AN: Oh my goodness, it's not a kmeme fill? No, my friends, it is not—or at least, not directly. Hawke and Fenris simply had more to their story than I was able to fit in the original fill, and when one of my closest friends asked me to continue it, I couldn't not say yes. This directly follows In Salt and Gold, so I would recommend reading that fic first. I hope you enjoy!
-.-
After Rain
part one
-.-
for Hikki
-.-
And yet, and yet,- -
Seeing the tired city, and the trees so still and wet,- -
It seemed as if all evenings were the same;
As if all evenings came,
Despite her smile at thinking of a kiss,
With just such tragic peacefulness as this;
With just such hint of loneliness or pain;
The perfect quiet that comes after rain.
-Evensong, Conrad Aiken
-.-
The door opens with a soft, protesting groan.
Fenris pauses in the doorway, the Kirkwall sun still warm on the back of his neck as he looks into the half-shadowed ruin of his foyer. Three months he has been gone and nothing has changed, nothing—here is the moldering armor still piled in the corner; here is the broken flagstone that Hawke trips over every time she visits; here is the layer of dust so thick on his unused lamps that it swirls up in angry, glittering whirlwinds at the breath of his entry as if the mansion itself resents the interruption of its solitude.
He decides that is appropriate. Fenris steps into the gloom, letting the dust settle grudgingly around his bare toes, and lets the door fall closed behind him.
It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust to the sudden dimness, but his feet need no such consideration; even after everything that has passed he still remembers his way through the cracked and fractured halls he has lived in for six years, and he moves unerringly up the chipped stone stairs to the one room of the house he has ever used with any regularity. Sunlight falls in straight, cool shafts from the grated ceiling as he crosses the landing, the only witness to his return to this place that still does not feel like home.
Even his room is untouched. Fenris does not know why this surprises him as he surveys the tattered drapes, the windows thick with grime, the blankets and furs piled haphazardly before his unswept fireplace; from here he can even see his little pot of armor polish on the flagstones at the end of the bench, just as he'd left it the morning he'd meant to meet his sister with what little pride in his appearance he could manage. He did not have the means to give her riches—he'd thought at least to give her a brother she could look at without shame.
"Irony of ironies," he says aloud, the sound falling dead in the still air around him, and plucks the polish from the ground to replace it on his mantle. In truth, he has more pity than hatred for Varania now; she made her choices with open eyes, and the magister whose mercy she so craved is dead along with all her hopes.
Danarius is dead.
His claws dig into the wood of the mantle at the sudden thought. It shocks him every time, the realization that his master is no longer walking in this world, no longer hunting him and those who gave him harbor—he is, in every sense of the word, free.
And he feels nothing like it.
That, Fenris thinks, is the problem. He has killed his master with his own two hands, felt the man's rotting heart quiver and die between his fingers like a rabbit in a snare, and still he cannot shake the quiet terror that one day he will wake in that thin cot with the high barred window, that Hawke will again turn to him with blank eyes and not know him. He is as unchanged as his mansion, a slave hiding under the dust of old habits and old fears, unmoved and unaffected even by something as enormous as Danarius's death.
Fenris turns on his heel, stalking out of his rooms without touching another thing. It has, after all, managed without him for three months; it will manage a little longer.
-.-
His feet lead him toward Hawke's estate without conscious thought. Indeed, her door is within sight by the time he realizes where he has been heading, and when the belated recognition occurs to him Fenris curses and stops in his tracks. A woman with an enormous basket over her arm lets out an impatient sight as she veers to one side to avoid running into his back, but Fenris pays her no mind, beyond irked with himself. Hawke had declared only an hour ago that she had every intention of going straight to bed and sleeping for two days; he'd resolved quite firmly not to disturb her, and still he finds this is the first place he turns to ease his disquiet.
He doesn't begrudge her the rest, of course—she'd been weaving on her feet as they'd disembarked from Isabela's ship that morning, unsteady from more than three weeks spent at sea, and at her side Fenris, too, had been dazed with weariness and the sheer impossibility of finding themselves in Kirkwall again, together. He'd knocked sideways into Hawke more than once as they'd walked through the docks, exhausted and so dizzy with disbelief that he hadn't been able to string two coherent thoughts together outside of sleep now and sleep more. Even now, fatigue presses hard behind his eyes as he steps out of the pompous bustling of the Hightown streets, as if to remind him of how long it has been since he truly rested. Two months—three? No, he thinks as he leans against a wall under a patch of hanging ivy, longer still than that—even before Varania came he had slept poorly, anxious and eager and certain that every morning brought both betrayal and fulfilled hopes.
Fenris crosses his arms and lets his head tip back until it rests on white, sun-warmed stone, choosing to let that thought drift away without pursuit. Kirkwall breathes around him and he focuses on that instead, on the bright silks draped orange and gold and cobalt blue in the brilliant mid-morning sun, on the steady stream of babbling voices that catches him up in their current as if to remind him that even this wretched city knows the comfortable touch of contentment.
