AN: Well here I am starting a DA2 Fic when my DA:O one is still in the works... *sigh* Darn it Bioware!
This is basically a retelling (which I am more than a little loathe to do, because that what everybody does for DA2) But it is going to be a bunch of linear one-shots dealing with character development instead of sitting down and trying to hash out the entire game. I chose to label this as Hawke/Fenris because that is the eventual outcome, but this is very much a Anders/Hawke/Fenris triangle. That being said, please don't bombard me with hate comments whenever the fellow you aren't rooting for gets some action. Thank you.
Rated M for gore, language and probably some eventual sexy times.
Disclaimer: BioWare owns all of Thedas!
Now, I give you FAR: the story of Fenris, Anders, and Raen.
He stood out on the deck of the ship, despite the wind lashing his face and the rain pouring over him in torrents, because this was a dawn he could not bare to miss. Even if the only difference between day and night was the murky light beyond the clouds turning a sickly yellow and the few stray shafts of sun that lance through the patches in the iron-colored sky, he would bear witness to it: his first dawn of true freedom.
He remembered running away from the circle tower in Ferelden when he was thirteen, convinced he was clever enough to outsmart the Templars and hide his powers, certain that the laws of the Chantry weren't intended for mages as talented as he was.
It had lasted a grand total of seventy two hours. Three days of sleeping in ditches and covered head to toe in mud. Three nights of running practically blind in the dark and stealing food scraps from nearby farms and villages. When they finally dragged him back the First Enchanter deemed that he was simply a roguish youth and not a blood mage, and asked the Knight Commander in his dry beaten down voice to show the boy some leniency.
Apparently, the Templar's idea of leniency was a month in solitary confinement and a beating so sound that the only way he could sleep was on his stomach, and even then it only came in fitful bursts when he was well and truly exhausted. Afterwards he was different; he studied three times as hard and tried to lull his captors back into the thought that he was benign. He had lost this battle, but he swore to himself that he would win the war. All they had done was strengthened his resolve to someday live free of their chains, dark towers, and suspicious glances. He would wait. He would bide his time. Because the next time he ran, he would not come back, no matter what that might mean.
He thought his chance might have come when they transferred him and a few other mages to the Gallows in Kirkwall. In the middle of the night, the templars that were guarding them had been suddenly called into service by the local law enforcement to help with a particularly rowdy barroom brawl, leaving a single knight to stand guard over four mages who are supposedly sleeping. It seemed too good to be true, to be a single well aimed sleep spell away from freedom, and the docks were practically at his doorstep, the open sea beckoning him to a place far beyond where they could ever hope to trace him with his phylactery.
He almost did it, but then he took a moment to think and realized that he had no coin, no contacts, and no way of knowing if any ships were even leaving the harbor tonight. 'Live free or die trying' was a motto he very much believed in, but he would like to avoid the dying part if at all possible. For one comrade, Leina, the temptation was too great and she tried to sneak out one of the inn's grimy windows. Then there was a scream piercing the night and the sound of a loud dream-shattering crash. He did not see what happened next, but he heard it, and he knew. The lone Templar who was watching over them barreled down the stairs and out into the back alley behind the inn to find the petrified woman, her arm or leg broken most likely, crouching down with the rest of the trash the world had tried to throw away. Then came the sounds of an angry male voice, low, threatening, muffled by his helmet, and Leina's high pitched whimpers of fear. He thought of her watery blue eyes, the freckles that seemed to only favor the right half of her face, and her nervous smile. Then there was a whooshing sound, a powerful surge of magic, and a deafening roar, and he knew there would be no mercy.
He found himself immediately hating both Kirkwall and the Gallows. No matter what the locals might want to believe about their circle tower, it was still very much a prison. He missed Ferelden, the cold and the wet, and the sound of dogs barking, there were a few too many Orlesian's among the rich and powerful in this city for him or any of his countrymen to feel very comfortable. But, in truly Orlesian fashion, the rich of Kirkwall blow every malady and ache hugely out of proportion, affording someone with a gift for healing plenty of legitimate excuses to leave his new 'home'.
He never would have dreamed that he would find his opportunity for escape in a noblewoman's sickbed. Even drawn and pale and bleary-eyed with fever, Leandra Amell was beautiful. The jewel of her family, her parents had been worried to the point of hysterics, and not only demanded the best healer the Circle could provide, but that said healer must stay in their house until their darling daughter was cured. To say that he was happy with both of these commands would have been an enormous understatement.
