Fenris would never understand why Hawke insisted on bringing him along on Anders' missions to "rescue" mages from the Gallows. It was one of many things he did not understand about Hawke, such as why he continued to follow the woman despite their obvious differences in opinion on mages, or more troubling, why he would find himself considering Hawke's easy smile and the grace with which she held her bow, the hidden strength behind her every movement, the way—
"Fenris!"
Fenris reflexively swung his sword to slice through the templar hunter that had appeared out of nowhere. The man cried out in pain, but not before his daggers found a new sheathe in the back of one of the mages they were supposed to be protecting. The woman slumped to the ground with a rattling sigh and Fenris barely glanced at her.
There were more important matters, such as the templars closing on Hawke. She was not a close-quarters fighter and he knew that if they succeeded in flanking her, she would fall under their blades. The strength of his fear for her drove him across the cavern at a run, ending in a leap that skewered one of the templars through the chest, ripping through his heavy armor like paper to find the blood and bone beneath.
He left the man to bleed his heart blood out onto the cavern floor and swung his sword in an arc to cut through the other templar's defense. His anger sang in his blood, channeled like the flow of lyrium in his flesh. He jerked his sword free of his enemy's body and brought it around again, cleaving deep into his neck and dropping him to the floor.
"Anders!"
Hawke's cry focused Fenris' attention. The mage meant nothing to him, but there, in that time and place, the enemy of his enemy was his friend.
Anders stood in an alcove, not retreating into its meager protection as another templar hunter lunged past his staff to draw a long gash in his side with his dagger. He cried out the words of a spell, but the ice that flashed in the air did not slow the templar, who scored again against Anders, sending him reeling back under the twin attacks, daggers slicing across his arm, dragging a scarlet line down his cheek.
Despite his scorn for Anders, Fenris raced to his aid, finding Hawke's arrows in the hunter's shoulder and throat before he could complete the leap that brought him within striking distance. Together, with arrow, blade, and magic, the last of the templars fell.
"Where's Merrill?" Hawke asked, then turned to run back down the tunnel where Merrill had been supposedly guarding the rear.
In front of him, Anders' hands lit with a cool blue light, and only when the magic touched him to heal him did Fenris take notice of the bleeding gash across his hip. He had long grown accustomed to the way Anders healed those around him without asking, but it never failed to bring a snarl to his lips.
Any condemnation he might have voiced was interrupted by Hawke's shout to Anders for help. Still bleeding from his own wounds though he had healed Fenris, Anders pushed past him to hurry to Hawke's side. Merrill hung limply in Hawke's arms, and despite everything, Fenris noted how strong Hawke was to simply carry her with no sign of strain.
"Magebane," Anders said, recoiling from the smell and the unmistakable fuchsia residue of the poison on her skin. "You'd think they bathed her in it. We have to get it off of her. Now."
"What about the children?" Hawke asked, remembering what Fenris had not.
Two children huddled in the alcove Anders had been guarding. He had put himself between the two girls and the templars without a second thought.
"Fenris has to watch them." Anders put a hand on Hawke's arm to push her toward the tunnel that would lead back to Darktown. "If we don't get her back to my clinic soon, we'll lose her."
Before he could protest, before he could insist that he was going with them, before he could even absorb what was expected of him, Hawke and Anders were gone, leaving him alone with two children barely old enough to have come into their power as mages.
He turned back to look at the two girls and frowned to see their tear-streaked faces turned up to him.
The taller of the two girls hugged the other girl tightly and trembled under Fenris' gaze. "Are we going to die now?"
For all that Fenris hated mages, for all he suspected every one of them of harboring evil where their magic rooted in them, he had never given much thought to mages as children. Mage children in Minrathous were schooled away from Danarius' purview, so while Fenris knew they existed, they were still abstract concepts.
These two girls were very concrete.
"No," he said gruffly. "I will not allow it."
He saw that his words did not reassure the girls, but he had been a bodyguard, not a nanny. Reassurances were beyond him.
He stepped aside to let the girls edge past him out of the alcove. "We must leave here before more come."
The older girl was also the bolder of the pair. Fenris could feel her eyes following the paths lyrium drew on his skin and read the curiosity that lurked under the fear like fish darting just under the surface of a pond. "Where will we go now?"
