Title: Obsession
Author: karebear
Rating: T
Characters: Fenris, Hawke
Standard Disclaimer (Dragon Age): I don't own these characters or the world they inhabit. Bioware built the sandbox. I just play in it.
Summary/Notes: I honestly don't even know what to call this hot mess of a relationship. Incredibly fucked up friendship? One sided rivalry romance? Both? Yeah, both. Let's go with that.

"Drinking wine and thinking bliss is on the other side of this
I just need a compass and a willing accomplice
All the doubts that fill my head are skidding up and down again."
- Pink, "Cracks in the Crystal Ball"

Every instinct that lives inside of him is screaming that he cannot trust her.

She is a mage, no different than Danarius or Hadriana or any of the dozens of magisters that he has personally seen torture and kill innocent people (most of them loyal slaves, people who had served them for years if not decades, and he is honestly not sure if this makes it better or worse) to get at their blood, to fuel their own ambition.

The lyrium burning through his flesh is all the reminder he will ever need of what they can do.

But... Hawke is different. (Is she? Is she really? Or is it just that she'd grown up hiding her power from Templars in Ferelden instead of leeching the life force from people like him to increase it in Tevinter?)

When she shows up at his house, the smart thing to do would be to slam the door in her face (And why is he even still here? What's in Kirkwall that he can't get anywhere else?), but instead he invites her in and pulls out the Tevinter wine and pours it for her (Why would he do that, ever? Habit? What is wrong with him?)

She sips the wine and watches him over the top of the glass, and her eyes are following him and he can't shake it off and she came over here to see if he needed anything, she offers to help him even though he never asked her to, she gives him gifts (Why? What's her game? What does she want from him?)

She insists on helping him learn to read, and he regrets ever letting it slip that he didn't know how, because she won't let it drop, and it forces him to admit that she's a surprisingly good teacher ("I used to help Carver and Bethany all the time." Why does he care? Why does he remember everything she says to him? Why should he feel bad about her broken family? He doesn't even have a family.)

And he follows her.

To every corner of Kirkwall and through the parts of the city he'd never had any desire to visit.

And farther than that, all over the Maker-forsaken Free Marches in the miserable heat and the rain and the cold, tramping through the dark and the dirt, in the middle of the night, it doesn't matter. She asks him and he'll go.

To the Bone Pit, the Dalish camp on Sundermount, through spider infested tunnels and against the Qunari.

And into the caves on the Wounded Coast.

When the hunters catch up with him again (after years, a part of him had hoped they'd given up, but he'd known better), she's the one that's by his side, and when he snaps the neck of the one who'd been leading them she doesn't even bat an eyelash, and when he sets off into the caverns to hunt Hadriana down for the last time, she's right behind him.

He has Hadriana in his grasp, he can't believe her, she's lying, she has to be, and even if she isn't, it doesn't matter, it can't matter, not when he's been waiting for this for so long. He'd fantasized about it to get him through the long nights freezing, starving, broken and bleeding, entirely at her mercy. She'd gotten her rocks off that way, tormenting him, playing with him, like a game, like a toy, she could do whatever she wanted to him and she knew it and Danarius never cared as long as she didn't cause permanent damage, and when you've got access to magic the definition of "permanent" can stretch pretty far anyway.

Hadriana looks at Hawke and begs her to stop him.

But she doesn't.

And he isn't sure whether he's grateful for the fact that she doesn't try to force him into doing the right thing, because she understands his need for vengeance, or if it disappoints him, makes him even more angry with her, because doesn't that mean she's exactly as bloodthirsty as he's always accused her of being?

But what does that make him?

And he swears her eyes are accusing him or is he just imagining it, does that matter? Why does he care what Hawke thinks about him, why is trying to prove himself to her? She's still a mage, he's still a slave, they do not have anything in common, why won't she leave him alone?

He runs away, ignores her, doesn't answer the door, pushes her away with all the force he can summon from the bottomless well of anger and hurt and mistrust inside of him (So then why is he angry when he sees her with Anders, of course they belong together, why should he be surprised that she would go to the abomination, she's no different then he is, not inside.)

He could go, now's his chance, there is nothing tying him here, she's left him behind, he told her to.

But he won't leave, he can't leave her.

Even if he did, she'd follow him. He already knows he'd never be able to get her out of his head.

She stops checking up on him, he's convinced himself that he's stopped wanting her to, but when he asks her to come, after not talking to her for months, for years, she does. Immediately, without question. What does that mean?

He hadn't told her about what he'd done, following up on the information about his possible sister (And why does he feel guilty about that? Why should he have told her?)

But he can't trust his own judgement and he needs her to tell him what to do (Really? Really? He risked his life to get out of Tevinter, to break away from Danarius' grasp, crossed the world, as far as he could run, killed to keep himself free, and now he's voluntarily enslaving himself to another mage.) This could be a trap (of course it is, he knows it is, so why is he walking into it?) and he wants her at his back.

Every instinct that lives inside of him is screaming that he has to trust her.

"I need you, Hawke. I don't have anyone else."