Author's Note: So this little thing was inspired by something one of the BioWare writers (I think Gaider? But I'm not sure) said about a possible future for Fenris and his lyrium markings, a few other fics I've seen where Fenris' markings become contaminated, and some things I hope in DA4. Warnings for major illnesses and the toll they take on the body, malnutrition and starvation, and lots of references to Danarius and Fenris' history.
Outside Minrathous, Solace, 9:45 Dragon
The pain was… extraordinary.
He was picky when it came to describing pain. His very first memory was of pain, pain that defied any description whatsoever, and it was the benchmark by which he set all other kinds of it. Thus far, every sort of pain that he had encountered had failed to measure up to the first, for which he had been grateful, but also unsurprised. That anything in the world could cause him as much agony as the ritual that had given him his markings was beyond what he had been willing to believe. For years uncounted, he had clung to that belief and been secure in it, and he had been careful with his descriptions whenever he was in pain. No comparison could do it justice.
He saw now that he had been a fool.
Fenris didn't even want to think about how it had happened. He knew fine well how it had, remembered it as clear as day, but in the grand scheme of things, it was irrelevant. He could have been accidentally impaled on an outcrop of red lyrium when he had taken a fall or been intentionally infected with it—it mattered not. Several weeks ago, his markings had been contaminated with red lyrium, and Fenris now realised that there was indeed something in this world that could measure up to the agony of the ritual.
The contamination had spread quickly, his markings all going pale red within hours of the horrible substance first getting into them. That alone had been agonising enough, but he had still been able to walk then, to move of his own volition even as the red lyrium had overtaken his markings. But his markings had already been growing unstable even beforehand—not disintegrating, per se, but he was losing control of them. Often, they would flare up when he didn't want them to, and their pulses were stronger and much more dangerous than they should have been, and while Fenris was used to the constant, low-level pain that they had caused him before, that pain had been getting harder to ignore. He'd known that something would have to be done soon, which was why he had returned to Tevinter, to see if someone there might have any knowledge that could help him. Regrettably, he'd found nothing before this had happened.
The red lyrium had kicked everything into overdrive. His pulses were completely out of control now, coming far more often than his body could possibly endure, and Fenris did not glow blue anymore, but the same shade of red as the red lyrium, the same shade as the frayed cloth around his wrist. The pain, meanwhile, was constant and far too intense and all-consuming to be ignored. It was in his every pore, in the very marrow of his bones. He had quickly lost the ability to walk—had had to be carried back to base by one of his companions—and the rest had soon disappeared, as well. In theory, he could still move; in practice, even just twitching a muscle caused a flare of agony that he could scarcely endure. His companions had laid him up in bed back at the base, and Fenris had not emerged since because he could not.
He hated it. Being trapped in bed, unaware of what was going on outside and, because of the pain, barely able to listen to the people who came in every day to give him updates and completely unable to do anything of his own volition. He could not dress, he could not change his bedclothes, he could not turn over in bed, he could not wash, he could not eat, he could not even get up to relieve himself. The latter two, in particular, were… degrading. To have to be fed some mashed-up, semi-liquid paste and to have to, essentially, relieve himself in the bed and have others change the sheets was humiliating. He hated to be so vulnerable, he hated to be an invalid, and he hated to be helpless. He had far too memories of being the latter; none were good. Suffice it to say, Danarius was preying on his mind a great deal lately, much more than he had in the eight years since his death. Fenris wished he wouldn't, but given the situation, it was perhaps inevitable.
What made it all the worse was that he now had to trust his life to a group of people who he was not half as familiar with as the old group in Kirkwall. Fenris was more willing to trust than he had been in the past, but it still left him—uneasy. On edge. He'd rather have had his friends here to help him than these sort-of strangers, though he would never have asked his friends to come to Tevinter with him just for his sake. Undoubtedly the bitterest pill to swallow was the fact that the mage who had taken charge of his situation, cast a spell that had isolated the red lyrium within his markings, preventing it from getting into his bloodstream and thus surely prolonging his life at least a good while longer, and thrown himself into researching a possible cure, was a magister's son. He was a good man, so far from Danarius that it was not worth considering, but the irony of being dependent on a future magister after all his efforts to get free of Danarius did not escape him.