He was straightforward and honest, even if he was a bit of a smartass, which she liked. She was kind and understanding about mage freedoms and blinked up at him with those big blue eyes, which he loved. And the way her soft lips formed around his name when she rolled her eyes at one of his stupid jokes and called him 'Mal-colm'.
He probably would have fallen for her if she had been a disease ridden harlot from the Blooming Rose, but she wasn't. She was from a wealthy family, which meant that she had coin, and she was noble, which meant that she had contacts. It wasn't why he chose her, but it certainly made freedom a much more tangible dream when he had kissed her soundly in a dark alcove and breathed in her ear, "run away with me."
And here they were, thanks to the efforts of a kind templar, which he never would have expected, and the aid of the Grey Wardens, which he had expected even less. True, they probably would have made a break for it anyway, but between the Warden Commander granting them passage on a ship that was supposed to be used exclusively on business for the order, and Ser Carver's promise to destroy his phylactery and create a false trail, he very much doubted how far they would have made it on their own.
She called is name and he turned to her, soaked and smiling, to see her shuffling unsteadily across the deck towards him. He held a hand out to her and she let him guide her into his arms, grumbling about how he was sopping wet and a bloody fool, even as she settled contentedly against his chest. He could feel the slight swell of the best reason for running pressed between them, despite the early stage and the layers of damp clothing. He wrapped the excess fabric of his cloak around Leandra, trying for some kind of makeshift cocoon to keep the spark of life between them relatively warm and dry.
Even if this child was born without magic, he knew that his blood has cursed them to the life of a wanderer, a nomad. He knew that they will more than likely be poor and they'll have to keep a low profile and Maker, he had almost nothing to give a child in the way of safety or comforts, but damn it if he wasn't going to give them everything he had. This baby might also make a lot of things much more difficult in terms of hiding, but he knew it was a gift, and one that so few of his kind are granted. He would make sure his child remembered how precious they were, how wonderful it was to have a family to claim. This baby would be as welcome in his life as this storm clouded sunrise, as welcome as a sudden shower of rain.
She was six the first time they came. On a warm sticky summer night, the sounds of cicadas singing and chirping frogs from the nearby pond were suddenly drowned out by angry shouts and raised voices. She awoke to the thudding of her father's heavy soled boots and the front door slamming open as he rushed to meet the rabble that had formed outside their home.
She snuck to the bedroom door, pressing her ear against the peeling painted wood to try and make out words. The voices seemed strangely familiar, as if they might be people from the village, but that couldn't be right…. These voices were filled with so much fear…so much hate. Surely they couldn't be the same people who smiled at her when she went to the market with her mother, who invited her to eat dinner with them after a day of playing with the other children out in the wheat fields. 'Why would they want to hurt us?'
"Apostate," The voices seethed out of the inky blackness of the night, "mage, maleficar." These words were more than titles, they were accusations, javelins of revulsion flung at their family, though she didn't quite know why. Then she thought of her father, about the way his big warm hands emanate a soft blue-white light sometimes when she was hurting, and then she thought about how he would raise a single callused finger to his lips afterwards to remind her, 'Shhh, this is a secret.' And suddenly she was afraid, for the first time in her life. It froze the very blood in her veins, and rooted her to the thin mattress of her bed when she retreated there in her new found cowardice.
There were lighter footsteps pounding towards the door now, and the frantic noise of her mother's pleading. Muffled sounds of struggle, a sick wet-sounding thud, and Leandra's scream cut through the thick summer air. She was calling out for her father, mimicking her mother's panicked voice outside the house, begging for him to get up.
Across the room, the ruckus had finally woken the twins, who wailed merely for their disturbed rest, blithely unaware of the danger at their doorstep. Bethany whimpered pitifully while Carver roared his disapproval with all the strength his little lungs could muster. She should hush them, go and offer comfort like an older sibling should…but she could still hear her mother crying, and she couldn't hear her father at all, and both of those things were more than enough to quell her courage.
It was distant at first, a dry far off crackle followed closely by a pale coil of smoke that slithered underneath the bedroom door. The heat ate quickly through the thatched roof, the distant sizzle building into a fearsome dusty roar as it tore through their home, as if seeking the siblings in the darkness. Terror pooled somewhere in her chest as a dark cloud of ash slowly seeped into the room; she heard the twins cease their crying only to burst into a flurry of hacking coughs, and she suddenly wondered if they were all about to die.