That was a good question. He could not follow Anders' route because he did not know which of the many branching tunnels the abomination had planned to take to meet up with the people who would smuggle these escapees out of Kirkwall. Nor could he take the girls to the clinic for fear it would lead hunters to Hawke. There was also no way he would bring mages to his home, no matter how harmless they appeared.
"Somewhere you can wait in safety," he answered while he considered his options for harboring refugee magelings. "Tell me your names. Should I need to issue directions, I must know to whom I am speaking."
The older girl – a skinny thing of perhaps eleven years old with tangled dark brown hair, wide hazel eyes, and a nose that she would either grow into or which would plague her for life – nodded solemnly. "I'm Lily."
She indicated the other girl, who looked to be a couple of years younger, although her long, mousy brown hair had fallen over her face and Fenris could see mostly bloodshot gray eyes and dirt past the locks. "This is Maura. What's your name?"
"Fenris." He shifted under the weight of their attention before pointing toward one of the tunnels. "Stay close to me, and if I tell you to do something, do it. I will not have Hawke blame me for losing you two."
Lily nodded while Maura continued to regard him silently through the curtain of her hair. It would have to do.
"Let's go."
He led them up, past the fallen templars and the body of the mage the hunter had killed. He heard both girls whimper at the bloodshed and moved faster to get them away from the scene. He took them through Darktown to find one of the ubiquitous urchins who would run small errands in exchange for coin. The boy stared curiously at the two silent girls with the tattooed elf, but he took Fenris' coppers and a simple message for Varric: Fenris is at Bartrand's.
It was safer than sending the message to Hawke at the clinic and drawing attention her way. She would doubtless go to Varric for help once Merrill was stabilized, as he was the closest of her allies.
The girls exchanged whispers while they walked. Maura sounded on the verge of tears and Lily's whispers were urgent, exhorting her to be brave.
He wondered what he had been like when he had been that young. Had he been brave? Would he have reacted like these children? Had he even had a friend to offer him comfort when the whole world turned to terror as it had for these girls?
Did his past contain memories like these that he should be glad were erased?
He reminded himself that these children, innocent though they seemed, were still mages.
"Do not speak to anyone," he cautioned them as they stood at the base of the stairs that would lead them up onto a surface street. "Do not make eye contact, do not stray from my side."
Lily bit her lip and nodded, holding Maura against her with an arm around her shoulders, then she hooked her fingers on Fenris' belt.
When he looked down at her in surprise she met his gaze with fear and defiance warring in her expression. "My mum always used to make me do it on market day," she told him. "So we wouldn't get separated."
"Indeed," he said dryly. "But I am not your mother."
She simply shrugged and maintained her hold.
• • •
Fenris saw the man try to touch Lily's hair before she did.
Late at night in Lowtown, the people who were out and about were less savory sorts, and it was one of those who took his life into his own hands for a touch.
They approached the man slouched against a wall as Fenris led the girls on the shortest route out of Lowtown and up to Hightown. He saw the man's eyes flick over him, lingering on the bared tattoos on his face and arms before moving on to settle on the girls. He recognized the fire of avarice that kindled in the man's eyes and watched him from the corner of his eye when he led the girls past him
All the man had to do was let the elf and his charges pass unmolested, but he was long on ambition and short on intelligence and apparently had failed to note the immense sword strapped to Fenris' back.
He pushed away from the wall with the start of a smile, hand raising to touch either Lily or Maura, and Fenris more than half-expecting it, caught the motion from the corner of his eye.
Fenris pushed Lily's hand off his belt and swung around, the lyrium in his skin reacting to his spark of rage, blazing with a flash of brilliant blue-white light that served to blind the girls, but more importantly to blind the man who had thought to touch someone under Fenris' protection.
He was still blinking his vision clear when he found himself pinned against the wall by a strong hand gripping his throat. The tips of Fenris' gauntlets dug into his skin, drawing pinpricks of blood and promising gouts if he moved even to breathe.
"If you even think of touching them," Fenris informed him in a low voice that carried threat like a rumble of distant thunder, "I will know, and I will kill you."
He dug the gauntlets in harder, ensuring that the man would have bruises and cuts to explain later, then released him to fall back against the wall.