But Danarius had always had an appreciation for irony. Likely he would have enjoyed this aspect of the situation even as he was frustrated at his little wolf, his precious investment, being damaged. Fenris almost wanted to hope that Danarius might even have had a solution for this, for he had spent years perfecting the ritual and months preparing for it when Fenris-as-Leto had been chosen, and if nothing else, he had been a highly intelligent and inventive man, an innovator in every sense. Yet not even Danarius could have known about the red lyrium, and so that avenue was as useless as it was repugnant.
"The things I do for you, my pet," Fenris imagined him saying, with that tell-tale faux-affability that still made his skin crawl even now. "But you have served me well. I will give you this; it is no less than you deserve." So long, of course, as Fenris continued to serve him. He imagined, as well, the way he would have weakly pleaded for it, the way Danarius would have condescendingly chuckled and patted him and given him what he asked, in the manner of one giving a treat to a dog. His stomach turned over in his chest, and he swallowed. Another flare of pain and Fenris went still.
There he is again. Why think of him, he asked himself. Why not think of— But he cut himself off there. That avenue was useless, too, and still torturous even now, after all this time and all his efforts to move on. There had been one man who Fenris could have borne seeing him like this, but that man was long gone. It wasn't even worth considering. All it would accomplish was make him feel worse.
Fenris sunk back into his bed and let the pain rage on and on.
These days, he preferred being asleep. The pain, for what it was worth, could not find him here, and he would put up with whatever his dreams decided to throw at him so long as that was the case. He had been having endless nightmares, that was true, mostly revolving around red lyrium and Meredith being petrified in red lyrium and the red templars and Danarius doing experiments with red lyrium and—Well, at least he could take comfort in the latter not being real. Still, the nightmares were a curse in that they would wake him up and leave him gasping, and that, of course, meant even more pain and a veritable age in going back to sleep.
But he would endure them if it meant he could get any sleep at all, if he could escape the pain for just a little while. Beggars couldn't be choosers, after all.
Tonight brought the usual confusing array of images that made up his dreams. Sometimes, he was in the slave quarters of what he suspected was the palace of the Archon, though he had absolutely no way of knowing if this was the case. It might have been a memory of his from the time before, half-formed and trying to break through, though again, he couldn't know. Other times, he was in Danarius' estate in Minrathous, but it was mercifully empty. Still others, he was back at the Hawke estate in Kirkwall, which was also mercifully empty. He never stayed anywhere for too long, and Fenris wasn't sure if he was grateful for that or not.
His sight wasn't the only sense his dreams involved, however. He could also smell food—the Hanged Man's usual fare, for example, or the grand feasts of the magisters. Occasionally, he could taste it, not that he much cared to. He could feel the floors of the various places he was in beneath his feet, which always made him feel more grounded—hence, he supposed, his discomfort when his mind took him elsewhere. Presently, he was in the slave quarters, and he could swear he could hear something—a snippet of a song. The voice of the man singing it was deep, rich, and strangely familiar. Fenris had heard the voice before, in conjunction with seeing flashes of red hair and gentle hands that he suspected belonged to his mother. If the latter were true, then perhaps the owner of the voice was his father. It was hard to say.
"Ame amin, halai lothi amin, noamin… Ame amin, halai lothi amin, noamin heruamin…"
The lyrics didn't match what little elvhen that Fenris knew, but it didn't matter; it sounded pleasant enough, and there was a comforting note to it that he couldn't quite place, as with so many of his half-formed memories of the time before. He knew what the lyrics translated to as well, and in light of his own life, beyond this present situation, it seemed strangely appropriate. But he didn't dare dwell on that long.
