A/N: If I owned Dragon Age, I'd have the money to also own a herd of pomeranians. I do not.
This is a side story to my witch!inquisitor AU, Andraste's Witch. You don't need to read that story to get this one, though. This actually has almost nothing to do with that story.
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"What I want to know is what's the purpose?" Garrett Hawke asked the room as he lay sprawled out on a couch in his estate's viewing room, his head in Isabela's lap as she played idly with his dark, ruffled hair. When he caught one of her hands to press a chaste kiss against her palm, she paused, her sepia fingers twining with his sunburnt ones, nails skimming his scorched skin just gentle enough to send a shiver through him. She tossed some of her dark hair back over her shoulder as she grinned down at him, rolling her eyes when he reached up and ran his fingers through her hair, pulling it back.
"Oh, I don't think this is what the spell was supposed to do. Likely it was cast wrong or…I'm not quite sure how this could happen. I'm sure you know, but magic can be a little volatile sometimes, if you're not careful."
Merrill sat across from them on the floor, a dozen or so journals and scrolls opened around her as she perused the different ones, getting lost in a passage only to have a soft, 'Oh!' interrupt whatever she was reading and send her searching through the dusty old books for something else. There were candles placed around the room, the majority of them around her so that she could read any of her sources without having to move everything. The shadows made her look all the paler, catching glimmers of green in her eyes as she leaned closer to the flickering light and then pulled away.
Varric was in a rather plush chair beside her, a few books of his own at hand, though he'd long since given up on being useful. He'd been trying to assist with finding the spell she was looking for, or something that could lead them to the spell she sought, but he just didn't understand magic enough. Though she'd been quite polite each time he'd offered that he thought he'd found something, he'd realized on his own that he was slowing her down and had settled into taking a back seat for this little misadventure.
As he scratched at some of his downy, perfect chest hair, she abruptly scooted around to examine a scroll he was sure she'd inspected at least thrice already. Her slender fingers traced beneath lines that meant nothing to him.
She'd been casting earlier, making quite the light show as she attempted to remedy their current…situation. Varric had suggested that this might not be the best of places to do this, but Garrett had simply assured him that he'd bought the heaviest curtains he could. There would be no seeing anything through them.
It was fortunate, too, for Merrill had been casting a lot. However, after her usual spells had failed her, she'd fallen into research. For the last hour, she'd been sitting there, dutifully searching for a solution to their latest problem.
A problem which was afflicting the last of their friends gathered, and the one person in the room who didn't look particularly grateful to have Merrill's dedicated attention.
Fenris sat in front of her, brooding with his arms crossed and shoulders slouched as far as they could go, making him all but disappear into the cushy chair Garrett had given him. Maker, but if that elf could have disappeared, he likely would have.
Earlier in the day, whilst out hunting slavers on the coast, they'd encountered a small group of blood mages who had been quick to label them blood donors and attack. While Fenris and Garrett had both charged into the chaos, interrupting spells and ripping out hearts, it had been Fenris who the mages focused on—likely terrified by the glowing visage of death before them—and it had been Fenris who had been hit with a spell right at the end, even as Isabela had sunk one of her blades into the last of the mages' necks.
The spell hadn't done much, or so he'd thought.
Though he'd braced for fire or lightning or any manner of pain to engulf him, he'd felt at most a light breeze. Then, when he'd dared to ease out of his defensive stance, he'd found the rest of his party staring at him with eyes wide, jaws slack.
To see Garrett, Isabela, and Varric all struck speechless had been more disconcerting than being hit with fire.
He'd looked down at himself, half expecting to have grown an extra limb or…something equally outlandish that would cause these looks of disbelief. However, he'd been as he always was, blood splattered across his armor and tawny skin, lyrium tattoos already dimming down to look more like odd vallaslin, as Merrill had once compared them to.
Panic had gripped him, then. It had been obvious that something was wrong, and he wasn't seeing it.
That was, until he'd looked back up at them. Even as he'd reached up to make sure he still had both ears—magic had done stranger things to people, after all—he saw his friends through a few odd streaks of bright blue.
And that's when it had finally hit him.
His hair.
Even as he tried to keep himself from going off on a full tirade about how magic just couldn't stop fucking him over, Garrett had sauntered over and draped his cloak around Fenris, pulling the hood down until it covered all of Fenris hair.
And coincidentally made certain that he couldn't see where he was walking.
Isabela had instantly scolded Garrett, darting over and pushing the hood back, reaching out and carefully pinning back Fenris bangs with a few hair pins that he'd never realized she carried. Once that was done, she'd set the hood back up, high enough that Fenris could actually see the road and walk.
He felt like he was a damned five-year-old as they fussed over him, though the help was not completely unwelcome.
It had been good to know that they wouldn't just laugh at his misfortune or leave him to find his own excuses for what had happened. Sometimes he still had trouble believing that he'd actually found such an odd group of friends after all of his running.
He'd forgotten that gratitude when Garrett had opened his mouth again. "So. What's your poison? Merrill or Anders?"
