AN: For spark-of-jenius, who was one of the winners of my first Tumblr giveaway. I promised 1,000-3,000 words on any subject the winner chose—and then she handed me this prompt, and I knew there was no possible way I'd be able to stay within those parameters.
Her original prompt: So far the only thing I can come up with is: Danarius traps f!Hawke in the Fade to bring Fenris to him, Fenris has to brave his many issues with the Fade etc. to go get her. No preference for Hawke class, use of Feynriel totally optional. :D If that doesn't spawn any inspiration, I'll try to come up with something else.
This is for you, Jen! I was truly inspired by this idea, and I really hope you enjoy the final product! As always, thanks to the stupendous Jade for her magnificent beta.
Enjoy.
Warnings: Canonical character death.
Ascendi
—
IF there were dreams to sell,
What would you buy?
Some cost a passing bell;
Some a light sigh,
That shakes from Life's fresh crown
Only a rose-leaf down.
If there were dreams to sell,
Merry and sad to tell,
And the crier rang the bell,
What would you buy?
—Dream-Pedlary, Thomas Lovell Beddoes
—
Prospero
This thing of darkness I
acknowledge mine.
—The Tempest, Act V Scene 1
—
It is a trap.
It is a trap and it is a lie, all of it, every word, and his sister has betrayed him to his master—and his master is—here. Here, in Kirkwall, in the Hanged Man, where Fenris has spent nights past counting at cards with his friends, on the stairs that lead to Varric's rooms, in the same hall Isabela has stumbled through so many evenings, laughing, drunk, her arm around his shoulders.
His master's shoulders in the same space, more stooped than he remembers beneath the silver robes. Thicker. Greyer in the beard and at the temples. Somehow after all this time Fenris is surprised—and appalled at his own astonishment. He ought to have known—he ought to have—
The voice is the same. The eyes are the same, possessive and piercing: perfectly assured of his own strength, his own mastery of the world and the slave before him. His master's smile and the walls of the Hanged Man with their lines and grooves, both scored as deep in him as his name, horrifying in the juxtaposition.
But there is no more time. Now there is only the roar of blood in his ears, and the weight of his sword in his hands, and the hiss of lyrium in his veins. Hawke's heat at his back. We're with you—a promise he can barely hear—and then battle. Blades on blades—the shriek of magic—his sister's face gone white—
His master's throat in his hand. A lifetime's history in that voice, on that tongue, and lies upon lies upon lies.
And then blood.
And then nothing but words.
—
"No," Fenris snarls. Varania flinches away, eyes huge.
"She's your sister," Hawke says, her hands open, pleading. There is no laughter in her voice now. "Fenris, this is your family!"
The flesh of his sister's throat whitens where he grips it. "She brought Danarius to Kirkwall! To bring me back as his slave!"
"Danarius is dead!"
"As she should be," Fenris spits, and Varania's hand closes around his wrist in blind panic. Her fingers are so slight and slender, no strength in them at all—a mage's hand.
His mother's hand—
"Please," she says, "Leto."
The word hits him in the chest like a hammer. He remembers: a courtyard, dirt between his toes, a woman's back as she pins linens to a line, the white sheets fluttering in the wind to give him a glimpse of red hair and a brighter smile. Leto!
His hand loosens despite himself. Varania's eyes are fixed on his and his traitorous heart wrenches at the grief there, the fear, the old and bitter rage that mirrors his own so well. She pulls away once, gingerly, and then again, and the second time the coarse fabric of her collar slips free from his grasp. He does not—reach for her again.
Fenris cannot look at her. She edges around him like a skittish animal, never dropping her gaze; when she is out of his reach she moves faster, retreating behind Hawke who watches him with frank anxiety. Hawke, who commands him even here, because despite his years of freedom he still cannot see the truth for the lies.
"Get out," he says, rough as the rock-choked Coast.
"Fenris," Hawke says, just as low, and abruptly he wants to touch her, to feel her hands on him and remember that he is not a ghost. But he can't—bear that, not like this when he is nothing more than brittle glass, and instead he drops his eyes to the place where his master lies dead and opened at his feet. Bleeding, too; Fenris's toes are stained with it around the nails. He lifts one foot, unsettled at the clammy stick, and there is a glint—
A pendant, gripped in his master's dead hand. The Tevinter sun etched in gold and hammered bronze, a long chain wrapped around each grey finger like a lariat. How many times he has seen this pendant resting above his master's heart—Fenris bends, blindly reaching—
Varania shrieks, "Don't!"
