Fenris is soaked clean through by the storm, even his leathers sodden, practically dripping from the tips of his ears. He's starting to think that when they say 'sun' here they mean something else entirely, and if he hears one more refrain of "Free Marches, more like Free Marshes' he's not going to be responsible for his actions.
Looking out from the edge of the town, he's tried to catch a glimpse of the horizon. The sea's supposed to be close but the storm's so bad he can't see it, and if there's any Jaegers keeping sentry in the bay he can't tell them from the rest of the jagged cliffs. The sky's a dark, bleak stone overhead and when Fenris ducks beneath the overhang of the bar he trades the rain for the dark, the fug of mildew and damp enough to make him reconsider.
Who would have thought such a day as this to be so hard won?
Fenris waits until he's mostly stopped dripping before moving through the doors, scanning the empty streets one final time before he steps inside. It's been two weeks and nearly half a country ago since there were any problems, and this isn't a welcoming place for Tevinters but that doesn't mean he's safe. Still, what the distance cannot give him the rain might just provide, and so he steps into the concrete bunker of what was very obviously not the bar it has become.
The inside is nearly as dead as the street, a jukebox muttering away some tune he doesn't know, a few men playing cards at a back table, and a dwarf working through some ledger at the opposite side. Fenris knows they're watching, he always seems to be worth a extra few seconds even If the coat covers most of the marks, but thankfully here it goes no further than that and he is left alone.
The bartender smiles, and Fenris can guess the quality of the establishment - or their connections - by the fact that a drink isn't waiting for him when he sits down. The rationed bars don't bother with menus, you get what they have to serve. Unfortunately Fenris is shaving down the last few coppers of a job that hadn't promised much before he'd taken it, and the bartender's slight interest quickly fades when he orders a glass of what he already knows is a piss-water ale
"Save the glass, Norah, and offer the elf something proper to warm him up."
It's the dwarf calling out, and he must be a regular because the barkeep smiles at him, pulling a bottle of what is significantly more expensive and far more likely to be off the ration books from beneath the bar, pouring out a hefty amber shot and setting it on the bar in front of him.
Fenris has no good options. Trusting strangers even so far as listening to them could mean risking everything, even accepting a free drink means a dangerous obligation. He'd prefer to be left alone entirely, but there's the matter of needing food and shelter and some kind of connections, some idea of where to go next and what to do. It's stupid to trust anyone so generous from the start, but Fenris is also exhausted from the journey and the constant rain and so he takes the glass and follows the unspoken cue, walking across the bar to sit down across the table from his new, mysterious benefactor.
The dwarf has a glass of his own, and raises it in greeting. Fenris tips back his shot, lets the smoky warmth burn down his throat and seep into him as much as it can, enough like comfort that he relaxes a little against the chair.
"- Marches, I think you mean the Free Marshes!" A voice rises just slightly from the other table, and Fenris only realizes the face he's making when the dwarf chuckles.
"Trust me, it gets worse when they start singing." The dwarf smiles. "Varric Tethras, at your service."
Fenris cannot tell much about him, other than that his chest hair appears to be at war with his shirt and is currently holding the high ground. Varric casually flips through a few more papers, with no sign that he's in any sort of hurry or indeed, wished for his presence for any particular purpose. A lie, of course, and despite himself Fenris finds he is growing impatient, even edgy. He glances at the door, cannot help himself even when he knows the dwarf sees him do it.
"So, what compels a sodden elf to the Hanged Man on such a lovely afternoon?"
Fenris is embarrassed to find how rusty all his words are, as if he's chiseling each one out like stones from a resisting wall. He hasn't been much for conversation this past year, and before that… far less so.
"I was hoping I might find a proper inn. I… believed Kirkwall to be a bit larger than this."
Varric chuckles again, but it's not a cruel sound.
"Well, I can at least solve part of your problem. You're not in Kirkwall. What you're in is mostly for the fishermen, or for the lookouts on the outer points. It doesn't actually have a name, even though I keep pushing for Tethrasville."
"Oh." A setback, but a rather small one, though it is a bit of a relief to find he has yet to reach the city. He'd been told many things about Kirkwall, but he's been told many things about many things, and disappointment is always lurking. "So, perhaps you could tell me the fastest road."
Varric hasn't stopped smiling, but there's a hint of something in the expression now, a little too close to pity, and Fenris has to keep from edging away for entirely new reasons.
"There aren't any roads into Kirkwall from this side. You've got your choice of a week's backtracking, or a boat to take you in." The wind picks up outside, and for a moment both they stare at the thick, charcoal clouds and the now-horizontal rain. "… And there aren't any boats."
