AN: A kmeme fill. Original prompt: Any circumstance, any LIs. Fenris sacrifices himself to save Hawke's life. Recommended listening: Dumbledore's Farewell (watch?v=AeVyvwThCd8) and Farewell from Pocahontas (watch?v=_EHCOJ8g_9Q).
I also want to take this chance to say this: I never expected this to have the kind of response that it got on the meme and on Tumblr, and I have been touched to tears by all your kind comments. Thank you all so, so much for your support; it's meant so much to me.
Finally, thanks (blame?) go also to Jade Sabre, who helped select the music. Thanks for being so wonderful and encouraging, and for having an encyclopedic knowledge of sad songs.
Warnings: Character death.
-.-
Lacrimosa
-.-
This is how it ends: quietly, rain-soaked, and without glory.
She doesn't understand what has happened at first. She sees the silver flash of the daggers in the downpour; she sees the solid warmth of Fenris's shoulders slide between her and the assassin, smooth and shadowed with dusk; she sees his brow furrow, just slightly, and his lips press together in sudden pain as he takes a half-stumbling step into her chest. It doesn't even occur to her to raise her hands to help him until it is too late.
Fenris is simply standing, and then he is not.
-.-
It's such a piece-of-shit tragedy.
That's all Varric can think in his suite at The Hanged Man, staring down at a stack of blank parchment waiting for him to set word to paper and story to stone. Tragedies are supposed to have meaning, damn them, ironic twists and momentous revelations and anti-heroes cursed by their own choices, and above all they should never, never include such an empty, pointless—death.
And oh, there is no question in his mind that this death is pointless. It is the very essence of the idea, so obvious as to be insulting, and if it had been another man's work he would have laughed and thrown the thing away. It just doesn't make sense—Varric knows nothing if not a narrative, and every literary part of him is adamant that this cannot have happened as it did, that there are too many threads still tied up in unfinished plotlines for this to possibly be real. Important threads, too, made of slave and lover and friend and every single one of them severed just like that with a pair of daggers to the back. The elf hadn't even been truly happy long enough to work up any real touch of poetic irony.
This is only cruel.
Varric sits back in his chair and pinches his nose. He doesn't like things like this, these muddy little tales that don't quite fit the genre, that blur the line between elegy and anecdote and leave the reader mired in unrelenting grief. It's not kind, and it's not fair; it's nothing but an ended tale with too many chapters still unwritten.
But in the end Varric is what he has always been, a storyteller, and when he can find the words he bends his mind to the swelling rise and fall, to passion and loss and still moments gone too soon, to his job of making sense of the senseless and turning a really shit tragedy into the wrenching poignancy he means it to be. If tears fall as he writes, Bianca is the only one to see them.
He begins with: He died free.
-.-
Fenris goes to his knees and Hawke goes with him. The still-raging battle around them fades into nothing—Hawke does not even notice the bolt thwack square between the assassin's eyes, fixing her triumphant grin in death. There is only the rain, and rough, ragged breathing, and the steel tip of a dagger peeping through the split leather over Fenris's heart.
"Fenris?" says Hawke, and she is surprised her voice is steady. A sword sweeps by overhead and a dim part of her mind registers Aveline's shout ringing out over the sand-thudding rain as she parries the strike. Hawke can't even remember why they're out here on the Coast after these raiders in the first place—whatever the reason, it just seems, suddenly, so very unimportant.
"Fenris?" she says again, softer, her hands hovering by his face. She thinks that if she touches him, she might break them both to pieces.
This time he moves, lifting his head just enough to meet her eyes, and she sees that his fingers have dropped from the hilt of his sword to drag nerveless in the damp sand by his foot.
"Hawke," he murmurs. Then he coughs, and his lips grow flecked with blood.
-.-
Merrill is very familiar with death. A lot of people forget that about her, including her friends, but she doesn't mind—it's nice, sometimes, to walk around the vhenadahl and pretend she's part of the normal people around her, even if they frown at her vallaslin and grumble about her twine. And then there are other times, like now, when she and Isabela break at last through the straight sheets of grey rain to find the others bent around Hawke and Fenris like a little copse of storm-weary saplings, and Merrill remembers that blood is blood and that Falon'Din sings his death-song always, even when she does not wish it.
In the end, Merrill is the one who lights the pyre when Hawke's hands shake too badly to hold a flame.
She comes back every week after that, rain or shine, to this empty, fire-scarred corner of the Wounded Coast, and builds a little cairn out of the stones she can carry. It is nothing so grand as the elders' graves on Sundermount, but it is what she can do with her own hands, and she thinks that if Hawke ever comes to this place again, it might be nice to see that someone cared enough to keep safe the ashes of her heart.
