The sky was blanketed with twinkling stars, stretching as far as the eye could see. Below it, the sea shimmered in the moonlight. Fenris scoffed at the sight; it seemed a nice, if excessive view, a complete world away from the bleakness of this place Varric called the Wounded Coast. The air was chilly; the salt of it would probably wear away lesser, ordinary armor. Good thing his armor was neither lesser nor ordinary.

He would've liked to dangle his legs over the edge of cliff for a few minutes, just to know what it felt like to be weightless, but he decided against it. If trouble came bearing down on the camp, he had to be ready. That was why Lethandralis lay within arm's reach in the sand, among the shells and dried coral.

"Fenris?"

Fenris looked over his shoulder. Hawke stood there with a bottle of ale in one hand, her robes slightly blown about by the breeze, her edges limned in the campfire light. Thirty paces behind her, Isabela was leading a drunken Anders and an amused Varric in a rousing and erotic shanty, while Aveline polished her sword with a rag, obviously and pointedly trying not to listen.

Hawke tilted her head to the side, exposing her long neck. Fenris caught himself watching the motion and cursed inwardly. He noticed a while back that there were little moments like this one, when he could feel Hawke breaching his walls without her even knowing what she was doing; lately, he was starting to think that some part of him was letting her succeed.

She said, "You hardly touched your food."

Fenris turned to the horizon once more. "I'm not very hungry."

He could feel Hawke raising an eyebrow. He felt her brush away a few conches, crouch to the ground beside him, and shuffle her legs so that she could get more comfortable in her new position. She sat two handspans away from him; Fenris knew because the tips of their fingers were but a few inches apart. The bottle, she set between them.

Hawke said, "Aww, that hurts my feelings. I made that bread, you know."

One side of Fenris's mouth turned up in a wry twist. Hawke was a mage with a sense of humor he could get behind, he'd give her that. "Is that so? No wonder it was a little hard."

"Excuse me, sir," Hawke's voice took on a mock offended tone. "Are you saying I'm a terrible baker?"

Fenris glanced at her. He'd heard from Varric about how Hawke had lost her sister Bethany as their family and Aveline escaped Lothering. He hadn't been there in the Deep Roads when Hawke decided to give up Carver to the Grey Wardens rather than let the taint take him. Fenris had no family of his own, and he couldn't imagine the pain of losing them, but he could imagine that the weight Hawke carried was heavier than his sword. He'd often wondered how this strange apostate woman could smile and crack jokes so easily, but he could never decide if she was a fool who took nothing seriously or a fighter who wore her strength in ways he had yet to comprehend. Looking at her now, pretending to be upset with him-poorly, considering the cheeky grin-he made a decision.

"I'm saying," Fenris said at length. "That the bread is as hard as you are on the inside."

Hawke's grin faded a little. She looked out to sea. "Well, now I don't know if that was an insult or a compliment."

Fenris's ears twitched. They'd never done that in the Imperium. The annoying quirk began around the time he came to Kirkwall. Further observation made him conclude that they were a reaction to embarrassment-and he was definitely often embarrassed around Hawke. Definitely more often than he would've liked.

"Forgive me, I'm not practiced at giving compliments," he hitched up one leg and rested his chin on the knee. "I didn't know anyone worth giving them to before you."

Hawke looked at him with that raised eyebrow yet again. "And yet you're an expert at flattery?"

Fenris chuckled. He hadn't realized how that had sounded. "We both know I'm not good at that, either."

It was Hawke's turn to chuckle. "Oh, I believe you're better than you think. Ale?"

Fenris eyed the bottle. "I'm not sure. Did you make it?"

"Every time, your sense of humor startles me."

Smirking, Fenris picked the bottle up, took a gulp, and set it down between them again. Overhead, a seagull squawked, and below, the surf roared. Behind them, the sounds of Anders' sobbing about a Ser-Pounce-a-lot were dying down. As Hawke and Fenris stared at the waves crashing on the rocks, a silence fell. It took Fenris a second to realize that it was the comfortable kind.

"Fenris," Hawke said.

Fenris grunted in acknowledgment.

"Why are you sitting out here, away from the camp? It can't be to set a watch, unless you're expecting the darkspawn to rise up from the sea."

Fenris said nothing. He didn't know, himself.

"I'll tell you what I think."

Fenris suddenly gripped his ankle with the hand that had been lying close to Hawke's. "I didn't ask."

"You didn't ask, but I'll tell you anyway," Hawke said.

Fenris glanced at her again; this time, Hawke was reclining on her elbows, her gaze at the stars and her throat exposed. He began to wonder what it was with him and the curves of her neck.