When Fenris turned back to the girls, Maura was once again clinging to Lily, her face hidden from his sight. Lily was doing her best to hold herself together, but her eyes showed too much white as her gaze darted from Fenris' gauntleted hand to the man slumped behind him and up to Fenris' face seeking reassurance that he was not going to turn on them next.
She would have appeared a normal, frightened child if not for other details – her hair glittered with a dusting of ice, her breath plumed fog in the warm summer night air, and frost coated the ground and crates behind her, spreading out with the two child mages as its center.
His face must have shown some reaction to the sight of her unchecked magic because she took a step back, pulling Maura with her.
Children. Maker, but they were just frightened children.
Fenris growled under his breath and thrust out his hand in the direction they had been traveling. "Walk. We will not be safe until we are off the street."
Neither Lily nor Maura said a word through the rest of Lowtown, but eventually Fenris felt Lily's hand settle on his belt again, just a light weight that kept him focused on the two lives he held in his hands.
When he traveled with Hawke, they would simply brazen their way throughout the city, day or night. Hawke and her friends were eminently capable of taking care of themselves, but on this night, Fenris took the route that Madame Lusine paid to have kept open for the sake of the brothel's patrons.
He picked up his pace past the brothel when he heard Maura whisper something to Lily and point to the banners hanging outside the Rose.
His face fell into a scowl when he heard Lily whisper back, "Pretty."
He knew he sounded gruff when he said, "Faster," but it was for their own good. He walked so quickly that the girls were trotting to keep up, but they left the Blooming Rose behind and soon they cut behind a row of Hightown mansions to approach Bartrand's estate from the rear.
Fenris cautioned the girls with a gesture to stay silent while he checked the windows to ensure no one else was squatting in the unoccupied estate.
The windows were dark. Boosting himself up on a sill, he saw no movement inside.
He knew Varric; there would be no opening the door without a key. Instead of even trying, he smashed the windowpane with his armored elbow and reached through the unlock the window.
Once inside, he leaned back out to offer his hands to the two girls. "I will lift you up."
Maura shook her head no.
He shifted his attention to Lily. "Tell her to come here."
"Go on." Lily tried to gently push Maura toward Fenris, but she shook her head again and tried to back away.
He could face slavers, demons, and even dragons, but he did not know how to handle one nine-year-old child.
"Maura," he said, drawing on his years of experience presenting a calm exterior no matter the workings of his interior mood, "come inside where it is safe."
She shook her head again and he briefly considered that all mages were more trouble than they were worth, even dirty little girls who hid behind their hair and never spoke aloud.
Then he bit out one last word.
"Please."
Maura looked over her shoulder and Lily nodded her encouragement. "Go on."
Fenris felt a small, strange thrill of victory when Maura moved forward and took his hands.
He lifted her through the window before turning back to find Lily already waiting with her hands raised to clasp his when he leaned back. For being such burdens, he mused, the girls were light as feathers when he lifted them up.
In his urgency to get the girls inside and out of sight of searching templars or Aveline's watch, he had given no thought to the broken glass from the window. Shifting to settle Lily on the floor next to Maura, he slid his foot over a shard and hissed at the sharp pain of it slicing through the calloused ball of his foot to lodge there.
"What's wrong?" Lily asked, looking around for some threat to materialize out of nowhere.
"It is nothing," he assured her. "But I need light."
"Let me." Lily held out her cupped hands and a ball of soft white light materialized there.
By its glow, Fenris lifted his foot and saw it already smeared in blood that welled up around the glass shard. He had certainly had more dire injuries than this, but that made it no less of an irritant.
Both girls watched his every move as he stripped off his gauntlets and settled on a glass-free bit of floor to try to pick the glass out of his foot. His fingernails were trimmed as short as possible and could find no purchase on the piece that felt as though it was working its way deeper with every failed attempt.
He looked up in surprise when Maura laid her hand on his wrist. Somehow she placed her fingers on a bare patch of skin without touching any of his tattoos, but he barely noticed past his surprise at hearing her speak aloud for the first time.
"I can do it."
Fenris began to say "You are too young—" –for such magic, but Maura interrupted him.