Merrill straightens the newest stone and lets two drops of her blood fall right in the middle of the cairn to keep the wild beasts away. She imagines that Fenris scowls at that behind the Veil and smiles at the thought, fluttering a hello with her fingers just in case he really is watching. Then, even though he is not of the People and probably wouldn't appreciate it much anyway, she sings of uthenera, and of peace, and when she is finished she rests her hand gently on his tomb.
"We'll protect her," she promises. "We all will."
The next time she comes, there is a tiny spray of white asters growing between the stones.
-.-
"Easy, easy—"
"No, don't! They're in too deep—you'll kill him if you take them out."
"Leaving them in isn't doing him any favors either, Varric!"
Their voices wash over Hawke as easily as the rain and with as little meaning. Her fingers curl hesitantly around Fenris's back, seeking to prove with touch what she does not believe with sight, but when she slips them up the grooves of his leathers to the place where the long blades meet his skin, he lets out a soft hiss and she jerks her hand back. It comes away hot and wet and scarlet, and even as she stares the rain mixes with his blood, pooling in the creases of her palm, sliding to the ends of her fingers where it falls in fat red droplets to the dirt.
One of the others leaves at a run to find Anders—she doesn't know which and doesn't care—but Fenris's gaze tracks after the thumping footsteps until they disappear over the hill. Then his eyes come to rest again on her face, and they carry such resignation that Hawke nearly chokes.
She clamps her hands on his shoulders, surging fear overriding her concern for his pain. "Stay with me, Fenris," she says. Her thumb digs into his collarbone.
He closes his eyes, and when he speaks, his voice is barely a whisper. "I will try."
-.-
The instant the door to the estate clicks shut behind them, Isabela breaks away to head to the docks. This isn't the place for her, anyway. She is no pillar of strength for Hawke to lean on; Isabela was made to bend before breezes, to tack and yaw with the vagaries of the open ocean rather than plow through them head-on. Aveline is the one Hawke needs now, Aveline and Varric and Anders and anyone, really, who isn't rubbish at offering comfort when she knows that there's no comfort to be had and damn that elf for dying on them all like this, with no warning and no glory and no decent chance to even say anything worthwhile.
But that's why, after all, she's out here on the docks in the first place. Her ship is little more than a black shadow against a blacker sky, but she has been choking on bone and ash and the dulled-steel shallows of the Wounded Coast for hours and more than anything she aches for the open ocean heaving under her feet, to let the clear bite of salt and sea rinse the rust-thick scent of blood from her nose and remind her that there is still a place that does not carry grief in its sails. The open water calls to her as surely as it ever has, and Isabela leans both elbows on an empty crate and thinks of the horizon.
She stands there for a long time.
Then, when the first gulls begin to wake, screaming freedom at the lightening sky, Isabela kicks the crate hard enough that she feels it through her boot and turns away from her ship. She doesn't know where she's going, really, but she's been too long in one port and something in her has undergone a sea-change without her noticing, and if she ends up at Hawke's estate she will not be surprised. Someone has to teach her how to weather the storms, after all.
That night, she orders a single glass of red wine from Corff along with her usual. "To absent friends," she says aloud, toasting the wineglass, and takes a long swallow that burns around the lump in her throat.
When she heads for Hawke's place at the end of the night, she leaves a sovereign balanced on the lip of the still-full glass. "For his tab," she tells Corff, and smiles.
-.-
Fenris's eyes keep closing.
"Remember when we met?" Hawke asks, sliding her fingers to his temples. Rainwater slicks his skin, making her feel as though he slips through her grasp no matter how close she clutches him, and the sodden sand of the coast keeps giving way under her knees. His eyes flutter open and she swallows before forcing a smile. "You put a fist through a man's chest and shouted at me without even saying hello."
"Regrettable," he says between breaths, and his lips curve up in a smile. His hands still hang limp at his sides.
"You turned out to be a bit friendlier in the end, though. Thank goodness."
He still smiles, but his eyelids droop and his head dips forward towards her shoulder, and Hawke takes two breaths to steady herself before speaking again. "Fenris, come on. Open your eyes. Anders is coming and you need to stay awake, okay?"
"Such a—tempting promise," Fenris says, and then he gasps as his breathless chuckle tears something deep inside his chest. "Hawke—"
She leans forward until her forehead brushes against his. "Save your strength," she murmurs, barely conscious of her words, and then she nudges his nose with her own. "Remember when you threw my book in the fireplace? You still haven't replaced that, by the way."