His eyes lift involuntarily to the high and narrow windows of Hawke's estate across the square, seeking out by habit the ones that look into her chamber—but when the crimson curtains drawn across them flutter with a movement inside, he drops his gaze with an impatient sigh and shifts against the wall. Orana's bustling, he's sure, proof enough that Hawke is asleep; he will not disturb her, even if the memory of her warmth pulls at him like a half-heard song, quiet and insistent—no. He will give her this peace. He had said he wanted to see to his home and she'd let him go without a word; it is hardly her fault that he cannot bear the stolid silence of his stolen manor at the moment, and if that means he has to wander the streets a little longer without rest—
"Ooh, what's this? Should I tell Hawke there's an elf-shaped ghost haunting her doorstep?"
Fenris cracks an eye open, unsurprised to find Isabela standing far too close for comfort, her head cocked sideways to peer under his hair. "Isabela."
She grins at his tone and straightens, and the sun catches like fire on the edges of her earrings. "And hello to you too, you silver-tongued charmer. Is there a reason you're out here playing statue, or did you just decide it was time to frighten the Kirkwall gentry with black looks and lots of leather? Because that sounds like fun, even if it's not quite working." Isabela jerks a thumb over her shoulder and Fenris sees a group of young nobles' daughters staring at him from across the street, clustered around a merchant selling semiprecious stones. When they notice his attention, one of them whispers to the others and all four burst into peals of embarrassed giggles.
Fenris suppresses the urge to snarl and looks away instead. He has had more than enough of foolish women admiring him like an exotic and dangerous pet, enough for a lifetime and longer. Even the silent oppression of his manor would be preferable to this scrutiny, and without a word he pushes away from the wall and turns back the way he came.
Isabela falls into step with him, slinging a casual arm over his shoulder, and a girl's faint and disappointed sigh carries to his ears with the wind. "You're not going in to see Hawke?" she asks.
He shakes his head. "She should sleep."
"Tch. I can think of worse ways to wake up." Her grin is more a leer, but she doesn't resist when he shrugs her arm off his shoulders. "Not that it'd matter," she adds more seriously as they round the corner into the quieter courtyard of the Chantry, "since Hawke's out like a light anyway. I can't imagine her waking up until afternoon tomorrow the way I left her snoring."
Fenris bites back his first thought—Hawke doesn't snore—and says instead, "You have just come from her estate, then?"
A pinched-looking Chantry mother purses her lips in disapproval at Isabela's bare legs. The pirate grins and adds a saucier shimmy to her hips in response. "Put her to bed myself."
"Did you?" Fenris says after a moment, forcing his voice to evenness, though Isabela's side-eyed glance tells him that at least to her, he is as transparent as glass.
"Look at those ears," she murmurs with a poorly-hidden smile, "lobster-red and glowing. Oh, unprickle your spikes, pet, I only made sure she was comfortable. Sometimes people rattle around in those big houses, you know, after they've come off long trips in tiny cabins. Especially," she adds, smile widening to a smirk, "when a cabin meant for one holds two instead."
Fenris trips over the last step up.
Isabela laughs, then, long and loud, and skips ahead of him to his mansion's front door, throwing it open without so much as a by-your-leave and striding in as if she belongs there. Fenris follows more slowly, his ears burning now with embarrassment rather than misplaced jealousy, and the sudden chill shadows of his manor do absolutely nothing to cool them.
"What, no biting retort? No 'silence, wench?'" Isabela's voice floats down from his upper story as he begins climbing the steps after her, and he can see her peering at her reflection in the dented copper surface of a shield held by one of the broken statues outside his bedroom door.
"I am—this is not open for discussion."
She throws a pout over her shoulder. The dented shield distorts her reflection, swelling her bottom lip to twice its normal size and flattening her nose against her face. "No details? Not even for me?"
"No."
"Are you serious? You finally sort out your shit after three years and get back together with Hawke—and under the most intriguing circumstances, might I add—and now you won't tell me anything?"
"No."
"Hmph. That's the last time I sail halfway across the world to save a friend from an evil, blood-magicky magister and his evil, blood-magicky mansion."
His mouth curves into an unwilling smile at that. Isabela is irrepressible, even now, and somehow her unfettered impudence presses back the shadows of his mansion, eases the thickness in the air like a window opened to a summer breeze. "I did thank you for that," he says.
Isabela scoffs and waves one hand dismissively between them. "As if that matters. Romping took place on my ship—my ship!—and I wasn't invited. This is a travesty of the highest order. I feel like someone should be flogged."
A tiny frisson of memory skitters through his mind at that—Hawke drops her forehead against the floor, digging her weight into the base of the column she is tied to as if that might ease her misery—blood spatters the marble floor, the white column she kneels against—Hawke's blood, drawn by his hand—and Fenris shakes his head sharply at thought and the sentiment alike to disperse them both into thin air. Amusement gone, he strides over and flings open the door to his room, hardly caring that Isabela follows him in like a curious cat, prowling around the edges of the dusty chamber and poking her nose into his pot of armor polish on the mantle as if it might be cream. He'd stashed a quarter-bottle of wine somewhere on the other side of the armchair when he'd left all those months ago—it is far too early in the day to be drinking, he knows, but he is frustrated and exhausted and the memories are more than he can stand right now, and when he fishes the corked bottle out from under the chair, he does not pause before taking a long draw.