The ground shifted beneath him, and Fenris suppressed a sigh as the world spun out around him, forming an incomprehensible blur. But even as that happened, he could still hear the voice singing the song, an echo that sent a shiver down his spine.
When the blurring stopped, Fenris found himself collapsing to his knees. He groaned, shook his head, and looked up and around to see that he was now situated in some sort of ruin, all crumbled and shattered, a sign of past glory that was long since lost. Smoke billowed into a greying sky, and all around him was fog and complete silence except for the echo of the song. It was quite faint, but also just loud enough to draw his attention and unnerve him all the more. There was no way to identify what this place was, of course, whether it was in Tevinter or the Free Marches or Orlais or anywhere—not that it would matter, he supposed, if his mind wouldn't stay anywhere for too long.
He sighed and looked down at himself, and abruptly, he wished that he wasn't naked. Not that clothes would have made it much better; they would have hung too loosely on his body for Fenris to completely forget what had become of him, but at least he could have pretended. As it was, because Fenris had spent weeks laid up in bed and because of the diet that he had been reduced to, he'd lost practically all the meat that there had been on his bones and his muscles had atrophied to nothing. He was absolutely emaciated; his ribs protruded, his elbows and knees were too sharp and his stomach bloated, he only had to feel his face to know that it was skull-like, and his veins were visible all the way up his forearms. He didn't even want to think about the havoc that the malnutrition was wreaking on his organs, nor how he'd basically never be the same again if he survived this. He might be able to fight again, with months of training, but he would never be as he had been before.
If he survived. The fact that he might not was the only reason why Fenris wasn't dwelling more on what would happen to him afterwards.
Venhedis. An emaciated wretch unable to get out of bed or feed himself, slowly being poisoned by the red lyrium inside his markings. And he thought he'd been pitiful under Danarius. He hadn't had much pride under Danarius, either, what with the leash and just being his attack animal in general, but at least he'd been able to do things. When he was like this…
Again, Fenris thought bitterly. Again. All these years I've been free, and now my life is about to be destroyed by these filthy markings again. Kaffas! Will it never end?
He felt, faintly, a hand brushing at his shoulder blade. At once, he jerked away, for he knew the touch, and it was Danarius'—or, at least, the echo of him. His muscles tensed as he expected Danarius to answer, and he looked around in anticipation of finding something, but there was nothing in either case, only silence and air and the ruin around him. But the touch came again, lower down this time, and Fenris pulled away and shuffled forward, not trusting himself to get up.
Still, it came, and when Fenris fell forward on his face, he stopped resisting. Only a dream, he remembered, and Danarius is dead. This cannot harm me. He let out yet another sigh and pulled himself back up, into a more comfortable sitting position.
Then the fog itself seemed to stir, twisting and shaping itself in front of Fenris' eyes. He frowned, his brow knitting over eyes that were too big and sunken in because of his inanition, and he leant forward to have a closer look. The brushing contact on his back and other parts of his body disappeared, but he scarcely noticed as he tried to observe the disturbance. For a while, there was nothing there to see, and then a humanoid shape began to form, slowly but surely.
Eventually, the fog parted, and it revealed—
Fasta vass.
"Fenris," Hawke said mildly, stepping out of the fog and approaching him. He was not wearing his mask, nor his gloves. His lightning-scarred face bore that gentle smile that Fenris had always found reassuring even at the worst of times, and his silvery eyes were filled with warmth and light. Those eyes flickered over him, and the smile faltered slightly when they saw Fenris' emaciation and the colour of his markings.
But all he said was, "Oh, you're hurt," and he stepped forward, knelt before him, and lifted his hand, which began to glow with a dim light. "May I?" he asked.
Fenris' mind had frozen. The only thing he could say was, "Yes." Even now, even here, Hawke always asked him for his permission. He didn't know what to feel about that—not after so long. Not after everything.