"I can do it." She sounded firm, certain. It wasn't a tone he would have expected from her after their short acquaintance.
She met his eyes through the screen of her hair until he nodded. "But no magic."
She blew a puff of breath through her pursed lips as though blowing away his restriction and knelt to examine his foot while Lily brought the light closer. With her smaller fingers and actual fingernails, she worked the sliver out of his foot more easily than Fenris would have thought.
Lily murmured "Good job," and patted Maura's shoulder while Maura wiped her bloodied fingers on her robe. Lily looked pointedly over Maura's shoulder until he remembered himself.
"Thank you."
Maura rewarded him with a tiny smile before she turned away to look around.
Lily also looked around and wrinkled her nose. "Will we be here long? Is there anywhere we can wash and… you know?"
You know?He briefly thought that no, he did not know, before understanding dawned. "I don't know. If you stay close, we will look around."
Maura rubbed her hands down her arms and hugged herself before returning to Lily's side. She leaned in to whisper something to Lily. Apparently her slight thaw toward Fenris had ended.
Lily looked around and shrugged, not bothering to whisper when she answered Maura. "It's creepy, but not creepy creepy."
Maura shook her head and whispered something more.
"I am here to ensure that you are safe," Fenris cut in. "And soon my friend will be here to see you two on to the next part of your journey."
"Anders?" Lily asked hopefully. "He said we were going to live—"
"Don't tell me where," Fenris said before she could reveal any knowledge that would weigh on him in the knowing. "Just because I say you can trust me, does not mean I do not lie. There will be liars in your path, people you should not trust. Learn to keep your secrets."
He had learned that well enough in his time on the run from Danarius, and unlike these children, he could fend for himself. Other than stray magic and a bit of light, Lily and Maura were as helpless as lambs.
Tonight these two were lambs guarded by a wolf.
"Come. There may be a water pump in the kitchen and somewhere you two can tend to your other needs."
Lily lit their way until Fenris could find candles. She protested when he held out a lit candle for her to take.
"I don't need a candle. This—" She raised her hands with the magical light to illustrate. "—doesn't blow out."
"And this," Fenris said firmly, "will never make someone call templars on the little apostate girl. Now take the candle and remember that magic is your last resort if you wish to keep the freedom others bought for you with their blood."
He did not smile when she extinguished the magical light, but neither did he scowl at her petulant expression when she took the candle. It was the least of the lessons both girls would have to learn.
Had he just given a mage advice on how to dodge the rightful authority of the Circle? Or had he just given a child one of many tools she would need to grow into a free woman?
Perhaps a better question was how he thought he could offer anything with regards to being a free person when he still had not learned how to be one himself.
Watching Maura shift restively from foot to foot while keeping her legs tightly clamped together, he decided the best question for the moment was "Where is the privy?"
• • •
When the vase smashed to the floor, neither girl would admit to breaking it.
"I didn't!" Lily protested while Maura clung to her like a limpet.
Fenris didn't know which of them had broken the vase and settled for a blanket admonition. "Be more careful. Both of you."
Lily scowled at him before looking away.
When a door slammed deeper in the mansion, he began to reconsider his assumption that the girls had broken the vase.
"Stay closer to me," he told them. "We may have to leave quickly."
Lily tried to grasp his belt, but he pushed her hand away. "If I have to draw my sword," he said, pulling it part way out of its sheathe on his back, "you would be in the way." He pointed her to his left, a few paces ahead of him. "Walk there. Stop if I tell you to. Be ready to run if I say to run."
Lily tugged Maura forward to where Fenris indicated. The whites of her eyes were showing again and the candle trembled in her hand, but she waited for his instruction and when he told her to walk, she walked, picking her way through the clutter toward the back of the mansion where they would find the kitchen.
Another door slammed just before a flying vase struck his temple.
Maura's whimper was lost under Lily's shriek of fear. Fenris' sword was in his hand in one swift motion, his tattoos flaring brilliantly to illuminate a hall devoid of attackers. There were no skulking figures, no running miscreants, nothing.
"It's mad," Maura whispered.
"What?" Fenris spared a look for the girls before returning to sweeping his gaze through the hall.