He hears Isabela snort at his elbow, and then before he can protest her tanned fingers are pulling the bottle away from him and pushing him down into the armchair in a cloud of glinting dust. She throws him an inscrutable look, one hand on her hip, and when Fenris scowls she rolls her eyes and tips the bottle up to her mouth, finishing off the last of the wine in three swallows as if making some kind of point.
She wipes her lips on the back of her hand and sets the empty bottle on the mantle next to his armor polish. "Drowning your sorrows already? There's still so much daylight left for things to go wrong in."
"Small comfort," he says with less irritation than he means, and wonders if it would be too much effort to fetch another bottle from the cellar. He doesn't remember this chair being quite so comfortable.
"Aw, how cute. You're doing the same thing Hawke was."
"Hawke?"
She flaps a hand. "You know, that 'hiding-pain-behind-humor' bit. You haven't got the humor quite down yet, though—Hawke's a good bit better at that part than you—but the brooding pain thing? Definitely your niche."
The thought makes his heart twist. Hawke in pain, Hawke laughing through her pain—and Fenris nowhere to be found, too selfish to spare a quarter-hour to make sure she was resting properly. He leans back in the chair, a humorless smile quirking his mouth. As if he could presume to comfort her anyway, after everything he has done to her, has allowed to be done to her. He considers it a small miracle she hasn't yet chased him from her side—though he knows that even now he will stand there without hesitation, without doubt, for as long as she allows it.
Isabela watches him, her arms crossed over her chest where she leans against the mantle, and Fenris realizes she is waiting for a response. "I am not hiding any pain."
She laughs outright. "Of course not, pet. And I'm the queen of Antiva." She capitulates, though, and doesn't press, and when Fenris fails to suppress a yawn Isabela turns the conversation to safer things, letting her voice and his fill up the last cobwebbed rafters of his home-that-is-not-a-home until there is no trace of that heavy silence left to choke him.
He doesn't even notice falling asleep in the armchair.
-.-
"Do you know, my little wolf, that I begin to suspect you are unhappy with your gift?"
"Master?"
The world is: narrowed eyes, white teeth bared in a smile—cold, cold fingers sliding down the back of his neck under his jerkin to brush against the lyrium there in both promise and warning—the press of too-gentle lips against the tip of his ear, the whispered murmur of a lover stirring his hair. "Spare me your feigned ignorance, Fenris. I am not an unobservant man. I see how little you have her do; I see the sinecures you do give her, and I must say—I am quite tired of it."
"Master, I—"
The world is: long, thin, fishbone fingers curled over his mouth, a sharp-nailed thumb slipping between his lips just far enough for him to taste the cloves left over from dinner. "Be quiet, please, while I am speaking. I simply wished to tell you: if you fail to make good use of my gift, I will find someone who will. Do you understand?"
The hand slides away; he bends forward at the waist and says, "Yes, Master."
His master's robes swish as he steps back, satisfaction uncurling across his face—a jointed doll takes his place, then, a life-sized marionette with knotted strings that falls to her knees at his feet and stares up at him with Hawke's face. He hears himself say, "The master is chilled. Build a fire," and the doll nods; he sees that he holds the other end of her strings, so he raises his hands and drags her across the room to the hearth. It takes her three tries to strike flint, and on the third try a tiny spark catches in the dry and half-rotted logs left in the half-swept ashes. The Hawke-doll waits only long enough to see that the fire is taking, and then she folds herself up into a jumble of joints and limbs and knotted string and collapses into the fireplace.
The flames lick up her leg greedily, wrap around her waist and arms in a violent caress, crack the delicate paint of her face into spiderwebs. He stands there and watches her burn.
"I'm so sorry, Master," she tells him in Hawke's voice, bubbling up through heat-blistered lips. "Please, please—forgive me—"
Fenris bolts upright.
His room—he is in his room, he realizes, sprawled in his pile of blankets and furs before the empty fireplace fully-clothed, sweating and shaking and alone in the light of early morning. He blinks twice, his mind a white-fogged muddle of dusty rooms and old wine and Isabela's voice—and the fog clears with the sudden rush of memory. Isabela had talked him to sleep—and that in itself is an inexcusable lapse on his part—but he'd woken later in the evening, the room dim with starlight and dust, and he'd stayed conscious just long enough to stumble from the chair to the furs on the floor. The room has lightened again with day, though, the sun bright enough through his shredded curtains to hurt his eyes, and barely mindful of his gauntlets, Fenris presses a shaking hand over his face.
Please, please—forgive me—
"Stop," Fenris says aloud through his fingers, the sound echoing for a moment around him, and surges to his feet. "Enough," he adds more sharply, as if the dream's wisps might be dispersed with words alone, but when he pulls his hand away from his face it is slick with sweat and fear. There is a basin of fresh rainwater on a broken desk by the window, meant to catch the drips from one of the holes in his roof; Fenris sheds his gauntlets and his tunic in short, jerking motions and splashes his face thoroughly before upending the entire basin of cool water over his head.
The shock of it helps to wake him a little—what helps more is the realization that there are voices coming from downstairs.
"…even here?"
"It doesn't count as breaking and entering if you don't break anything, big girl." Isabela, Fenris realizes, and eases his white-knuckled grip on the basin.
Then Aveline's voice again: "Try that on me when I'm in uniform and see how far it gets you."
"Oh, I will, trust me."
"Not half as far as I could throw you."