Fenris lets out a very soft sigh, and says, "I am sorry."
-.-
The thing is: Anders doesn't know why he's confused. Objectively, he has no reason to grieve—Fenris has been the embodiment of everything he has struggled against for the last ten years, stubborn and bitter and unyielding; by all rights he should be rejoicing that the blasted elf has been struck down at last in the heat of battle, and yet—and yet—
And yet he has no peace.
Justice thrums at the base of his skull and Anders shudders, turning away from the little girl and her newly-mended leg. The spirit is as uneasy as he is, though he doubts Justice is as moved by Hawke's grief—and that, too, is another thing that confuses him. He knows that she cared for the elf, knows too that he could not expect her affections to turn so easily to another—and yet when he had lifted his hands from Fenris's still, silent body on the wet sands of the coast, come far too late to make a difference, the white and stricken face that had greeted him had shaken something deep in his heart. He had known she thought fondly of Fenris.
He had not known she loved him.
An untruth, rumbles Justice, and still there is the undercurrent of confusion in the spirit's voice. You blinded yourself rather than see.
"Shut up," Anders snaps, ignoring the look the girl's father gives him, angry not because Justice is wrong but because he is right and now, watching Hawke sit quiet and pale and unmoving in her grief day after day, lost in the empty mausoleum of her estate, he cannot pretend anything other but the truth.
She loved Fenris; Fenris is dead; Anders has no peace with either of those.
An ignoble death, Justice decides at last. Unjust, for a worthy enemy. The warrior deserved better.
Anders says, "Hawke deserved better, too."
-.-
She is not sure what makes her ask her next question. Perhaps it is compassion, or fear, or simply morbid curiosity, she doesn't know, but she asks him, "Does it hurt?"
He is quiet for a long time, as if considering his response. The rain patters down like drumbeats in the sand, pockmarking it and smoothing it in turns as they wait and wait and wait for Anders. At last, Fenris says, "Yes," and then, more quietly, "no," and then he gives what might have once been a shrug. "The pain is distant."
She does not say what they are both thinking: that if the pain is easing, his life is fading with it.
-.-
She is always too late.
Some days it's enough to shake her from her steady footing, the days when she dreams of Wesley and darkspawn and a pit in the foundries of Lowtown, but never in her life has Aveline felt as helpless as the day she watches Fenris die at her feet. She does not help with the pyre—Merrill does that—and she cannot speak her grief—that is Varric's part—and she cannot do as Anders does and ease the pain of Hawke's wounds. In the end, all she can do is bear her friend's weight and help carry her grief on the long walk back to Kirkwall, taking on the burden of informing her household and making sure that at least here, she will not be alone with her sorrow.
Then Aveline goes home, and she tells Donnic that there will be no more diamondback games, and for whatever reason it's that silly little thing that breaks her determined stoicism open like a dry shell. Donnic is already reaching for her when her face crumples, and he holds her as she cries like a child for the loss of one dear friend and the pain of another, for Wesley and for herself, and for all the lives she has never been able to save. She weeps for a long time, and then when she is finished, she wipes her eyes and says, "That's enough of that," and raises her head again to meet the warmth in Donnic's eyes.
"I would not lose you," she says then, and he pulls her against his chest.
He does not offer her promises—he knows as well as she does that what has happened today is proof enough of their fragility—and instead, he presses a tender kiss to her mouth. He says only, "I love you."
This is what Aveline holds close to her heart over the next weeks as she watches Hawke pull into herself like a vine lost to winter. She knows this grief too well, knows the all-encompassing cold that reaches into the heart and settles there, and she knows too that there is very little she can do to ease that chill if Hawke herself cannot see her way to warmth again.
Then, one day, when she opens Hawke's bedroom door as usual to coax her to dinner, she finds her sitting on the edge of her bed with her face in her hands. This is not usual—Hawke has been quiet and pliant and still since Fenris's death, as emotionless as a doll—and at first Aveline does not know what to make of this change. She crosses to Hawke's side and hesitates, but before she can stumble into some kind of platitude, Hawke lifts her eyes and silences Aveline with the utter despair in her face.
"I don't know what to do," she says at last, and Aveline thinks those are the first words she has spoken since the Coast.
She sits beside Hawke on the bed, the mattress shifting with her weight. "What do you mean?"
Hawke does not look at her. One hand curls around the other in her lap, her knuckles white with grief. "Every morning—" she starts, and then her voice catches and she has to try again. "Every morning I wake up and—he's not here."
"Oh, Hawke."