And even if there were, Fenris doesn't have the coin. He hoped his luck would be slightly better, that he'd be able to make it into Kirkwall, and from there… more luck. Maybe too much more. If all he has heard about the city is true, they won't be short on Ranger candidates, men and women of known merit from familiar places. Fenris ignores the clutch of cold desperation, wishing he had another shot, or the bottle. He has other options, he can stay as he is, working as a smuggler or simple muscle - but Danarius will find him, has found him, will do so again, and if he has nowhere to make a stand then he'll run forever.
Where do you think you can hide, my little wolf? Where do you think I can't find you?
"Hey, elf." Varric's voice brings him back, out of what he knows is only memory but memory has long since been a loaded word. "You all right?"
"I'm fine."
"Good, because the storm's clearing out a little, so this is our chance."
"I thought you said there weren't any boats."
"There's not." Varric says, throwing all his papers into a bag, and hoisting it on his back, surprisingly nimble for a dwarf. He doesn't toss any money down, but the bartender only gives him a cheery farewell. "I've got my ways. You coming?"
"I can't…" Fenris stops, hates himself, keeps going. "I can't pay you."
Varric is not surprised, which is honestly a little annoying. "I tell you what, I'll get you to Kirkwall if you tell me what you plan on doing once you're there."
It's a friendly offer, not an interrogation, and from the tone Fenris can tell Varric's expecting a bit of a yarn for the trip on whatever is is they'll be traveling on. The friendliness annoys him, the not-knowing is worse - or maybe Fenris really is broken, the way he's been telling himself all this time that he's not. A feral thing too crazed to do anything but snap even at an extended hand.
"I'm a Ranger. I survived my Indentureship and I wish to compete to pilot a new Jaeger."
His voice is hard enough that it almost sounds like the truth. Varric blinks, and grins.
"You're lucky I don't charge by the word, elf." He pulls the hood up on his coat. Fenris hasn't begun to dry out, so there's no need to do much of anything. "Let's go."
The wind is like a slap in the face, the rain hard enough to sting. "I still don't see how we're getting through this storm."
"That's because you haven't met Bianca yet."
Fenris doesn't know if they'll let him anywhere near a Jaeger. He doesn't know if the need for replacement pilots is anything like it is back in the Imperium. He's not sure if his skills will translate here - but they must, he's certain they must. Anyone can use a Ranger who can bear a full damage load without falling, leaving the Prime Pilot clear to strike. He's damn sure done it, with both arms ripped clean to the cables and steel flayed from throat to navel and he'd held it, hadn't he? The Rangers can use him, and he'll submit to the Drift. As long as it isn't some Magister in his head, he can bear even that.
Of course, none of this matters because he's not going to survive to see Kirkwall in the first place.
The chopper lurches, in free fall even as it's slammed by the wind and Fenris clutches at the wall as if it will do anything at all, keeping his eyes open out of sheer stubbornness even though that means he can see how close they are to the granite walls on both sides, the sea churning so furiously beneath them it's almost pure white.
Varric chuckles and pats the nearest window with one gentle hand. Fenris can't quite hear him over the sound of the helicopter's engine, but it's been a constant string of endearments to Bianca the AH-64 Varterral since before they left the ground. He doesn't want to know why the dwarf named the machine, or how he came to pilot it. Fenris doesn't even care where they're going so long as they land there or just crash and get it over with. The helicopter climbs just to fall again, and Fenris can't see a damned thing through the glass, though Varric might possibly be humming happily under his breath.
He'd noticed the crates the moment they'd climbed inside, their third passenger carefully stowed in the rear, but it seemed Varric considered him trustworthy enough to keep a secret, or disposable enough that it didn't matter. Oddly enough, finding out the man wasn't entirely reputable did a bit to ease Fenris' mind.
"Aggregio Pavali," he said. "A good choice."
"Oh ho," Varric smiled. "You hear that, Bianca? We have a connoisseur!"
He should have known then, to get out and walk the rainy week back to the road. To take his chances rather than go down in a shrieking hunk of oddly-named metal - although he can keep it as his last thought, that Danarius might continue to waste great time and resources searching, while Fenris rests at the bottom of the sea.
"We're almost there!" Varric yells, "it should calm down a bit from here on out!"
Fenris doesn't believe him, but amazingly its true. As they sweep past the last of the jagged rocks and into the Bay of Kirkwall, a strange calm settles, the flight evening out though it doesn't do much for the view. Varric's chattering with the mainland now, requesting clearances and arranging landing strategies. It can't be so difficult with no one else crazy enough to be in the skies. If the dwarf is at all worried about the bevy of ill-gotten gains in their hold, it doesn't show.
The water is black as ink-stained slate, and the sky continues to press down and down, but now Fenris can see them, stretching out along both sides of the cliffs below the city - the Jaegers, a row of silent sentinels, and beyond them a great building rising up amidst the crumbling remains of the Tevinter's ancient, failed Kaiju wall.
"Well, there it is, elf." Varric says. "Welcome to the Kirkwall Shatterdome."