A scoff. "You know, that's your problem. You're always so upright and uptight it's like you've got an iron poker up your ass. If you'd learn to bend a little—where are you off to, Hawke?"
Hawke. Hawke is—here? Fenris starts to run a hand through his hair in distraction before he remembers his gauntlets; he lowers his hands to dangle uselessly at his side, unsure what to say, what to do, but before he can decide on a course of action her voice floats through his closed door much nearer than the others'. His stomach lurches like a ship at sea.
"I'm just going to see if he's upstairs. Give me a second—I'll be right down."
"Not like I haven't seen those dusty statues before!"
The tarnished bronze handle turns and the door opens. Hawke's head is turned over her shoulder to answer Isabela, one hand still resting on the knob, so Fenris glimpses first the dark, high-collared coat that covers her from chin to knee over black trousers and boots, bound at the waist with a wide red sash. He hasn't seen these robes in years—she'd said once they made her look grimmer than a Chantry sister in Seheron—but with her old robes vanished during their voyage to Minrathous, he supposes she has little choice.
And then Hawke turns to face him and he forgets about her robes entirely.
"Oh," she says, eyes wide with genuine surprise. "You are here."
"Is he there?"
She leans back through the doorway without looking away from him. "Yes, he's here—we'll be down in a minute. Don't break anything."
"There's nothing left to break—"
Isabela's voice cuts off with the click of the door closing. Hawke leans back against it, a smile curving her lips. "Hi."
Her voice. Her smile, unmarred by fire or fear, and suddenly in the face of it his nightmares seem so very unimportant. "Hawke," he says and takes a step towards her; she pushes away from the door and comes the rest of the way to meet him, sliding both arms around his neck and pressing a gentle, playful kiss to the end of his nose. Then she pulls a face and takes a step back, and he smirks to see the damp patches on either shoulder of her coat.
She says, "You're wet."
Fenris raises an eyebrow without releasing her waist. "So are you, it seems."
"And whose fault is that, my darling?" Hawke mutters with false sweetness, brushing ineffectually at the fabric before Fenris takes her chin between his finger and thumb and kisses her properly.
Her eyes fall closed; Fenris grins and says against her mouth, "Mine."
"Yes," Hawke breathes, and for a moment Fenris is not sure what she is agreeing to—and then her eyes snap open and she puts both hands on his bare chest to push him back, laughing. "Fenris! I came here for a reason."
"Other than allowing Isabela free rein of my foyer."
She nods. "You really didn't hear us knocking?"
"I was—asleep."
"You've never been that deep a sleeper." Hawke draws her thumb over his forehead and down his cheek, her fingers warm through the water still lingering on his skin. Then, with that perceptiveness that no longer surprises him, she asks, "Bad dreams?"
Fenris glances away. "Yes."
Hawke pauses a moment more, her eyes searching his face—but she does not press him, and when a faint crash echoes up from downstairs, she claps her hands and brightens considerably. "Well, throw off the gloomy spectres of the Fade, my sour-faced friend, because I have a job for us that's going to be so exciting, so downright thrilling that I just know you'll be chipper and cheery as you've ever been by the time we're through with it."
Fenris had learned at the very beginning of their acquaintanceship that Hawke's enthusiasm for a task often ended up rather the inverse of his own. He tries anyway. "Slavers?"
"So close. Shopping!"
Fenris sighs. "And you…wish me to come on this ill-fated venture."
"You don't know it's ill-fated! It could be perfectly—good-fated. Well-fated?" Her fingers skate up the lyrium over his sternum, sending a little white spark shivering up his throat. "Pleasant, anyway."
He catches her hand in his, unable to hide his reflexive swallow. "Unless you wish to save this venture—ill-fated or otherwise—for another day, stop, Hawke."
She grins and drops her hands to her sides. "Does that mean you're coming?"
As if there had ever been another option from the first moment she'd walked through his door. "Unfathomably so."
"You're a champion, Fenris."
"And your flattery is transparent."
Hawke laughs. "As if you mind."
His lips twitch into an answering smile as she unearths his tunic from his nest of furs and tosses it to him. She isn't wrong, after all. "And the quarry?"
"Finery, I'm afraid."
He pauses with one arm still out of the sleeve. "Finery."
"There's a thing. A welcome-home gala…thing. For the Champion."
Her voice is chagrined, but Fenris can hear the hidden anticipation behind it as he pulls his tunic on. "I do hear they require formal attire at those events."
"Lace trappings and everything," she says as she crosses back towards him; her fingers do up the toggles on the front of his jerkin with practiced deftness, and when she reaches the last one under his jaw she lets her hands slide up to cup his face with a tenderness that is nearly painful. "It's just—such a normal thing to do. With you. Does that make sense?"
He leans forward until his head bumps against hers. "I understand, Hawke."
Hawke rests there a moment, her eyes closed, then pulls back with a smile. "Well, come on then," she says, holding out a hand for him to take, and Fenris steps forward.
-.-
This is how Fenris ends up in a private suite of one of Hightown's most exclusive boutiques, crammed into an undersized, gold-striped chair while a flock of attendants swoop around Hawke and Aveline for more than an hour, draping yards of fabric around them like a pair of entertainers' tents. A short, blonde elf holds up a bit of ribbon against Aveline's cheek and coos and somehow, Fenris suspects Aveline's faint blush has very little to do with the overwarm shop.