"One time, back home," Garrett offered, drawing Fenris out of his brooding and the attention of everyone else—though Merrill was still fairly engrossed in what she was trying to read. "Beth was trying to figure out a way to make the berries pick themselves off this bush. I forget why, probably some dumb dare I made her do. Not sure how, but things went sideways, and we had a pet bramble bush that would follow us around for about a week. Mother was terrified of the thing, thought it was a demon, but Father just laughed. Something to do with the energy of the spell settling into the roots instead of around the berries or… I couldn't quite grasp the concept, but Beth and he fixed it before the templars could notice."
Fenris drummed his fingers against his arms slowly, scowl in place. "My hair reminds you of a sentient bramble bush."
"Oh, it wasn't sentient. Just mobile. I think it just followed Beth because of her magic." He let out an abrupt bark of a laugh. "The first time Carver saw it, he nearly pissed himself." His smile slipped a little as he thought back to his younger brother, a brief, uncharacteristic moment of regret flashing across his features, though only Isabela caught it. She ran her fingers through his hair again, leaning down to plant a kiss on his forehead.
Fenris couldn't say that he rightly cared about the damned stalker shrub.
His hair was blue.
Blue.
Of all the colors it could have been changed to…
"Are you sure it wasn't intentional?" Isabela asked, leaning forward a little and ignoring as Garrett snuggled further into her lap. "I would think that sort of spell could be useful. If you're hunting a nug or something, hit it with that and then you'll see it even if it tries to hide."
Or if you're hunting a person, Fenris almost added, though there was too much bile in his throat for the words to make it to his lips.
"Oh. Well," Merrill had resumed scouring her magical texts for a solution. "I suppose that might be useful. If not a little awkward. I don't know that I could eat a blue nug, though. I think he'd be too pretty."
"Could always keep him as a pet," Isabela continued to muse. She perked up, nearly sending Garrett toppling to the floor as she leaned forward in her seat, excited, "Or you could sell them! The world's only colorful nugs! I bet that'd bring in a pretty copper."
"And they'd wonder how you got them that way," Varric cautioned, scribbling something down on a piece of parchment. He was writing all of this down, wasn't he? Dammit.
Merrill's magic flickered in the dimly lit room, casting eerie shadows across the walls, and making Varric's red hair look almost blonde before the light dyed away.
Fenris resisted the urge to shudder beneath its touch, and fell back to sulking when he saw that his hair was still the same shade of blue.
"Fenris," Merrill's light voice drew out his name as she pinched her brow together, rising to her knees and reaching out to lightly hold a lock of his hair, inspecting it as though it wasn't the weirdest damned thing she'd ever seen. Mages… "Have you thought of just shaving it and seeing if it grows back normal?"
"I'm not shaving my head," Fenris spoke, voice dry. Though, honestly, if it would grow back white, that might be preferable to this. He recognized some of the dispels she'd tried, and with each failure, he had the sinking feeling that they were going to need to go to Anders, after all.
While he wasn't fond of either mage, he really didn't want Anders to see him like this. The mage would be positively giddy. Merrill had smiled a little when she'd first seen him in his current predicament, but then she'd settled into business, not poking fun at him every other breath as he was sure Anders would.
However, before he could amend his decision to forgo just getting rid of his hair, Merrill had already sunk back down into her research. "You don't remember any of what he said when he was casting? Not even a snippet?"
"We weren't exactly paying attention, Daisy," Varric offered with a shrug that she couldn't see. "And we're not mages. We don't memorize spells."
"If I was about to be killed my intent wouldn't be to turn my enemy's hair blue," Merrill offered, drumming her fingers against her knees with one hand as she flipped a few pages with the other. "I think in his panic he must have skipped part of the spell or just said it wrong, which resulted in one that didn't harm, just…" She glanced up at Fenris as she trailed off, clearly unsure what to label this.
"Oh, I know," Isabela leaned away from Garrett, grinning from ear to ear. "It started something like…" Brow furrowed, she made a few different attempts, each a bit more dramatic than the last, to recreate the spell she'd heard.
On her third try, Merrill perked up, "Oh, oh. I think maybe that was it? It sounds familiar, anyway. Where did I hear something like that…?" She drifted into her thoughts, expression focused as she dug through her memories. Finally, her face lit up and that brilliant smile of hers plastered itself to her face. "One of the other clans had a way of dying fabric magically for special events. They'd found the spell for it in some old ruins, and brought it to the last Arlathvhen. It was a lovely spell, but the elders decided it was too…magicy, if that makes sense?" She paused, sitting back a bit and looking wistful. "You could feel the magic even after it had been cast. A few of the clans were willing to learn it, but most feared it would catch templar attention if we wandered too close to human lands or just crossed paths with a hunting party. And anyway," she looked a little disappointed as she leaned forward to reexamine one of her books again, "most people like the ceremony that goes into dying the colors we do use. No need for magic that might endanger the clan." She paused on a page she'd just flipped to. "Oh, I think this could fix things."
At her earlier comments, Garrett had sat upright, one of his earnest, 'let-me-be-helpful-somehow' looks in place. "Well, if you can figure this out, maybe it would help. You could dye things for events and then reverse the spell afterwards. Then you wouldn't have to worry about—"
"Wait!"