She answered him as he put a hand on Lily's shoulder and pushed her farther down the hall, Maura stumbling along with her. "The house is mad. It doesn't want us here."
"Houses do not want—" This time he saw the vase rise from the table and hurl itself at his head. He snarled a curse before sheathing his sword and picking up the girls, one under each arm.
Apparently the house did not want them there.
He ran through the hall as doors slammed open and closed on either side of them as though reacting to his sudden urgency. He darted into a room he vaguely remembered as a banquet hall of some sort and dropped Lily to her feet while he snatched up a chair and threw it through one of the floor to ceiling windows.
Without these children to protect, he might have stayed to investigate, to roust this hostile force from the house, but not with Lily and Maura looking to him to keep them safe.
He held out his arm to Lily, picking her up when she came back into his reach while candelabra lit themselves and rose off of sideboards to float toward them.
"Close your eyes."
He held the two girls tightly against him and ran to build up speed before he leapt through the broken window and out into the street.
Behind them the candelabras extinguished themselves and the mansion went dark, but now they were out on a Hightown street and soon the noise would attract unwanted attention, either from the Guard, or worse, from any templars that might be on the streets looking for the escapees.
He set the girls down and grabbed their hands, pulling them roughly down the street toward his home. It was anything but ideal, but he had nowhere else to hide them, and at least there he knew where they could clean up.
• • •
Fenris' mansion left much to be desired in terms of creature comforts, but it got the girls off the street and away from the prying eyes of Hightown residents. The strange tattooed elf would attract attention dragging around two dirty human girls. He could but hope they had moved quickly enough to stave off disaster.
He released them only when they had reached the front door.
"Go only where I tell you to go," he said as he opened the door and hurried them inside. Maura stifled a scream and tried to run as soon as she saw the body just inside the door, but he caught her by the back of her robe and hauled her inside.
"That way," he said roughly, pointing the girls toward the open door into the great hall across from the entrance. "Then right. You may take care of your needs before we go upstairs."
His friends never commented on the state of the mansion, but walking with the girls, he saw it through fresh eyes – the toppled Imperium statue in the entry hall, the rotted corpses, the holes in the roof. It was more a place he haunted than inhabited.
Maura seemed to echo that thought, cautiously asking, "Are you sure we're safe here?"
Lily nodded. "This is scarier than the other place."
"You are safe here," Fenris assured them, opening the door that led off the great hall. "I will not permit harm to come to you while you are in my care."
He escorted them to the privy and then to the kitchen to draw water for them to drink and to wash away some of the filth from their escape.
"What is this place?" Lily asked while Maura scrubbed away enough dirt to start a small garden patch.
"My home," Fenris replied, and glared at her when her shocked expression evoked a frisson of… shame? "Would you rather be in the Gallows?"
His shame grew when she shook her head and took a step back. He was a better man than a bully of small children, even mage children.
"It is my home," he said more gently. "I am a warrior, not a nursemaid or," he added with the faintest of smiles, "a housekeeper."
Lily nodded, her eyes uncertain in the face of his shifting moods. "Sorry."
Maura gave a huge yawn and moved back to wrap an arm around Lily's waist. She was cleaner, but water still dripped from her chin and strands of wet hair that had fallen into the bucket as she washed.
They both looked at him expectantly, the weight of their gazes suddenly palpable.
"I have food upstairs," he said to fill the silence. "And I will build a fire."
Both girls continued to watch him, waiting for some signal. What did they want from him?
"This way." He pointed them out of the kitchen and guided them upstairs to the room his used as his living quarters.
Again he noticed details that he had simply accepted and lived with over the years – the piles of moldering cloth, toppled tables. holes in the ceiling, cobwebs. With their fresh eyes scanning his home, he saw anew the conditions that he had unquestioningly accepted for himself.
"There," he said, pointing the bench in front of the fireplace. "Sit."
He squatted at the fireplace to use the dwarvish matches Varric had given him to coax the fire to life, fending off some of the chill that came in through the open ceiling.
Maura lightly plucked the strings of his lute, drawing Fenris' attention away from his efforts with the fire. "Do not touch it."
She flinched and looked down at the floor. "Sorry."
Lily pulled her down to the bench and put an arm around her. He could feel their twin stares boring into his back until the fire had caught and he could turn to meet their eyes. "Are you hungry?"