Isabela leans one elbow on a mannequin squeezed into a truly improbable corset. "It's puce."
"It's mauve."
"If that's mauve, then I'm the Revered Mother. Don't you think, Hawke?"
"Maker, I don't know. It just looks pink to me."
Aveline huffs and Isabela lets out a very pronounced tch, and after a furious but silent salvo, Aveline vanishes into the fitting rooms after the chattering attendant with a long and undeniably puce skirt fluttering behind her. Isabela rolls her eyes and pulls on another enormous hat, nearly stabbing Hawke in the ear with the bowsprit of the tiny replica ship crowning the brim. Normal, Fenris thinks, and sighs.
Hawke drops down next to him. "This was such a mistake," she groans. "I should have just had something ordered."
The delicate little chair creaks dangerously as Fenris shifts his weight. "It is not the most tedious thing I have ever endured," he offers. In truth, it has really been rather entertaining; he cannot remember the last time he saw Aveline in a dress, and the atrocities Isabela had chosen to model for their little party had produced as much laughter as horrified gasps—he thinks in particular of a brilliant yellow dress with more layers than some cakes he's seen—and when he compares the sight of Hawke in a well-fitted gown to the moldering skeletons in his foyer, Fenris supposes he has spent mornings in worse circumstances.
"Oh, thanks. But—I know. Let Aveline try on that other blue thing she's got in there and we'll go. I'll just ask Jean-Luc to take in that green dress with the sash I wore last year; nothing's fit right since Minrathous."
She says it easily, lazily, her arms crossed over her chest as she watches Isabela change out the ship-hat for a turban with a fistful of white feathers rising out of an enormous paste sapphire set in the center. Her face is relaxed, her eyes calm—but Fenris knows that under her flippancy she is as restless as he, the both of them caught in the tilted, stilting steps of half-forgotten habits, the once-easy routines now so unfamiliar they might as well have been meant for another life altogether. They both have scars from Minrathous, Fenris thinks; Hawke simply hides hers in a high-collared coat and a smile.
A smile that vanishes as she hears an anxious clucking approaching from the other side of the shop, and within ten seconds, another of Jean-Luc's shop-girls has materialized to hover at Hawke's elbow. "Are you sure you don't want to try anything else, messere? There's a lovely taffeta in the back all done in cream and silver beading—it'd look exquisite with your hair—maybe a little diamond tiara? Nothing too gaudy, of course, but the Champion needs something truly magnificent—"
Hawke laughs. "Thank you, but I think that's a little—flashy for me. We're just going to wait for my friend and go."
"Are you quite certain? How do you feel about satin? We just got in a truly stunning jupe trompette from Orlais in the most wonderful deep azure blue—it's got these clever little roses made out of ivory lace at the waist. Do let me show you."
A glimmer of the Champion's ire lights in Hawke's eyes as she opens her mouth, but before she can get a word out Isabela interrupts them both from across the room. "Hey, Hawke, come here. Have a look at this."
The shop-girl watches Hawke in despair as she pushes away and joins Isabela at a little dress rack in a corner, and then her eyes turn pleadingly to Fenris as if he might intervene and force Hawke into the truly stunning jupe trompette. "I do not command her," he says, shrugging, and the girl droops.
There's suddenly a furious rustle of silk and crinoline at Isabela and Hawke's rack, and then Hawke's head pops around the corseted mannequin with suspiciously flushed cheeks. "I'm going to, ah, try this on, Fenris. I'll just be a moment, okay?"
He settles back into the chair and raises his eyebrow. "Oh?"
"Yes. So just…wait."
"As I have been. For the last—" he glances at the sun streaming in through the shopfront windows in feigned pique, "—hour."
"Exactly." She grins as Isabela whisks the dress into one of the fitting rooms—Fenris catches a glimpse of dark red organza—and then, laughing, the pirate pulls Hawke in after her. "Five minutes!" Hawke says, and the curtain swishes shut behind her.
"Ah—excuse me—" the shop-girl says to Fenris, looking a bit stunned. "I'm going to see if they need any help. Those buttons can be a bit—fiddly—" She flits away after them, the rings on the curtain clinking together like bells, and Fenris smirks.
And then he hears the girl's voice from behind the curtain, loud and startled and tinged with outright fear, carrying through the sudden silence like breaking glass. "By the name of the Maker. Your back."
His amusement vanishes. He should have known—he should have expected—but even when Isabela's tanned arm appears, pushing out the girl in a wild flutter of linen curtains and bewildered horror, Fenris can find no peace. He knows what Hawke's back looks like.
After all, he left the scars there himself.
Fenris lurches from the chair in an ungainly, awkward movement that nearly topples the mannequin beside him. Fool, fool, fool—how could he not have realized what the girl would see; how could he not have stopped her following after them? He has become too complacent, too careless, too eager to believe Hawke's easy mask to see the truth hidden beneath it. He takes one step forward—but Aveline is ahead of him, swirling out of her curtains in a sky-blue dress only half-laced up the back; her pale, freckled shoulders show only for an instant, and then she slips into Hawke's room and pulls the curtain closed behind her. She asks a question, her voice low and gentle, and Hawke answers with a pained laugh that makes something deep in his chest ache.