"I've noticed that even when we're at the Hanged Man, you tend to sit a seat apart from the rest of us at the bar," Hawke continued.

Fenris tightened his grip, thinking that the pain of his metal fingertips digging into his leg would brace him for whatever painful revelation Hawke was about to make. He did nothing to stop her from talking. Some part of him didn't want to hear this-whatever this was-but a evidently, a bigger part of him was curious and it was winning.

"You're used to being alone, and yet you keep tagging along with us when I ask you to."

He always thought it was because he was showing Hawke his gratitude for her having helped him deal with Danarius's bounty hunters on the night they first met, but he knew now that that reason had slowly been giving way to another.

"All your memories are of you being alone or ending up alone eventually. Being alone is all you know."

Fenris released his ankle. He hitched up his other leg as he took a swig from the bottle again. The ale burned as it traveled through him. He thought of his life at the Imperium, barely speaking to the slaves who feared Danarius's special pet; of living with kind Qunari whom he later murdered at Danarius's command; of running from town to town, realizing that the most he'd spoken to someone was one of the bounty hunters, before he crushed the man's head.

He put the bottle down, his hand still wrapped around the neck as he said, "You don't know a thing about me, Hawke."

Hawke shot him a burning gaze, more searing than the ale, confirming what Fenris had always suspected: that she was lovely even when she was serious. "On the contrary, I do know one thing. You are lonely. And I'm going to make you a promise."

She sifted through the sandy ground and lifted something between them. It was a jagged piece of coral as big as his palm; even by moonlight, Fenris could tell that it was a brilliant, blood red.

Before he could stop himself, he asked, "You're going to make me a promise on the bone of a dead animal? I must have failed to notice that you're drunk, Hawke."

"Oh, I don't know," she shrugged. Her smile returned to her face and voice. "It seems more romantic than making you a promise on a bottle of ale, don't you think?"

The sound that Fenris made was the lovechild of a grunt and a chuckle.

"Come on, Fenris, humor me!" Hawke's eyes darted to Fenris's hand, still on the bottle's neck. She held out her free one.

He would never say so, but the gesture moved Fenris. He'd never told anyone, but Hawke must've known that he hated being touched. He shouldn't have been surprised, but now he knew for sure that Hawke had been watching him as much as he'd been watching her. He removed his hand from the sand and placed it an inch above her outstretched one, palm up.

Hawke put the piece of coral in his palm and folded his fingers over it. Her own hands lingered atop that hand. Fenris realized that the metal edges of his gauntlet must be cutting her fingers, but she said nothing about it. Nothing in her gaze or her smile betrayed any pain; he felt that that made her somewhat unreachable.

Hawke said, "I promise you, Fenris, that unless you tell me to, I won't leave you alone."

And though he'd said so before, Fenris felt with a strange surety in his stomach that Hawke, with one side of her face bathed in moonlight and the other in firelight, was beautiful.

"Hawke! Elf boy! Are you two canoodling over there?" called Varric's voice.

"Varric!" objected Aveline, all the scandal perfectly encapsulated in those two syllables.

"Canoodling? On a cliff over the sea without care for the sand getting in your ass? Oh, that's so my style, Hawke!" called Isabela.

"No one wants to hear about your exploits, you slattern-" growled Aveline.

"Ladies, please! W-we-hic-should be fighting darkspawn, not-hic-each o-other-" Anders hiccuped.

Hawke groaned and rolled her eyes. She pushed herself off from the ground and dusted her robes before taking the bottle of ale. Fenris took this opportunity to reach for Lethandralis and resheath it in the scabbard at his back. When he looked back at Hawke, her hand was in front of his face, palm up.

"Let's go back," she said. "Before Varric starts telling tall tales about my sex life."

As Fenris pushed himself off the ground, he ignored Hawke's hand. Hawke raised an eyebrow for the third time that evening.

"You go ahead," he told her. "I'll follow."

Hawke shrugged. Then she gave him a smile that seemed to say 'well, I did promise you after all, didn't I?' and walked toward their raucous, waving companions.

Fenris stared at her retreating back, then at the coral in his palm. He pocketed it. If he was being honest with himself-and he was starting to think that he wasn't nearly so honest with himself as he thought he was-he hadn't taken Hawke's hand because, calloused as it was from handling her staff, he had felt its softness and warmth-its life-through his gauntlet. He'd seen the dents and the shallow, bloodless cuts in her palms, made by the gauntlet's grooves when her hands had slipped off. He knew she could handle such small wounds, such small pains, but still.

Still.

Fenris smiled one of his wry half-smiles. He walked back to camp, the red coral in his pocket warm against his thigh.