The blade of the Arishok's axe gleams sharp and deadly as it swings in an endless downward arc. Time freezes, each second solidifying like shards of ice forming atop a flowing river, pooling together, becoming larger until the surface is hard and cold like a mirror and everything stops. Crystalline, it shimmers on the edge of reality - the held breath before a sigh, blood welling between fingers clutched around a wound, bulging outward to strain the boundaries between friction and gravity before it is loosed, spilling, spinning out of control.
The blow meets Hawke's upturned shield at the apex of its strength, shattering the moment like a rock through a stained glass window. He can see her arm twist under its weight, the shield's scarred and dented surface rippling under the sheering force like water moves around a dropped stone as its wooden underpinning cracks beneath the strain, splintering and coming loose. It staggers her to one knee and behind him someone screams.
He has never known fear before this moment.
Fenris has known pain, has known suffering, has known loss and helplessness and regret, but never before had all things coalesced into what closes its icy fingers around his heart and squeezes.
Hawke is going to die. For Isabela. For Kirkwall. For them. For him. He has helped to set this in motion, has guided her feet along the treacherous path up to the precipice, has handed her the false wings and convinced her she could fly. It is because of him that she even thought it was possible, that there was a chance that she might save them all.
But basalit-an is just a word. And Hawke is just one woman.
It's a close thing.
Hawke loses so much blood she actually feels lighter in his arms when they carry her back to the estate, and he lets himself be shoved to the back of the room as mages - mages, mages, just another word, such an important word - cluster around her bed. Bethany holds back the darkness through force of will alone as Anders empties all of himself and more into rent flesh that reluctantly closes, bones convinced with cajoling and tears to realign. The smell of elfroot, lyrium and ozone is so strong in the air that it burns his nostrils. He has never been more useless.
It's a close thing.
She laughs with bandages wound round her head, blinded by yards of white cotton. A long stripe splits her mouth across both lips and down her chin, stitched and shiny with salve but uncovered. Anders has managed to save her eye, to piece back together the crack in her skull, but even magic has its limitations when it comes to scars. Hawke shrugs, flopping awkwardly like an injured bird with one broken arm and four cracked ribs, and says without much regret that she's never been pretty anyway.
They say they're sorry - I'm so, so sorry Hawke - and it's all he can do not to shout. They're just words, but words sting like iron brands and do harm like swords, and she's never been more beautiful to him in her entire life than she is in that moment, healing and breathing and alive, despite the odds. Hawke's life is a miracle, a treasure snatched from the yawning jaws of the abyss, an impossible thing shouldering its way through doubt to prove its veracity - she will never be anything but beautiful.
But beauty, just like regret, is just another word and he thinks they have both had their fill.
He sits with her most days while she sleeps. Kirkwall struggles to find its balance without a viscount to fill the vacant throne. The spectre of the Knight-Commander looms from the Gallows, growing stronger, gathering momentum in the surging vacuum left behind by the Qun, and Hawke is needed far before she is ready. The others go, one by one - running away, rebuilding, overseeing, called to duties elsewhere until it is only he who watches in silence as she sleeps, curled on one side with her arm against her chest like a cat in the sun, hording precious energy before they can demand it from her again, tightening the noose they call Champion around her neck like a leash that slowly strangles.
Champion is just a word, but it could be the one that ends up on her grave.
"I know you're there," she says, the day the bandages are supposed to come off, when Anders and Orsino's best healer from the Circle have officially decreed her strong enough to walk from bed to door.
It startles him, makes him wonder if she's simply been doing as Hawke does - waiting. She waits, waits to see what he'll come around to, waits to see where he'll lead himself, waits for him to leave, waits for him to come back again. He isn't clear if she knows, though, just how much he depends on her for guidance, for temperance, for faith. He doesn't deserve it - especially now. Not when this is the result of his leadership.
"Am I?"
"You've been there the whole time."
It's not untrue, but he doesn't know what to say. He can't see her eyes, the full expressiveness of her face, but her mouth is soft, neutral, and all the words he can think of stick in his throat like stale pieces of dry bread that he can't choke down.
He doesn't want to say he's sorry. Everyone is always sorry.
"Hawke-"
"Maybe you should go." The words are gentle but they hit like a hammer, staggering him back into his chair.
"I - If you wish."
"When the bandages come off-" she stops, picks over her choices, teeth worrying the healing scab on her lip. "It might be best if you didn't see."
Heat surges up his throat, radiating out across his body to the tips of his fingers. "Do not allow yourself to think for a single moment that what you look like could matter to me." He falters, flustered by his own vehemence. "I don't- I am not-"
"That isn't what I mean."
She's wearing that soft smile, the one with clues hidden around the edges, the patient one that lingers like a held breath, waiting to be discovered. It was the same smile she wore the night, not so long ago, that found him scratching at her door like someone else's unwanted pet, attracted to the smell and warmth of home - any home. It is not the same smile she wore when he left.
Not so long ago, and another age. Another lifetime. He is not the same man he was then, and yet he is still not who he needs to be. There is still too much anger, too much regret. And hate. Hate that wells up like steam escaping the lid of a boiling pot, contents churning within, screaming and railing and demanding release even if to do so is to no longer exist -
And that's when he understands. It isn't about her at all. It should be - but it isn't.
"I thought it might be upsetting."
The words out loud make him feel selfish, pricking into that part of him that will always feel unworthy. At times he is little better than a dog kicked one too many times for spite, unable to tell the difference between a striking hand and one that soothes, and snarling equally at both. The inequity in their relationship is still astounding.
"Your concern, though generous, is unwarranted."
"What can I say," she quotes, voice dry as rustling leaves across stone. "I'm a giver."
It's too soon and Isabela is gone, and he isn't even sure if she knows that yet. It isn't his place to say - she'll know all soon enough anyhow, not even Aveline can hold back the tide forever. In fact he has nothing to say at all, the space within his mouth cavernous and empty.
He is eloquent enough, but he has never been good with words.
Her fingers move experimentally on the bedspread, no longer broken, waving pinky to thumb, and she nearly snatches them away in surprise when he covers them with his. Two fingers on the back of her hand, then a third and a fourth and the curl of his thumb into her palm. She doesn't move, not even when his grip turns tight of its own accord at the sensation of skin against skin, a thousand memories stored in every cell of his flesh. It's a craving, an addiction, a thirst he can't slake when he fears the plunge into dark waters, so easily within reach.
He isn't sure why he feels so brave when she isn't looking, when she can't see, but the world seems different when the lights come up; this moment, fleeting as it is, could be the last of its kind. They are alive - for the moment - and safe - for the moment - but all of that could change between one beat of the heart to the next, and he swallows down the need to explain with words and presses her fingers against his mouth. Her skin is cool against the heat of the lyrium that curves down his chin, warm against his lips, and he knows she can feel the difference.
They never speak of this moment, not after the bandages come off, not for years, not until Danarius is dead and Kirkwall lets her go, if only for a little while. Hawke comes home, shield at her side and a new scar over the bridge of her nose, full of stories about green lights in the sky and horrors on the other side of the Veil that he never wants to think of, and Fenris - older, dubiously wiser, hair longer, back aching in a way it never used to - presses his lips against her cool white fingers, filled with gratitude for every scar and stitch that stretches the time they have left, grateful beyond words.