Hawke shouts, wordless and terrified—
Magic explodes under his hand in a white burst as blinding as the heart of any sun. A sudden pressure slams upward, immense and implacable, burning his palm as it shoves him back—the lyrium surges like a flood-tide in his skin as glass bottles begin to shatter behind the bar and someone is screaming—
A silhouette: slender fingers closing around that terrible light, cupping it with naked magic, hiding it away. A mage's fingers.
Hawke's fingers.
No, he thinks. No, no—but the pressure is crushing his chest, staggering him, his hair whipping around his face as if this storm has come to end the world. The light is so bright and growing brighter, searing through him like a flame until his eyes blur with tears; he squeezes them shut and it makes no difference, just as brilliant and just as hard and his thundering heart will burst if this does not end. If he could only move—!
And then the sun goes out all at once with the barest sigh. The pressure vanishes with it.
At first there is only shadow. Fenris falters, blind, deaf, stunned by the sudden relief; in slow streaks of color the world resolves again into the soot-stained walls he knows so well, the knotted tables, the blood of his dead master pooled on the wooden floor and made darker with sudden drying. And there, crumpled at his master's feet—
Stricken, Fenris breathes, "No."
She lies limp and still, hair spread around her shoulders, the pendant's chain tangled around her nerveless fingers. Her legs have bent beneath her like a doll's; her eyes are half-lidded, staring sightlessly into nothing.
Hawke.
—
The next moments come in a white roar.
Reunion would have been enough to shake him. But this, his sister and betrayal and his master and his master's death and this, all at once, all within three-quarters of an hour—it is too much. And now Hawke…
He is on his knees beside her. He thinks he might be speaking; she is so cold, her head lolling away from his trembling hands, but—a pulse, and a shallow breath but a breath, and she is not dead and he has not killed her with his own history. Arcanum and the trade tongue alike spill free in a nonsense jumble, words tripping at his lips with no meaning and less sense. Abruptly, a hard shove knocks him to the floor; he is up again in an instant, lyrium lighting his snarl, but it is Anders and not a threat, hair loose in his eyes as he presses both glowing hands to Hawke's temples.
So be it. Better this way: Fenris can do nothing for her and he—
And he has a sister.
Fenris has held many hearts in his hands through the years: sick hearts, hearts with soft places, hearts that could not bear the touch of steel and burst too quickly to prolong life. Varania's is smaller than most, but strong, beating against his palm like a bird's wing in high storm. Her lips part in a noiseless sigh; her neck curves as she strains to breathe. Her eyes are very green.
He says, unsteady as wildfire and as implacable, "You will undo this."
Varania sucks in a high, whining breath. "I can't."
"You will."
"I can't. I can't. But I—know how." She chokes, swallows, chokes again. "If you kill me, you'll lose her."
"Fenris," says Varric, somewhere behind him, somewhere behind the rapid thudding of his heart in his ears. Behind him—with Hawke—
Varania says, "I tried to warn you."
A hiss slips out between his teeth; his hand tightens, and holds, and—comes free, sliding from his sister's chest unbloodied, the silver tips of his gauntlets fraying the dark-dyed linen of her collar. Varania curls into herself with a thick gasp, her fists pressed to her chest; Fenris steps back, unable to trust his own control, and clenches his hands at his sides. The slightest move—the slightest hint of a threat—
Anders's voice, then, edged with worry. "I don't know what this is. I can't wake her up. I've never seen this before, nothing even like this. Justice says there's Fade here, but…in her, somehow. I don't understand!"
Fenris glares; Varania holds his eyes, straightening, but pitches her voice for Anders. "There is blood magic in it, mage. That is what the spell was meant for."
"I've seen blood magic before. I don't know what this is."
Varania takes a step forward; when Fenris does not stop her she moves to kneel at Hawke's side, turning her back on Fenris, on his anger and his fear. Her hands come to rest over Hawke's heart, between Hawke's half-open eyes, fingertips seeping green light. She says, "Here. And here. Can you feel this?"
"Yes," Anders says, startled, and Fenris lifts his eyes to the soot-stained beams of the Hanged Man's ceiling, struggling to breathe, struggling more to keep a thought in his head that is not terror. The front door to the place opens behind him and he hears Norah curse and Corff begin to shout, hears the tramp of many feet as onlookers and patrons alike begin to filter into the building again. Many voices, quiet and careful and curious. Too many.