The girl turns to Fenris with both hands over her mouth. "I'm so—I'm so sorry," she says, blinking back startled, embarrassed tears. "I didn't mean—it was an accident! I was just—surprised, that's all. Please tell the Champion I'm sorry. I would never have—never—"
She falls silent at the look on his face, her breath hitching. With as little control as he has at the moment Fenris is not surprised at her hesitation, but rather than frighten her further, he turns on his heel and stalks from the suite, leaving the flock of open-mouthed shopgirls and their tiny gold-striped chairs behind them. "Tell Hawke I will come back," he mutters to an elf with an enormous purple dress cradled in her arms; the girl bobs a nervous nod, and Fenris feels their stares burn into the back of his head all the way across the shop until at last he turns the carved rosette handle of the front door and escapes.
-.-
He doesn't go far. His driving need is not for flight but for air, for clean sunlight and wind and the less-oppressive company of people who neither know him nor care to. He is not inconspicuous—that is not a luxury his appearance affords—but he is ignored as he passes out of the shadows, and that is enough. It takes only three paces to reach the rail that overlooks the rest of the Hightown market; Jean-Luc's shop proper occupies most of the sunlit second level, exclusive and expensive and at the moment, choked with memory. Fenris stares down at the bustling hum below him, at the nobles and servants alike mingling at the open-air stalls with no more concern than saving a handful of coppers, and tries to push away the sharp-cracking echo of a whip in the back of his head.
"—appalling, really. Dragging the Champion off like that, like some sort of war-prize—it's savage!"
It takes him only a moment to find the voice's owner: a thin, older woman in a fur-lined stole standing almost directly below him, her head bent in coquettish secrecy towards another middle-aged woman in a pink dress. A younger, pale girl, about seventeen, stands beside them. "Oh, I know," says the other woman, flapping a hand. "I could hardly believe it when Lady Lukis told me! My sister always told me those foreign mages were barbarians—and she was right! It's beyond me why the city didn't send out some sort of—oh, search party or something. Atrocious, if you ask me."
"If you ask me," says the first woman with the fur, her voice dropping even lower, "I'm not so very sure the captivity was quite so—unwilling."
The girl scoffs, obviously disgusted with a theory she has heard before, but Fenris's hands tighten on the railing above them. The woman in the pink dress leans closer. "Do go on."
"Well, that foreigner—he was a mage, wasn't he? And you know she's one of them too for all the templars try to hush it up. They say Tevinter's a grand place for those people, a place they don't have to hide. And besides, you were there in the Keep just like I was; you saw her fight that horrible qunari beast. Don't you think she could have beaten a man if she really wanted to? A mock fight, a few scratches for show—and then she's off to a magic city without a care in the world to lord it over the normal folk."
"I suppose…but that seems—forgive me—a touch extreme. What about the elf?"
"What elf? Oh, oh—the lover? The slave?"
Fenris clenches his jaw so hard it creaks. It is beyond ludicrous to continue standing here, to continue listening to such mindless and spiteful drivel—and yet, he cannot seem to make himself move. Below him, the girl crosses her arms with a huff.
"The ex-slave, Mother. Perrin told me the mage was his old master, and the Champion went to Minrathous to help kill him."
"All that for an elf?" says the woman in fur, the way she might have said stray dog or table. "Don't be ridiculous, dear."
The girl, clearly stung, jerks her head away in a cloud of blonde braids and ribbons. "I think it's romantic."
"It's preposterous, and I don't want to hear another word about it. The Champion has better things to do than go around cavorting with dirty, foreign elves."
"Mother!"
"Lady's grace, girl, lower your voice! Show a little decorum—you're certainly old enough to know better. Come on, we still have two stops before lunch. So nice to see you, Iris; do stop by for dinner tonight. Bring Dudley along. It's been so long since we've seen you two…"
The two older women sweep off in a cloud of expensive perfume that catches on a slight updraft to carry to Fenris's nose. He hardly notices, though; he is lost in a sudden mire of unthinking fury, thick with guilt and dark with anger not for his own sake—he became inured to those insults long ago—but for Hawke. How dare they trivialize Hawke's pain; how dare they mock her suffering? The metal of his gauntlets digs further into the stone under his hands as he tries to stop himself from thundering down the stairs after those—those—
"Idiots!" comes a hiss, very angry and very quiet, and Fenris looks down to see the girl still standing ramrod straight below him, her hands fisted as tight as his own. "Stubborn, cockeyed old—old biddies!"
His anger seeps out of him like a cracked well. The girl is right, after all: they are nothing more than a pair of gossipy noblewomen, noisy as a pair of honking geese and just as significant. Hawke would have laughed to hear their assessment of her, not lost herself in rage. Fenris cannot laugh at this, not like she would have, but he can give their words their due consequence—none at all.
He pushes away from the wall, accidentally dislodging a bit of crumbled mortar with the tip of his forefinger. It falls straight and true as if he'd launched it on purpose, landing square atop the girl's head like a direct summons; she lifts one hand and her eyes follow, and before Fenris can even think of backing away from the rail her gaze fixes squarely on his, first in surprise, and then in slow and dawning recognition.