The word snapped through the room like a bolt of lightning, and Merrill's spell died on the tip of her tongue as all eyes turned to the stairs to see Bodahn standing there, face ashen as he fidgeted, trying to recover his usual air of professionalism. Fenris had never understood how Bodahn could keep up with all of their foolishness and still be so calm all of the time. As it was, this was the first time Fenris had seen him lose his calm. The dwarf had his hands clasped together in front of him, lips twitching toward a frown that never quite formed. When he was certain Merrill wasn't going to cast, he sighed, turning to address Garrett. "Serah, we have a bit of a problem."
"What's wrong?" Garrett asked, motioning his manservant to come further into the room.
"A friend of a friend stopped by…and he was more than a little drunk, so at first I thought it nothing, but it's best to look into these things, and it turns out that…we have a templar problem."
Garrett tensed, brow low, appraising the worry on his servant's face. He sat like that a moment before asking, "They don't think I'm a mage, do they?"
While such an absurd question would have usually been met with a laugh—Garrett was too renowned as a warrior to ever be confused as anything else—this evening it didn't even crack a smile.
"The knight-captain is on his way." Bodahn finally lost out to that frown. "Here. Now. He's a few blocks off. I don't know why they'd be coming now, but there it is. I thought I'd let you know before they were on our doorstep. Not that it'll be long."
For a moment the room was completely silent.
Garrett nearly toppled the couch with Isabela still on it as he leapt over it, starting toward the wall where he'd rested his massive two-handed sword and then stopping himself. "They couldn't have known we'd be back tonight. We didn't even know we'd be back tonight. Or that we'd have Merrill here. Was it supposed to be a raid while I was away?"
"I'm not sure, serah."
Merrill was already moving to gather her texts, and Varric had hopped down to help her. Together, they had them up off the floor and into her satchel in a few minutes. "Fenris can come to my house," Merrill offered. "I mean, he got into the city without anyone noticing he was blue, and it's darker now, so I'd think we could move unseen."
"Mine is closer," Fenris pointed out, trying not to think about the fact that he was inviting a blood mage into his home, even if it was so that she could help him.
She'd picked up on his annoyance, and she fidgeted a little as she settled her satchel's strap over her shoulder and across her chest. "Or I suppose we could split ways, and you could lay low until I let Hawke know when I've got something."
Despite it being a tempting offer, he simply sighed. "I would not suggest going to mine if I intended to change my mind." He checked his gauntlets to make sure they were secure before heading over to the wall with their weapons and taking up his own. As he slung it over his shoulder, he noticed Varric readying Bianca.
"I'll come with you. If the templars stumble across us, I can distract them while you two go. After all, I bet they'd have a lot of questions for someone with blue hair."
Fenris groaned inwardly, though he simply nodded.
Even as they started toward the stairway, Isabela and Garrett having also donned their gear, a loud knock interrupted them.
The whole lot of them froze in place.
"Fuck," Garrett hissed. He ran his hand over his short beard, roughing up the bristles briefly before smoothing them back into place. "We can…the window." He pointed toward it. "We'll distract the templars and you can go out the window."
"How exactly do you plan to do that?" Varric tried to keep his tone amused, though there was a hint of worry in it, especially as his gaze darted toward Merrill and then Fenris.
"We'll…"
"Didn't Bodahn say it was the knight-captain?" Isabela interjected. When Bodahn nodded, a slow, wide grin towed up the corners of her lips. "I know what we can do…Bodahn, go ahead and get the door." She started to undo the sash around your waist. "Come now, sweet thing, take it off. All of it."
Fenris wasn't sure what to think, other than he was a bit surprised at how fast Garrett's shirt hit the floor. He was hopping out of his pants as he followed his lover down the stairs.
The door opened.
"I beg pardon, Serah Hawke, but—Maker!" the knight-captain let out a startled cry, and the next few noises that came out of his throat were indecipherable. Finally, he coughed. "If, uh, if you need a moment to— We can—"
"No, no. This is fine," Garrett assured him. "You needed something?"
Part of Fenris wanted to walk over to the balcony just to watch the show, but Varric tugged on his arm, and Fenris quietly ducked out the window, climbing down the vines that wound their way up along the outside wall and then landing with a soft thud onto the ground. He made sure his hood was in place before he helped Merrill and then Varric down. As the window closed, he thought he heard Isabela saying, "Well, you did come all the way out here…why not stay a little while? Have some fun?"
Even as Fenris quietly took the lead of their little group, winding his way behind Hawke's estate and into the alleys that would get him home, he couldn't help a small smile. His hair might still be blue, and he might be relying on a blood mage to fix it, yet somehow it didn't pain him as much as it might have, just a few short years ago.
Inconvenient as it was now, things were going to work out alright. He could feel it. Perhaps it was just Garrett's indomitable optimism wearing off on him…or the fact that he had friends willing to proposition templars and hunt down slavers just to help him.
And Garrett and Isabela would have one hell of a story for them tomorrow.
Hopefully, his hair would be back to normal when he heard it.
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A/N: Thank you for reading, and please feel free to let me know what you think! If you read Andraste's Witch and would like any other side stories for those characters, feel free to send me a request.