"Fenris."
He has killed Hawke. Or—is killing her even now. He should have known—
A hand grips his arm and he jerks away, cursing at the burst of lyrium-light that follows. "Fenris," says Varric. His eyes are very serious. "We need to move Hawke away from here. Now."
"Of course," he says, the words stones in his mouth, and follows Varric to the place where Hawke lies on the stained floorboards. Too many voices—too many eyes, their weight heavy on his shoulders as he bends and gathers Hawke in his arms, unable to ignore the way she hangs limp, unable to stop the terrible cold fear that curls through his stomach. Anders's worry; Varania's glare. Only fifteen steps to Varric's suite at the top of the stairs. Twenty.
He is going to be sick.
Anders and his sister move swiftly to Hawke's side the moment Fenris has left it. There is something ludicrous in that, an abomination and his—sister, perched at either side of a human lying too still in a too-short dwarven bed, magic flickering at her temples and her heart to throw weird reflections over the walls, the fat brass lamp atop the nightstand, the little worktable with crossbow oils and a scattering of copper gears. "Fenris," Varric says again, and by the Maker he is sick to death of that name—
He collides with Isabela on the stairs. She is barely able to steady them both; once he is on his feet again he hurries past her, ignoring the questions she throws at his back, his eyes dropping away from the worry he can read too plainly in her face. The main hall still shows their massacre, blood sprayed across tables and benches and bodies alike, the more opportunistic of the passersby already rifling through the slavers' pockets for what they might sell. On the other side of the room Norah picks her way through broken tables and bottles, trying to salvage what she can as Corff stares forlornly at a streak of char left across his counter. Fenris watches them without speaking, numb as a sea-stone too battered by waves. Some of the men speak to their friends of their finds. Some of them laugh.
None approach Danarius.
Eventually the guard arrives. Aveline first, Donnic at her shoulder, and six or seven men and women he knows by face if not name; Aveline makes straight for him, and between his anger and his terrible guilt, to hold the weight of her gaze is as difficult as straightening a slave's back. She says, clipped and tense, "Explain."
He does. Her cheeks flush and then pale, mottling the skin behind her freckles, and when he is finished she whirls to bark orders at her guards. They scatter at her command, stopping the onlookers, herding the curious back towards the door—she herself does not move from Danarius's feet, as if to guard it herself against the hands too eager to reach into his purse—and almost without realizing he has been moved Fenris finds himself at a corner table, thrust into a relatively unstained seat beneath a high, dirt-choked window, as Donnic rights another chair for himself.
"Fenris," Donnic says, sitting down, leaning close, "you're breathing rather fast."
"What?" Fenris says stupidly, and all at once the impossible disaster crashes down around him, overwhelming him in its magnitude. His heart races, unsteady in its beating; the room seems abruptly too bright and too loud, too crowded with faces he does not know. He covers his face with his fingers and bends forward over his knees. It is—too much. All of this, in so little time, it is too much—
Donnic grips his shoulder, a heavy warm hand as grounding as the earth. "Easy, easy. Calm down. The captain's here. I'm here. We can figure this out, right here, together. Easy, my friend. Slow down."
If it were anyone else—but it is Donnic, and after some moments Fenris feels the weightless panic behind his eyes begin to recede. He drags his hand down his face, struggling for breath. "Donnic. My—sister."
"Yes."
"She said there was blood magic in the spell that holds Hawke."
Donnic swears. "Can she break it?"
"I don't know. Where is the—do you know the place where Merrill lives?"
"In the alienage, near the vhenadahl. I've patrolled there before."
"Send a guard to bring her here." He swallows, lifts his eyes. "Please."
Donnic nods, calm and sure, and something of that calmness finds its way to Fenris at last. "Consider it done," he says, squeezing Fenris's shoulder. "What else do you need?"
What else—Fenris stares, uncomprehending, then lets out a rough bark of a laugh. "If I knew," he begins.
Donnic nods again as if he understands, though there is a sorrow in his eyes that scrapes under Fenris's skin. "Go upstairs. I'll send Merrill to you when we've found her."
Fenris stands without speaking, perversely grateful to have this choice taken from him. An easy order to follow: go upstairs, where Hawke lies trapped in some foul working of his master's make, his traitor of a sister at her side, a mad abomination at her other. Where there will be nothing for him to fight but memories.
He goes. Aveline still stands guard over Danarius's body, her husband's head bent towards her, her boots stained with drying blood.