Her mouth falls open as she looks at him, then after the chattering figures of the two women, and then back at him in helpless embarrassment. He sees her mouth I'm sorry, and despite it being the second apology he has received in as many minutes, Fenris can still find no appropriate answer to give. In the end he settles for an unsmiling nod; the girl blushes furiously and dips a curtsey, and then sets off after her mother in a walk slightly too hurried to be called sedate. Fenris watches her go only for a moment and then, forcibly dismissing the conversation from his mind, he turns back towards the boutique. In truth, he has little desire to brave the frightened attendants and their army of overpriced dresses again. Even the thought of Hawke in a red gown is not tempting enough at the moment, and when the window display of the tiny shop next to Jean-Luc's catches his eye, he lets himself be distracted by the sight.
It is a sweets shop, he realizes, the window full of artfully-displayed chocolates and gourmet candies scattered across red velvet like gems. Fenris himself has little enough of a sweet tooth, but even a box of stickied plums is preferable to one more shamefaced apology, and before he can talk himself out of it, Fenris enters the shop and tries not to feel like a man walking to his doom.
"Morning, serah," calls the proprietor from behind the counter, a heavyset, bearded man in a spotless white apron. "Looking for anything in particular?"
"No," says Fenris, flexing his fingers at his side in discomfort. The shop is empty save him, the very air sugared enough to make his teeth ache.
The man shrugs and goes back to arranging a pristine pyramid of truffles on a crystal platter. "Suit yourself. Let me know if you see anything you like."
Fenris says nothing and without real purpose, begins wandering through the narrow aisles. Every table he passes is crammed chest-high with sweets; one is covered in brightly colored hard candy, another with every conceivable fruit surrounding a basin of melted chocolate. He finds himself holding his breath as he passes an impossible, delicate spire made of spun sugar, the fire-hardened candy drawn thin like wire and shaped like glass into a perfect, intricate replica of the Chantry belltower. Then, on the stand just past it, he finds a display of molded chocolates that so surprises him that he stops dead in his tracks.
"Like those, do you?" The shopkeeper laughs, placing another truffle atop his pyramid. "I call them Templar Treats."
Fenris picks up one of the pieces by its foil wrapping, careful not to touch the chocolate itself. "Are these…?"
"Knight-Commander Meredith's face? Why, yes, they are. Hand-painted, each piece."
Fenris replaces the piece of painted chocolate among its sisters, feeling absurdly nervous at the sight of sixty tiny Merediths staring accusingly up at him. "And does the Knight-Commander…care for this sort of thing?"
The man shrugs. "Haven't the foggiest idea, serah. She's never come in to try one, if that's your meaning. But they sell like hotcakes, and until she sends a batch of templars to shut them down, I'll keep making them."
"Ah." Fenris edges by without making eye contact with the confections again, or with the little red-glazed templar shields surrounding them. Then, in the corner, he spies a large, earthenware bowl surrounded by almost plain canvas sacks tied off with scarlet ribbon. By the time Fenris makes it to the table, his discomfort is gone; when he sees what the bowl holds, he wants to smile for the first time in days.
The bowl is filled to the brim with salted, honeyed almonds.
He is not used to gift-giving, but two thoughts race through his head in quick succession: Hawke would like these and I wish to give these to Hawke. Shaking his head at himself, he hefts one of the white canvas bags in his hand. Two or three pounds, he guesses—too much to carry easily, considering Hawke's other packages, and certainly too large to conceal—but all the same, he does not hesitate as he carries the bag to the front counter.
"Ah, found something, did you?" says the man, already pulling out a bit of brown paper to wrap the bag. "We just got those in from Vol Dorma. Will you be taking this with you, serah, or would you like it delivered?"
Of all the things Fenris had expected to do today, buying sweets for Hawke had not exactly been in the top five. "Delivered."
The man turns and shouts into the back room; a moment later, a young boy with a smudge over his nose emerges with a quick step. "A delivery," says the man, handing the boy the wrapped package, and when Fenris finishes the directions, the boy sketches a wide-eyed bow before vanishes out the front door like a shot. "Don't mind him," the shopkeeper says, giving a good-natured sigh. "A bit of hero worship, that's all. It'll pass."
Fenris chooses to let the confusing statement go without asking for clarification—enough time has passed that he is eager to rejoin the others, and he is not interested in dwelling on the muddled mind of a chocolatier's delivery boy. "How much?"
"No charge."
Fenris blinks. "I'm sorry?"
The man smiles behind his beard, waving Fenris towards the door. "Just tell the Champion—welcome home."
"I will," Fenris says after a moment, and the smell of spun sugar follows after him as he leaves.
-.-
"What have you been up to? You smell good enough to lick."
"Browsing," Fenris says shortly, and pushes Isabela's face away from his neck. "Where is Hawke?"
"Just changing now," Aveline answers him from where she stands at the window, picking through a display of beaded shawls without much interest. "If you want to go back to the suite, she'll be done in a moment."
There is something in her voice—but she shrugs, and Fenris gives a slow nod before making his way to the rooms at the back of the shop. Isabela falls into step beside him and he throws her a glance, but her face is perfectly casual—and then he opens the door to the private suite and realizes the stark and bitter truth.