When they nodded he opened the heavy chest that he used to store his food away from the mice that reigned over most of the mansion. He doled out bread and cheese and a pair of apples that were not too shriveled, and took solace that their silence had less weight to it while they ate.
Maura yawned again and Lily after her. Even he had to stifle the urge to yawn when they did.
He considered where to put them until Hawke or Varric came. There were other bedrooms, certainly, but they were hardly more hospitable than the rest of the mansion the girls had already found so frightening.
He cast an eye over to his bed and sighed. It would hardly be the first time he had chosen the floor.
"Stay," he said, much as he might speak to Hawke's dog. He left them in front of the fire and went to search the cupboards and wardrobes in the other bedrooms until he returned with two long cotton shirts that would serve the girls for the night.
He set them on the bench. "Change."
With that he left the room, returning after what he deemed was long enough for the girls to be changed. Maura was sitting in front of the fire with her feet pulled up inside the shirt, but Lily was waiting facing the door, her arms crossed.
"We aren't dogs," she said when he entered the room.
He brushed past her to pull back the blankets on his bed, moving books out of the way. "I know."
"Then don't talk to us like dogs." Lily's voice trembled with nervousness, but Fenris gave her credit for effort. "Sit. Stay. Change. We're people."
He fluffed his pillow a bit too vigorously and nodded. "I will consider it. Now. Please, go to bed."
He let Lily and Maura settle themselves in his bed and poured a glass of wine before settling on the floor in front of the fire with his sword laid in easy reach beside him. He could hear the girls whispering behind him – again – but kept his gaze on the flickering fire to allow them some illusion of privacy.
"Fenris?" Lily again.
He did not turn. "Yes?"
"Will you play us a song?"
Maura added hopefully, "Please?"
He was silent for several long moments before he drained his glass and stretched out his arm to retrieve his lute.
He played with his back to the girls, watching the fire when he was not watching his fingers. He would be the first to admit that he was not a particularly good lute player, not that anyone ever asked, but the tunes were recognizable at least. Better still, when he played like this, he was creating something, rather than doing what he was so much more accomplished at – destroying.
He heard the bed shift and the sounds of bare feet padding lightly across the stone floor before Maura dropped down to sit on the warm flagstones in front of the fire. A glance over his shoulder showed Lily asleep on her side facing them, her mouth slack and her face finally relaxed.
"You should sleep," he said quietly, to avoid disturbing Lily.
Maura pulled her knees up under the too-large shirt and hugged them to her chest, watching his fingers with her unwavering stare.
"I'm not tired yet," she said, belying that with a jaw-cracking yawn.
"Not tired," he said. "Then that was not a yawn?"
Her expression turned stubborn. "I'm not tired."
Fenris raised an eyebrow. "There is no need to lie to me."
This time Maura sounded pleading. "I'm not tired."
It was enough to make him set the lute aside. "Why don't you want to sleep?"
"I'm not—" He held up a hand to forestall her protest.
"You aretired. Why do you not wish to sleep?"
Her little shoulders slumped leaving him feeling unaccountably like a bully.
"Dreams."
He realized that she had not looked away from his hands even after he put the lute away. With a flash of insight he picked up the lute again and set to plucking out a simple tune even he could not mangle too badly.
He waited until some of her tension ebbed before asking, "You have bad dreams?"
She shrugged and seemed disinclined to say anything more. He let the silence draw out, moving on to another tune he was not quite as confident with. She seemed to gain more confidence at the occasional discordant note and finally admitted, "I have dreams that come true."
He struck another jangling note and took time to backtrack a few measures to pick up the flow of the tune before asking, "Is that why you're here?"
She nodded and rocked slightly, apparently to comfort herself. "Someone told and templars came. Mama and Papa said they're just dreams but the templars didn't listen."
She rubbed her cheek on her shoulder and hugged her legs more tightly. "They said they're just dreams and they tried to make the templars go, but the templars said it's magic and if you fight the templars they hurt you."
She finally looked away from Fenris' hands to his face, tears spilling down her cheeks in a steady stream. "They killed my mama and my papa because I have dreams and sometimes they come true."
