor's charwoman, the rumor is that she's been carrying on with that angry elf she's always running around with—an elf, of all things!—anyway, I could hardly believe it, he's always looked so violent with his enormous sword and that unnatural hair and I'm—what on earth are you looking at, darling?—oh, if you insist, but I've always said peeping is so tasteless—oh—oh my goodness—and right in public, too, where anyone can see them—well, by all the stars of the Maker, wait until I tell Lady Calla about this!"
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#43 - Search
"I am looking," he slurs, "for peace—"
"—at the bottom of a bottle—"
"—where many men find it, I'm told—"
"—they find oblivion, Fenris, not peace—"
"…I would be satisfied with either."
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#44 – Hope
They want her to be the hope for the masses, the irenic, the Great Placater who stitches the city back together when Meredith and Orsino are done ripping it apart at the seams; she blinks and the bandit shrieks as the fireball explodes in his face, just another soul added to an account long ago become innumerable, and she laughs without mirth: Hawke, Peacemaker.
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#45 – Eclipse
Anders orients himself to Hawke like the sun, his brilliant gleaming vanguard against the sibylline sibilance of Justice's darkest wrath, but as the years slip away so does she, and in the end she turns her face away from him altogether to accord his portion of light to the elf—she leaves him lost in shade and shadow, blind but for Justice's pitiless glare, black as boiling pitch.
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#46 - Gravity
"Don't think—that I'm rushing you," Hawke says, voice muffled on account of her face being mashed into the Hightown cobbles, "but as it turns out—Gravitic Ring—is really uncomfortable—"
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#47 - Highway
It has been pouring for four days straight, the icy slow rain that seeps into bone and settles there, and when the Maker-blighted mud sucks the boot right off her damned foot for the third time in the last hour, Hawke snaps; she peels off the other sodden boot and hurls it off the cliff, and then she stands right on the edge in the gusting wind and lashing rain (saved from an abrupt death only by Fenris's quick hand), and she shouts, "I am going to pave the Wounded Coast if it is the last thing I ever do!"
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#48 - Unknown
Hawke no longer fears the future; she no longer faces it alone.
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#49 – Lock
Varric knows locks better than most people know their lovers, the tumblers and pins a tongue he has spoken since childhood; he sees Hawke tuck her hand into the elf's, and thinks that not even he could have designed a key to fit so perfectly.
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#50 – Breathe
She has no voice left but her breath—so let this, then, be her aubade, her song to the dawn that breaks red and gold and glorious over the gleaming spires of the city she loves; to the whorled clouds that scud through the air, blazing light around their edges; to the radiant white stone and to her people that live and thrive and to everything that is Kirkwall, everything that she has burned for and bled for and saved as best she could—and to Fenris who holds her even now on the silver sands of the coast where the gulls cry out to the beckoning of sea and sky, who keeps her heart like a bird in his hands, who sees her silence and understands it, because though she may have nothing left but her breath to share with him—they live—and it is enough.