"An ambush," he says flatly, and hears the click of Isabela locking the door behind him.
Leaning against a mannequin draped in a man's formal suit and with Jean-Luc himself brandishing a tape measure at her side, Hawke crosses her arms and grins.
-.-
"Are you still sulking?"
"No."
Varric laughs. "You are! Third day in a row—this has to be some kind of record, elf."
Fenris flicks a bit of wet sand from his wrist, sliding his sword over his back and studiously avoiding Varric's eyes. "Leave it."
Hawke slings her free arm over his shoulder with a fresh spray of wet sand while Varric nudges one of the dead slavers over the edge of the cliff, sending the body toppling into the grey seas below them with a quiet splash. "Ignore him," she suggests with a grin.
"Him, or you?"
"Sourpuss."
He scoffs. "Nuisance."
"At least you'll be a sharply-dressed grump."
He dislodges her arm with a stiff shrug; she lets him at first, but as her hand withdraws she reaches up and tweaks his ear, and it is only her laughter and her quick-footed retreat up the rock-strewn path of the Wounded Coast that keep him from chasing her down. "You may expect retribution for that, mage," he promises, shifting his weight casually to one side. She knows as well as he does that his mood is mostly show, and he lets the corner of his mouth curve up in a smirk.
"Empty threats," Hawke taunts, but he sees her edge a half-step further up the path.
Fenris nearly starts up the path after her, leaving the rest of the dead slavers' pocket-pilfering to Varric, but before he can take more than a step Anders has slid between them, both arms outstretched to ward off the impending battle. "No roughhousing," he says to Hawke, eyes stern and unforgiving. "No hard running, no jumping, no extra strain. You've already pushed it coming out here to fight; I'd really rather not have gone all the way to Tevinter and back just to lose you to sepsis. And you," he adds with a glare at Fenris. "Don't encourage her."
The world is: cold steel eyes, a tight fist in his hair, and a honey-smoothed voice curling into his ear. "Do not encourage her, dear pet. One does not praise a sword for its sharpened edge; one does not reward a slave for unexceptional service—"
The memory is worse than cold water to the face. Fenris scowls, but Hawke cuts him off. "Anders, I'm fine—"
"You're not, and you won't be if you open up your back again." Anders pinches the bridge of his nose with a weary sigh. "I'm not confining you to bed rest, Hawke—I just want you to be careful."
Her eyes soften as she drops a hand on Anders's shoulder. "I know. I will be."
Anders looks doubtful—and rightly so, Fenris thinks—but concedes with a frown and lowers his arms.
"Fantastic," comes Varric's dry voice from behind them. "Heartwarming, really. Now, if today's touching family drama is finished, you want to help me with these slavers?"
Hawke grins, swinging her staff loosely at her side as she makes her way back down the path towards Varric and the bodies still surrounding him. "You know, I really missed going through dead people's pockets with you, Varric. Every day, between the magisters and the mind-numbing busywork, I kept finding myself thinking, 'oh, if only I had a bit of frayed rope and a couple of broken longswords, then this place would really feel like home.'"
"I'm touched, Hawke," Varric says, and shoves another body into the sea.
They make short work of the remaining slavers, even with Hawke's inability to focus and Anders's covert fretting, and soon enough the four of them are on their way back to Kirkwall, marginally richer and a good deal dirtier than they'd left it. The skies are clear, the weather cooling with an early fall, and even the biting, salt-thick smell of the ocean is almost restrained as if in welcome—but Fenris notices little of it. His thoughts are miles away, lost in the white marble halls of a magister's mansion, and it is not until he walks squarely into Hawke's back that he realizes she has stopped.
"Are you all right?" she asks without preamble, and Fenris blinks the coast back into existence. Ahead of them on the path, Varric and Anders are deep in some kind of discussion about structuring manifestos, far enough away that their voices will not carry with the wind.
"I am fine," he says, realizing belatedly it is a mirror of her own answer and equally as truthful. "I was thinking of—broken longswords."
Her mouth twists in a wry grin. She has told the others little of what happened in Minrathous, Fenris knows, only enough to assuage their concerns and fill in the longest stretches of their absence. They know that her memory suffered; they do not know the scars on her back are of his making. "Masochist."
"Not without cause," Fenris says, and lifts his hand to touch the high, black collar of her coat.
"You know you're the only one who blames you for that."
"Because I am the only one who knows? I am overjoyed."
"Sarcasm doesn't do you any favors, Fenris."
"Neither does ignorance," he retorts, but his thumb slides along the line of her cheek to temper his tone.
Hawke shakes her head, letting the argument die before it starts. "Change of topic. You have any plans for this evening?"
"Besides your ludicrous party?"
"Besides my ludicrous party."
"I do not."
"Good," she says, and hooks a finger under the wrist-strap of his gauntlet. "Come home with me after."
Fenris raises an eyebrow, ignoring for the moment the sudden lazy curl of heat in the pit of his stomach. He wants to ask are you certain, and he wants to ask are you well enough, but he knows Hawke would not welcome either those questions or the sentiment behind them, so instead he closes his hand around hers and says only, "I am yours."
"Good," Hawke says again, a warm and half-hidden promise in her eyes, and when Varric calls after them, the smile she gives him lingers in his thoughts all the way back to Kirkwall.