Hawke smiled and rested his hand gently on Fenris'. The dim light diffused, right into him, and Fenris' eyebrows shot up as it spread up his markings, chasing the red away and replacing it with its previous white. As it spread, too, his limbs began to get noticeably thicker—first his fingers, then his arms, followed by his neck and his torso and eventually all of him. His breath caught as he saw himself the way that he had once been, proud and strong.
Only a dream, he remembered. This is not real. He sucked in a breath and bowed his head.
"There," Hawke said warmly. "Is that better?"
Fenris couldn't resist. "… Yes."
"Good!" Hawke said. "We can't have you hurt, Fenris. There's so much out there for you to do—a whole world for you to see."
And there wasn't for you? Fenris stared up at Hawke from underneath his lashes, his gaze as bitter as his thought was, but Hawke didn't notice. The echo of the song was still there, repeating over and over again.
Hawke abruptly got up and turned away from him, taking a few steps back into the fog from which he had come, and Fenris was seized by the fear that he would leave him again. Absently, he wondered if this might be a demon, but some part of him knew that it was not. A demon would likely not be attracted to him in his crippled state, and besides, Fenris had had dreams like this before. He knew how they went, and thus far, this one was following the pattern. For the moment, he had little to fear.
Once again, the world started blurring, but Fenris hardly noticed, as his eyes were affixed to Hawke's back. Hawke did not disappear, simply remained where he was, clutching his staff in one hand, his other curled into a fist at his side. The world reformed, and Fenris outright groaned in pain, but a different sort of pain, as he looked around and saw that he was in the very same room in the very same tavern in Ferelden where he had last seen Hawke. He had dreamed of the place often since he had left it, but it had not got painful until—
"I can't," Hawke said, and Fenris blinked as he was suddenly thrown headlong into a memory. "Varric mentioned red lyrium, piles of the stuff. I don't want that getting anywhere near you. I don't want you getting contaminated. If that happens… Maker knows what we'll do. Fenris, please, for your own safety—"
Here, Fenris remembered cutting off his words with a shout. He'd been furious that day, and in hindsight, rightfully so. While Hawke had remained quiet, though not calm himself—he'd often been on the verge of tears—Fenris had snarled and yelled and thrown a few things. After Maker knew how long, he'd conceded, but now, long after all was said and done, he didn't rightly know why, and he wished he hadn't. Having set them in a deadlock would have been a thousand times better than the result of his giving in and allowing Hawke to go.
But right now, he had another concern.
"And yet I ended up contaminated anyway," he said bitterly. "It took four years, but still it happened. Why is it that nothing ever goes your way, even in death?"
Naturally, Hawke did not answer. Likely he couldn't, this being a dream and all. As Fenris stared at his back, he felt something like a strange mingling of grief and pity in his chest. Was it not enough that everything in Hawke's life should fall to pieces and his death involve another man being chosen over him? Did everything he'd died for have to fall to pieces, as well? For just a moment, the anger that he still felt at Hawke even now was drowned out by something else entirely, and Fenris swallowed. His chest had gone tight.
Hawke turned around then, as abruptly as he had turned away. On his scarred face was the same soft, warm expression as before, the same one that he had worn as he had left their room—and Fenris' life. It tore at his heart to see it, but he'd be damned if he would show it. Fenris clenched his jaw and held his gaze steadily.
Hawke smiled, a little sadly. "I'll come back, Fenris, I promise," he said. "And when I do, nothing will ever keep you from me again. Just like you said, that night at the Gallows."
That tore it. "Vishante kaffas!" Fenris snarled, refusing to acknowledge the wetness under his eyes. "You lied to me! You lied to me, and you made me a liar, and you left, and you died! You broke your promise, and you made me break mine, and you died!" The words that he had been longing to say ever since he had received Varric's letter now exploded out of him, four years too late, and Fenris felt himself wanting to scream at the futility of it all as much as at anything else. This was a dream. Hawke could not hear him, nor could he answer him.
