(Note: I am still working on The Danger of Touch, I promise. But since I was doing this fill for the DA Kink Meme, this story started to generate a life of its own and now has a grip on my mind. I figured people would like to read it here.

This fic will be borrowing from the great poet Pablo Neruda. In fact, all the chapter names will be coming from his works.

Rating subject to change, but I don't think anything explicit will happen in this one.)

Letters to Nowhere

By Ambrel

"The Question"

The pen felt heavy in his hand. His fingers, so used to gripping the braided hilt of his claymore, slipped clumsily around the length of the writing utensil like it was a fish he'd pulled from its watery home. Purple-black stains had already spread on his hands and on the table, across the scraps of parchment and some on the floor beside the chair in which he sat. Calluses from years of martial work meant nothing to the small, dexterous world of the pen.

It was awkward. It made him feel inadequate, that pen. It held silent witness over his many, many mistakes. It judged his progress and in his mind, found him wanting. The length of feather – quail, from the coloring – was frail. But how it judged, how it read his stuttering marks upon the page with the weight of a proving master, intent on exploiting the weakness of his student.

Weak.

It was a small thing. Delicate, like a slender river reed or a flower's stem and he feared he would break it in two. His efforts were shaky, white-knuckled with concentration, and riddled with errors that were calmly corrected by the woman who sat in the chair across from him. Her voice never wavered, never jeered, never laughed. She undertook this self-appointed mission with the same sense of gravity as she did when reviewing tactics or choosing marks. Her mind had been set from the beginning with the words she had said: "You will learn to read. It is part of being free."

How could he refuse?

And so he found himself here, in front of a comfortable fire. It hadn't taken long to learn the basics of the alphabet. She'd written the formerly mystifying sigils in a neat line across a parchment for him, followed by a small drawing of something to represent that letter. An apple for 'A', a bow for 'B', and so on. He'd graduated from rounding out the shapes of each letter to monosyllabic words. From there he learned how certain letters interacted to make sounds that made absolutely no sense. Small phrases, then simple sentences.

Before he knew it, he was learning to see the language in a completely different way. Parts of speech. Nouns. Verbs. Adjectives. How they all worked together. These were skills that, in the spoken language, he had used and understood intuitively. It forced his mind into an unnatural shape when he realized that there were more dimensions to the concept than he could have ever guessed. Nuances were numerous and almost without end. With each new skill and every small triumph, he was reminded of how much more there was to know. And he was certain that he might never know it all, and inexplicably, the thought saddened him as much as it spurred his progress.

In short, Fenris was well on his way to becoming a lover of the written word, no matter how it vexed his pride.

He'd never anticipated the growing pains – cramps in the small muscles of his hand that ached like a bruise. Sharp quills that stabbed pinpricks into his unsuspecting hands. Headaches that came with squinting in candlelight. A crick in his neck from leaning over his work in one position too long.

Fenris raised a hand to his neck to rub away some of the tightness that had settled there. Hawke's eyes followed his movement and she leaned back in her chair. "I think that's enough for tonight."

The elf frowned, but obediently began to gather the scribbled papers together, blowing on the ink to dry it. He folded them with the utmost care before securing them in one of his belt pouches. When he straightened to thank Hawke for yet another lesson, he found himself face to face with a thick sheaf of papers bound together with a length of twine. He raised a brow and looked at her in askance.

"Here," she said with a smile, "It's for you. I remember back when papa was teaching me. It was always easier to practice on my own when Bethany and Carver were out playing. I was thinking that maybe you could do some practice on your own if you get too bored in your mansion by yourself."

"What would I write?" He asked. He had no stories to tell, or at least, none that he would like to share.

"Anything. That's the best part about a blank paper. It can become anything." The woman replied. "Take me, for instance. I write in a journal each day. Sometimes it helps clear my mind. You could do something similar. Or if you want, I can come up with some sort of project for you after each lesson."

Fenris regarded the papers with an appraising stare. "Perhaps."

She handed him a few spare bottles of ink, four fresh quills, and a small wooden box to keep the papers in. "You can use a needle and twine to bind them if they get too disorganized to handle," she said as an afterthought. "And let me know if you need anything else. I always have extra writing materials laying around."

A nod and a short walk later, Fenris found himself at his doorstep, pulling at the doorknob with one hand while trying to balance the box of paper in the other. It only took a few moments to fumble the door open, but in that time he caught himself staring at a series of letters and numbers that he'd not noticed above the door frame before. He squinted, turning his head a little to the left as his lips moved. It was a painstaking process that took longer than it should have, sounding out those semi-familiar letters. "Ten…sixteen. Su…suppli…ent? No, Sup-pli-cant…supplicant. Supplicant's..re. R..e..s..t. Rest. Supplicant's Rest." His brow furrowed. How fitting an address for the living place of a former slave. And how ironic for Denarius, who had occupied this place before him.

He went inside.

There was a desk in his room. It was large, too heavy to move closer to the fire by himself, but there was no shortage of candles in the abandoned bones of the house. It didn't take him long to hunt up a couple of fat pillar candles and set light to them. Then, dragging a comfortable chair to where he had arranged his workstation, he pulled out each item from Hawke in turn, laying them out on the tabletop to examine them. A thrill of excitement rippled up his spine. He had these things and they were his. There was a novel feeling to the idea of being able to write and read and in truth, he hadn't had enough yet. His fingers itched to hold the quill for reasons he couldn't pin down, despite the feelings of inadequacy that it imparted to him.

What to write?

There was no sense in writing about his day, really. It was a day of little consequence. The most eventful thing that had occurred was his meeting with Hawke, and there was not much to speak of there. Like any lesson, it served the purpose of enhancing a new skill.

Any stories he may have known were either already well known here or they were of the sort that he did not care to share. And if he were to engage his trademark honesty with himself, he was not yet equipped to record any stories. His grasp of the written word, while beginning on a good foundation, was still lacking in eloquence.

Fenris sat mulling over this conundrum, tapping his lower lip with the feathered edge of a quill, when the answer came forth, unbidden yet clear.

What did he watch Denarius do every day that he stood guard at his shoulder? Scribble letters. Missives to apprentices, messages to partners, letters to contacts the maker only knew where. Fenris could write letters. Letters did not have to be long, overdrawn affairs like stories. They could be short and succinct. They could be conversational or formal.

"Perfect," he murmured to himself, sitting. "But who to write?"

His circle of acquaintances was not large. Not Isabela. He'd nothing much to say to her as he'd yet to sound her out. Sebastian was too well-meaning. Varric needed no further ammo and he wasn't sure Merrill had yet learned the art of writing in anything but Dalish symbols. Anders was out – except, perhaps, when Fenris worked his way up to a finesse that would leave the man speechless with rage after the first sentence. Aveline was busy and ambivalent. He had nothing to say to her.

That left one person, then. Hawke, the one who pointed him this way to begin with.

He lifted the pen, dipped it in the ink, and wrote carefully on the first sheet of paper.

Hawke.

Thank you for yor help. I will try to rite ech day to hon my skells.

Fenris

Simple. Full of errors. It took him far too long to write even that small amount of words and the crick in his neck was threatening to come back. He eyed the paper critically before breathing the ink dry. "It shall have to do. Small steps." He reminded himself, putting the paper into the bottom of the box, folded up over itself, before closing the box itself.