Fenris had to fight not to look away from Maura as all his words against mages came back to him in a flood. It was so much easier to hate a group than an individual. Abominations and blood mages excepted.
Wordlessly he set the lute aside and rose, leaving the room only to return with a musty, but not filthy, stack of blankets from one of the linen cupboards. He arranged them in a pallet on the floor in front of the fire and sat down beside it, taking up the lute again.
Maura looked from his face to the pallet and back to him again before she scooted over and lay down, pulling the blankets up to her chin.
He played a gentle melody until finally her eyes drooped and closed.
• • •
Fenris dropped into a light doze still sitting in front of the fire after Maura finally fell asleep, but his eyes snapped open the moment he heard his front door open. There were two options for his company – good or bad. There would be nothing in between.
He shook Maura's shoulder and pressed his fingers to her lips when she opened her eyes.
He whispered, "Get Lily up, get your shoes. Don't make a sound. Can you do that?"
Her eyes widened, but she nodded and sat up.
"Be ready but don't leave this room unless I say so." She nodded again and hurried on silent feet to wake the other girl.
He rose just as silently and took up his sword. His friends would not be too surprised to see him with a bare blade, his enemies would be rightfully surprised right before they died. He glanced back to see that Maura was following his instructions, whispering urgently to Lily while the other girl blinked in confusion, then slipped out of the room.
He pulled the door carefully closed and stood silently, listening.
"—guard says no one lives here," came a male voice.
"Still lit up in here," came another voice, this a woman.
"And there are mushrooms growing out of the floor," retorted the first. Fenris could see shadows moving in the front hall. "If the past-rotted corpse over there wasn't enough."
"Shut up and spread out," came a louder man in tones of unmistakable command. "Foster and Wallace to the right, Barrett and Viaggi to the left. I'll go this way. Keep your ears open, raise a shout if you find them."
Fenris backed off the landing into his room. Lily and Maura were both up, wearing their shoes and their makeshift nightshirts. They looked at him with wide, expectant eyes and he shook his head. He motioned to them to go around the corner by the bed, out of sight and put a finger to his lips. Hide and be silent.
Lily immediately tugged Maura out of sight. All he could do was hope they would follow his instruction to stay silent.
He strapped his sword to his back while he waited, lurking to the side of the cracked door while he listened to the man with the commanding voice walk through the great hall and ascend the stairs. Somewhere on the first floor, intruders were opening and closing doors, poking around where Fenris had not gone since he had killed everyone here with Hawke's help. The thought of them here made his palms itch for violence.
He heard boots on the landing outside his door and a heavy sigh before a gauntleted hand came into his vision and pushed the door open.
He grabbed the man's wrist and jerked him into the room, slamming him roughly against the wall, one hand moving swiftly to grasp his throat above his gorget, the other, lit blue-white from the lyrium in his brands plunging through his breastplate, through his skin, past muscle, past bone to wrap long fingers around the man's heart. He could feel the ghost of it flutter against his fingertips, all it would take would be the faintest act of will to turn his fingers solid.
"If you make a sound," Fenris hissed, "I will crush your heart. Do you understand?" He squeezed his ghost fingers and watched the man's eyes widen.
The templar nodded as much as he could. His breath was coming fast, his eyes wide, his entire body vibrating with tension and fear.
"You're here chasing escaped mages?"
The templar nodded.
"Do you want to live?"
The templar nodded again.
"There are no mages here."
The templar stared at him, but Fenris was gratified to see a trickle of sweat gather at his temple and roll down the side of his face.
"Are there any mages here?"
The templar shook his head immediately. Fast learner.
"Do you believe that if you or any of your men come here again that I will kill you?" He gave that ghostly squeeze again.
The templar nodded frantically.
"Good." Fenris almost smiled. "Then let me be very clear. If a templar sets foot in my home again, I will kill him and every templar with him and if you are not among them…" He paused to let the man consider his next words. "I will find you and I will tear your heart from your chest while you scream."
He narrowed his eyes. "Do you believe me?"
The templar nodded quickly.
Fenris pulled his hand out of the man's chest. "Now you are going to leave this room, and you are going to call your people, and you are all going to leave alive."
He loosened his grip on the man's throat enough that he was only held in place by mutual agreement rather than by force.