Oh, it was better, there was no denying that. It had not been easy this year, even without factoring in the markings. This year marked four years since Hawke had left him and since he had died, and they had in the end only spent four years together as lovers, and that had weighed heavily on his mind until the problems with his markings had started getting out of hand. But it was better—he had found joy in life again, could travel around and see new sights without constantly thinking of Hawke, and could look back on the time they'd spent together with more joy that it had happened at all than grief that Hawke was gone and it was over. Fenris had moved on, or done his best to at any rate. He was alive, and he was enjoying it. The early days, where grief and rage had almost crippled him—he might not have found a physical pain that could compare to that of the ritual until only recently, but the same could not be said for emotional pain—had long since passed. He was alive, and he was all right, as Hawke would have wanted.
But there was so much that Fenris had never been able to say, so much that had remained locked inside his chest. Even when he'd seen Hawke in his dreams before, he hadn't been able to bring himself to scream at him or to weep or to—to do anything, really. He wasn't sure why. Perhaps it might have been the same tonight if not for the red lyrium, the thing that Hawke had left him behind to protect him from and that he had fallen victim to anyway, and for which he now ardently wished, more than he had in some time, that Hawke was here. Hawke might have blamed himself for every little thing that ever happened, but in the end, he'd always got things done. He would have found a way to solve this, and in the meantime, he would have cared for him with no complaint, and there would have been no shame at all, no shame…
Would have. Kaffas, what an awful pair of words. They said almost was terrible, but Fenris personally found would have, could have, should have to be a thousand times worse. They spoke of so many possibilities, but at the same time implied by their very meaning that those possibilities could not be. It was wrenching.
"You should be here," he said fiercely, stubbornly ignoring the wetness still even as it coursed down his cheeks. "You should be here, with me; you should be helping me; you should never have left me! And I should never have allowed you to go!" Guilt tinged his words now, guilt as well as old grief. Fenris was glad that he had not seen Carver in the years since his brother had died; he was not sure how he could have borne the last Hawke's despair over the loss of the brother who had worked so hard to protect him and to reconcile with him despite his best efforts to impede him. He wasn't sure he could have stood his guilt over his organisation's connection to said brother's death, either. Regardless, Carver had enough to deal with without knowing that Fenris could have stopped his brother—and hadn't. And Carver was not the only one he had regrets for.
Hawke looked back at him once again, still wearing that same soft smile, and it made Fenris want to scream, to do any number of things. "I love you, Fenris," he said. "No matter what happens, you will be all right. Don't ever doubt that." He had said that as well before he had gone, but in the current context, it seemed as if he was trying to prophesy, and Fenris could not believe in it.
He bowed his head, something like a sob tearing its way out of his throat. "Venhedis, Hawke, why don't you leave me?!" he snapped. "You left long ago and will never return, I have accepted that! Why do you still bother me like this? Why not make it a clean break and let go for good?" If Hawke had to be gone, then it seemed only fair that his ghost let go entirely and stop visiting him in his dreams. It was pointless to ask, he knew, but even so—he did not wish to be tormented like this when he was already being poisoned by red lyrium. Things were bad enough as they were.
Still, Fenris knew that he should know better than to ask for that. The one time something had gone absolutely the way he wanted… well, it had been over for the past four years.
The expression on Hawke's face shifted then, and Fenris knew that he was no longer in a memory, but dreaming again. There was no more warmth in Hawke's face, no more soft and gentle smile; there was only remoteness and distance, and his grey-like-silver eyes had gone blank, staring through and beyond him. He had not moved, but Fenris got the impression that he was suddenly very far away—as Fenris had asked; he had no right to complain now.
He had only barely noticed that when Hawke's eyes, quite out of nowhere, rolled over white, and the scars on his face and neck began to glow faintly. Fenris furrowed his brow and frowned, eyes narrowing as Hawke seemed to stare at him for a moment longer. Then his long-gone lover readjusted his grip on his staff, said, "Ego te amo, Fenris," began to chant a verse from the Canticle of Exaltations, and started to turn away.