"Please!" She heard her mother implore frantically, "Not my babies- They're only children- For the love of the Maker, stop this! Let me go! Let me save them, I beg you!" The words broke some dam deep within her, and as a pressure grew somewhere at the center of her being she realized that she was more than just a scared little girl locked in a flaming cottage. She was a Hawke, and she was furious.
'I will not die!' she thought to herself angrily. Over and over she repeated the words in her mind fiercely, willing them into truth. The strange pressure in her chest coiled tightly, to the point of almost pain, demanding to be set free, but she didn't know how to, so she simply screamed. And there was a harsh light wrapping around her being, and the bedroom door was charred, and there was a strange and distant whispering in her head and the room was filled with a blistering heat, and her brother and sister had grown eerily quiet. But just when she felt like she might simply explode into a million tiny fragments, she heard her father's voice.
"RAEN!" He bellowed her name, because he knew; he could feel it. She was just like him, and somehow that realization was the key, and the power that had been amassing deep within her burst free in a violent torrent of dazzling blue light. It flooded from her every pore, ripped from her mouth, poured from her eyes; she became nothing but a gateway, a vessel, for this strength that had been slumbering for six long years.
She thought she heard far off screaming and the sound of several pairs of feet running, but all she could really focus on was how cold it seemed suddenly, and how everything in the house had gone still and silent, even if that slight buzzing in her head wouldn't go away. It was so nice compared to all that blazing heat and yelling. As the world faded to black around her, she wondered if her father will be mad that she gave the secret away, even though she didn't know it was her secret too.
When she next awoke, it was in her father's arms, swaying and jerking along in the back of a canvas covered wagon. The cold light of predawn was peaking in under a loosely tied flap, casting gray-blue highlights over what appeared to be the majority of their possessions, stuffed hastily into bags, as well as her father's looming figure as he slept. He seemed older than she remembered somehow, the lines of his face more careworn, the sliver at his temples more prominent…. She wondered what it was about last night that had made him look so much…less all of the sudden. Then she noticed the bruising across his face, the angry purple and ocher welts down his neck, and the blood on his clothing. She thought of the surge of raw power that ripped from her, and she began to consider that perhaps it was not that he had become less, but that she was suddenly more.
"There you are, my little Gale." His deep even voice rumbled her out of her revelry. She blinked up at his eyes, the same stormy gray as her own, but so so so much sadder, and pondered at the wisdom hidden behind them, and the secrets, and the loss. She said nothing for a while; afraid of retribution, but when he smiled down at her, she found a question slipping out despite herself.
"Are you mad at me, Daddy?" She asked in a raspy whisper. He stroked her dark hair fondly with one slightly swollen bloody hand.
"Of course not, Sweetheart," He reassured her with a widening smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "You saved us, all of us, and you were very brave…" He paused, uncertainty she had never seen before surfacing on his face.
"…what did I do?" She asked, the fact that he was anxious unnerved her, but at this question he gave her a true easy grin.
"You froze the entire house!" He chuckled warmly, "Solid! I had a real time trying to thaw everything fast enough before the villagers could round up the Templars."
"I…froze it? Like magic?!" A rush of both excitement and fear swept through her at the prospect.
"Exactly like magic," Malcolm told her, his grin fading, "You're a mage, Raen… just like me." She took a breathless moment to ponder this information.
"Is that why they came for us?" she asked him, "Is that why they were angry?"
"Yes." It was amazing how that one word could carry so much world crushing weight. "You can't tell anyone, Raen. Never. It'll be our little secret, okay? Yours and mine."
"Why?" She practically sobbed, the seriousness in his tone scaring her.
"They'd come after us again," He explained patiently, "They'd take you away, and they might hurt your mother and the twins." She stared and him with wide somber eyes and nodded slowly. "Good girl."
"Daddy…are we…bad?" She asked him tearfully, "Is that why they hate us?" He hugged her to his chest and tucked her beneath his chin, rubbing soothing circles across her back.
"No, Dearheart," he said emphatically, "We're just different, and some people think that different is scary. Only our actions determine whether we are good or bad, not how the Maker created us. Magic is a gift, Raen. What do we do with gifts?" She craned her head back to peer up at him uncertainly.
"Give them to people we love?"
"Exactly."