"Say thank you."
The man wet his lips and hoarsely breathed, "Thank you."
Fenris took a step back. "Get out."
The templar fled.
Fenris waited by the door and listened to the man call his other templars back, overriding their protests with curt commands. He did not relax when he heard the front door open and close and silence once again descended on the house. He left the room, running silently to the front of the house to peer carefully out a window that gave a view of the street outside.
Seeing five templars march away and meet up with another group before marching out of sight helped, but not so much that he would relax again that night.
He watched the street until he remembered that the girls were still upstairs waiting for him.
They were still huddled out of sight around the corner by the bed when he returned to them.
Lily had returned to her role as their spokesman. "Are they gone?"
"Yes."
He raised his arms when they rushed him, wrapping themselves around him like vines, holding his hands helplessly above them while he stared in mute surprise at the two girls.
Lily pulled away and tapped Maura's shoulder to get her to release him as well. "What did you say?" she asked. "We couldn't hear it."
"He said thank you," Maura contradicted. "I heard him say thank you."
Fenris considered what he had told the templar and edited heavily. "I told him to leave and he left. Now go back to bed."
• • •
Varric arrived just as the night sky was starting to lighten. He had Anders and Hawke in tow and announced himself as soon as he came through the door.
"Calling all brooding elves," he shouted from the doorway. "Would all brooding elves please come to the front door."
Maura and Lily woke at the shout. "It's a friend," he assured them. "But stay here."
He left them to go down to the entry hall, finding Hawke and Anders looking tired but whole and Varric looking fresh as a daisy. Sometimes that dwarf was insufferable.
"There you are," Varric said cheerfully. "I figured this was the next logical place when all we found at Bartrand's was a broken window."
"That's all you found?" Fenris asked incredulously. "Nothing attacked you?"
Hawke looked at him quizzically. "No, why? Should something have attacked us?"
"Just the whole house," Fenris replied before giving them a brief summary of the events at Bartrand's estate.
Varric whistled and shook his head. "No shit? That's going to put a crimp in my plans for selling the place."
"It might have been the girls," Anders suggested. "Young mages with untrained potential can attract a lot of attention, so to speak."
The thought made Fenris cast a look over his shoulder before he turned back to Anders with a scowl. "Will you see them trained wherever you're spiriting them off to?"
"What does it matter to you?" Anders asked, already bristling. "I'm surprised you didn't just march them back to the Gallows and say—"
"Will you see them trained?" Fenris snapped. "Will you see them safe?"
Anders subsided, now confused instead of outraged. "They'll be safe, but what do you care about the details? You've never cared before."
Fenris folded his arms. "Because none of the others have been in my charge."
Hawke tilted her head, a faint smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. "Fenris…" she began before stopping herself.
"Swear it," Fenris said implacably.
Anders finally seemed to see what Hawke was seeing because he licked his lips. "It's never safe to be an apostate, but they were so new to the Circle that the templars hadn't even had time to take their phylacteries."
"Could you train them?"
"What—?"
Fenris enunciated each word as though for a simpleton. "Could you train them?"
Anders had slipped back into confusion. "Er… I suppose?"
"Then they are staying." Fenris turned his attention to Varric. "Do you know any good builders? I have repairs that must be done." He jerked his chin toward the corpse on the floor. "And anyone who can help me dispose of refuse?"
Varric shook himself out of staring dumbfounded at Fenris and settled back into his smooth persona. "Sure thing. I'll send someone over later."
"Wait a minute," Anders protested, "we aren't leaving a couple of mages in his care!"
Hawke put a hand on Anders' arm and leaned up to whisper something in his ear before she pulled away and said more firmly, "You heard Fenris. They're staying. You two can work out a schedule for the girls' lessons later."
She gave Anders a gentle push toward the door. "Go get some sleep."
Varric took the hint and fell into step with Anders. "I'll walk with you. I'll see you later Hawke. Fenris."
Hawke waited until the door latched behind the two before brushing a feather-light kiss against Fenris' jaw. "It's good to see you growing."
She touched his cheek with her fingertips before slipping out the door, leaving him to raise his fingers to the warm trails her touch had left.
Then he turned back to tell the girls that they had a new home.