"Vester sum," Fenris murmured, more out of habit than anything else. He wiped his face and watched resignedly as Hawke, once again, walked away and disappeared back into the fog. There was no use feeling anything more, not when walking away was all that Hawke's ghost could do now.
He could still hear the song, somewhere in the background. "Ame amin, halai lothi amin, noamin… Ame amin, halai lothi amin, noamin heruamin…"
When he woke up, it was gently, without the startled panting or jerking of limbs that accompanied his nightmares, and thus, it was with minimal pain—relatively speaking. He stared up at the ceiling, blinking the tiredness and the crud out of his eyes, having to resist the urge to bring his hands up to wipe the crud away. After they were clear, he tried to look as far out of the corner of his eye as possible to determine how early in the day it was, but from this angle, he could see nothing.
Mentally bracing himself, refusing to sigh because even the slight movement of his chest in the doing could be agonising, Fenris turned his head slowly to the side. His muscles went taut, and a flare of pain shot through them, reaching the top of his head and the very soles of his feet. He gritted his teeth—this wasn't something you could ever get used to, not really—and closed his eyes, riding the wave out. When it had settled, he opened his eyes again and looked out towards the window. The sky outside was streaked with gold and orange as the sun rose above the dark outline of Minrathous, ominous yet somehow glorious at the same time against it. If one could ignore Minrathous, it was beautiful.
So he tried to do many things: to ignore Minrathous and enjoy the sunrise, to not think of anything else but it, and to remain stock still. The gold and orange were spreading out further, growing all the more intense, when Fenris' muscles abruptly seized up, and despite his best efforts, a scream was torn from his throat as his markings pulsed for the first time that day. His back arched off the bed, and his fingers gripped the bedsheets tightly as the agony wracked him; his eyes were squeezed shut, but he still swore he could see the terrible glow of red that matched the frayed cloth around his wrist. The cloth that had been a favour, that was now a memento, the cloth that he had refused to remove when he had been laid up in bed in the first place.
Eventually, it passed, and Fenris let out a tired moan as he slumped back into the bed and his fingers loosened their grip on the sheets. The pulses had come several times an hour at the outset of his contamination, but they'd grown more frequent over the past few weeks, and he knew that the pace would likely keep increasing until they were almost constant, leaving him perpetually exhausted both physically and mentally and potentially bringing other complications. After that, he imagined, it wouldn't be long until the red lyrium started forming crystals within him and they started overtaking him. Once that happened, he would be done for. It would push out through his skin, mutilate him, and over time, twist him and turn him into a red lyrium monstrosity, unrecognisable as his former self. Worse than that, it would destroy his mind, what sanity he had left. Fenris hadn't yet thought about whether he should ask one of his companions to kill him when it got that bad, but it occurred to him now that if the magister's son couldn't find a cure, then he'd prefer a quick death to what the red lyrium crystals posed. He wanted to die with some dignity intact.
But that time wasn't here yet. For now, much still remained, and that thought gave Fenris as much despair as it did comfort. He couldn't rightly say why, but it did.
Fenris looked down at himself, saw his markings all red and his body wasting away again, and he let out another moan. Fasta vass, how had it ever come to this? He knew the answer to that one. The inevitable consequence of inscribing lyrium into a man's flesh, which he had no way of knowing if Danarius had ever thought that far ahead to, plus a complete accident—or it could have been deliberate. Everything had to end, and unless the magister's son found a way, this could only ever have been his.
And the mage, to his credit, was trying. He didn't even know Fenris that well, but he was working as hard as he could. But he'd found nothing these past few weeks, and Fenris had no reason to believe that that would change now.
Which left him alone, in a room, with his out of control, contaminated markings, his wasting away body that would never be the same again even if he was cured, his memories and mementoes of the man who had died at least in part to save him from this, and the echo of a song still ringing in his ears.