She sucks in a breath at the sound of her name and one trembling hand comes up to cover her mouth, as if she can hold in her sobs by sheer force of will. "And the thing is—I just realized—if I wake up tomorrow, he still won't be here—or the day after that or ever and I—I miss him, Aveline!" Hawke doubles over, one hand still pressed to her mouth, and her shoulders shake as if she cannot get enough air. "I miss him—so much—"
"Oh, Hawke," Aveline says, crying too, and before she can stop herself she reaches over and pulls her into her arms. She doesn't know how long they sit there on the side of her bed, weeping, but when they stop at last it feels as though something heavy has lifted from the air around them, as though a bit of ice has thawed to let in the sun. Aveline draws her fingers through Hawke's hair in long strokes, the way her mother did for her once, and Hawke rests her cheek on Aveline's shoulder in the quiet hush.
"Do you remember," Aveline says eventually, "what you said to me on the boat? After Wesley died?"
"No."
"You said, 'stop being so stoic and cry, you ass.'"
She lifts her head at that, and looks Aveline in the eye—and oh, it is a fluttering, fragile thing, stained with tears and deeper grief, but—
Hawke smiles.
-.-
His head rests on her shoulder, too heavy for him to hold up. Her fingers stroke through the wet hair at the nape of his neck, carding the white strands until they lie straight as the lyrium down his spine. His eyes are closed and hers are too, a final defense against the truth as much as any rain.
"Do you remember?"
"Yes." It is nothing more than a gasp against her skin.
"If there is a future to be had, I will walk into it gladly at your side."
"Yes."
Her hand shakes on his neck. "I didn't think if would matter."
He says nothing.
-.-
It's the little things that make her cry in the beginning, after that first real breaking with Aveline: the discovery of one of his spare shirts in her wardrobe, a glimpse of an elf with green eyes in the market, the day she realizes his pillow no longer smells like him. It takes her a long time to learn to ease through those moments, and longer still before she can make herself leave the house, but time passes and wounds scar over, and slowly, thread by thread, she teaches herself to gather up the pieces of her life into something that resembles normalcy.
Her friends are there, too, impossible and insistent and precious beyond price—Isabela teaches her to laugh and Varric to remember; Merrill gives her a grave and the sheer joy of life. Anders reminds her how to heal; Aveline grounds her, steady and resolute and proof enough that even this pain will lift, that time will smooth its jagged, anguished edges into something softer until despair gives way to peace. She is not there now, not quite—it is more that she can see a distant light where there was none before, and even if its warmth is still far enough away that she cannot yet feel it, the fact that it exists at all is enough.
.
.
One day, she goes with the others to a little cairn on the Wounded Coast. Merrill flutters anxiously, torn between worry and sadness and hope; Anders shakes his head and Varric and Isabela grin and exchange stories of taking Fenris for every coin he had on Wicked Grace nights at The Hanged Man. Aveline stands tall and firm at her shoulder, ready if she is needed, but Hawke thinks that she is strong enough for this, and when they round the last outcropping her feet do not stumble as she approaches for the first time the place where Fenris died.
The rest of them back away, letting her take the last steps on her own, and Hawke looks down at the pile of grey stones grown all over with white asters. She kneels, then, and unknots a bit of red ribbon from her wrist, and with a short, careful movement, she ties it around the thick, sturdy stems of the asters growing from the base of the grave. It is not a goodbye, not exactly—she doubts that she will ever truly close away that part of her heart—but there is an ending, here, and a beginning, and Hawke does not weep as she stands and dusts the glinting silver sand off her knees.
She looks a moment more at the cairn, brushing her fingertips across the topmost stone, and then she turns to her friends and she smiles, and Hawke says, "We should move on."
-.-
His forehead is hot on her neck and his breath comes in shallow sighs, so faint and far-between that she finds herself holding her own until she feels each brush of air over her skin. Hawke slides her fingers further into his hair, holding him closer against her, and takes his hand with her other and draws it into her lap. His fingers are like ice.
"Does it hurt?" she whispers.
His head shifts in the slightest movement on her shoulder. "No."
"Good," she says, her voice trembling. "I'm glad."
"You are safe," Fenris says then, and she feels him smile. "Safe and whole."
"Bastard!" she breathes, blinking hard, and she lifts her face up to the rain. "I'd rather have you."
His smile widens as he turns his face into her neck, and then Hawke feels his ice-fingers twitch under her hand until they grasp her wrist, and when he tugs she lets him lift her hand and his to his chest, to the place where his heart beats gentle and unsteady, a slowing song coming to its end at last.
.
.
His heart thumps once, hard.
He says—
"Yours—!"
.
.
-.-
.
.
end.