A/N: Lord, sometimes I wonder how it is I write these things.
Chapter Two: In Which the Elf Objects, Violently
She was infuriating, she and that damned dwarf. If they had started out with a single bit of good sense to share between them, they were slowly killing it off with drink and stupid plots.
"Foolish."
Frustrated, Fenris slammed his fist against the wall of a crumbling building, the sharp bevels of his gauntlets sheering off pieces of eroded stone and spraying the packed dirt street. The night was blessedly empty as he stalked angrily back to the ruined mansion in Hightown. There was no one he wanted to see. His legs moved stiffly as he paced, his armor hot and stifling, feeling constricting at his throat and around his chest. Angrily he yanked at its collar.
She was an idiot.
He was… what.
Ruining things, that's what. The realization made his eyes squeeze shut, made his stomach clutch. He had barged into a private conversation, insulted her, and proceeded to give her an order. Him giving her an order, like he had any right to do so. Was he not just another stray invited to eat at her table and follow along at her heels?
No, that wasn't fair. Hawke had been nothing but kind to him, especially considering that their acquaintance had been premised on his initial deception. He himself had risked her life; that he had followed her willingly into danger ever since did not make him less of a hypocrite. Still, she had offered him a place, treated him fairly, rarely asking of him things he was not wont to do. Even if the situation demanded, she always made it clear that it was his choice.
Choice. As if he had one when she looked at him the way she did, with clear blue eyes framed with those long, dark lashes. There was a small crinkle that appeared between her brows when she was being earnest; he had seen her lie, boldly, with a clear countenance. Just not to him. He didn't think she had ever lied to him, even if she had made it plain that there were things she would rather not discuss.
He probably should apologize.
He'd just wanted to keep her safe.
A growl of frustration alarmed a passerby as he neared the Hightown square that housed Danarius' mansion, and he glared, causing the hapless man to move to the other side of the street. Wonderful. He could almost hear the voice of that damn mage floating disembodied in his head, calling him mongrel. Dog. Monster. Fenris grit his teeth so hard it made his jaw ache, hands clenching tightly to fists, the effort grinding the interlocking metal pieces of his gauntlets together.
The house was dark and empty, as usual. Fenris stalked through it as he always did, checking, making sure, this time bitterly disappointed that the ransacked mansion was deserted. Climbing the stairs to what had become his living quarters, his hands struck out, knocking things from shelves without really seeing them, adding broken items to the rubble that littered the floors. He lifted a lamp, hefted its weight, admired it, and then threw it at all wall where it smashed into pieces.
The lamp dissolved against the wall near her face.
"Fenris."
He hated the way her lips shaped his name, the soft sighing way it was almost a question. He took the word, turning it over in his mind, examining it for the accusation he expected it to hold and found only compassion and the slightest threads of wounded bafflement. Shame rose to choke him and he turned his back to her, feeling a guilty flush rise from his throat and ascend to the roots of his hair. "Get out."
"Do you not think I deserve an explanation?"
His response stung her; he could hear it in the whip crack of her voice. Good. His lips twisted into a smile that contained nothing but self-contempt. "Do you think I wish to waste my breath? You will not listen to me." He turned to face her then, lyrium-banded arms firmly crossed over his chest, feet apart and planted. He had intended to stare at her impassively, a look one might give a child behaving badly, but he could feel himself glowering. Hawke sighed audibly, pushing a hand through her hair, irritably removing the few stray locks that petulantly insisted on falling into her face.
How often he had to resist the urge to do the very same thing, to open up that lyrium-blue gaze to him, to brush the callused pads of his fingertips over her smooth skin, to trace the outline of the delicate bones beneath her flesh. To find out what she felt like – if it would be as he imagined. He bit down on that thought, chewed it up, swallowed it, vaguely aware that his hands had clenched at his sides, the metal gauntlets making that grinding noise again. He would not dare to touch her, could not bear to, not when his hands itched to close around her white, slender throat and choke the stubbornness from her.
"I am listening to you. Trying to." Her voice softened, soothed. She was trying to calm him, put him at ease, lull him like he was some sleeping bear she had roused by accident. He knew what she was doing, and it rankled. Even after all of this time she still thought his wild moods were a blister she could simply smooth balm over to make disappear. "I want to understand."
He was being unjust; the quick twist of guilt in his gut reminded him of it. Again. "We have such things in the Imperium. A place where the Magisters send their useless slaves, and those too wild to control. To die for the entertainment of others, that is not a fate worth fighting for. I do not wish to see you marred by it."
Imperium. Magisters. Slaves. He spat the words as though they were venom, tiny drops of poison rolling off his tongue. It always came back to that with him, like Anders and the Circle or Isabella with that damned relic. The little obsessions that ruined them all.
"I'm not going to die, Fenris. It's just a job." Unsettled now that the intense green of his gaze was upon her again, Hawke turned to the side, paced a few steps, turned back. "How long have we fought side by side? You can trust me to defend you in battle, but not myself?" Her tone turned waspish with insult, the words sounding almost bitter. Carver. "Contrary to whatever you may think, I did manage to take care of myself before you came along. I didn't ask for you to-"
Wild dog indeed. His temper flared and snapped his control clean in two. He rushed her, his cold gauntleted hand closed around her arm and yanked her around, forcing her to bend face down over a table shoved to the corner of the room, pressing her with the weight of his armored body. She struggled belatedly, wriggling in his grasp, and managed to land a hard elbow in his belly before he unceremoniously flipped her over to face upward.
His hands banded about her wrists, the metal cutting into her skin. He gripped her hard enough that he almost felt her bruise, felt the grind of bone and joint beneath the flesh. Snarling, he kicked her feet apart before she could think to use her knees against him and moved in closer, his slim hips pinning her flat against the table.
He had never handled her this way. For the most part they did not touch, not even small familial gestures passed between them. He always seemed to require a safe buffer of distance, which she respected, careful not to push the limits of his comfort lest he be driven away completely. To have him so hard against her, so fully, so suddenly, so without warning, it choked a gasp from her lips even before he curled a hand around her throat.
Fenris towered over her, stretching her body upward with the hand that curved like steel manacles around both of her wrists, forcing an arch in her back, the hand about her neck taking hard hold of her jaw and jerking her head up to look into his face. Close, he was so close, close enough to inhale the deep scent of him, even over the bitter smell of the beer that stained her clothing. His body flickered blue with power, lightning tracing along the lines in his skin. Fear smashed into her like a fist followed by a flood of hot desire, afraid in equal measure of what he would do, and what he wouldn't.
He did not see how her eyes unfocused or how her lips parted tremulously as she moistened them nervously with her tongue. Instead he reveled in her helplessness, his capture of her, the power over her he held. He could break her apart. Rip the life out of her.
"Do you see now?" He snarled down at her, his hand closing around her throat again, using it to give her head a little shake. "Does this explanation suffice? I cannot protect you if you chose to fight alone. You cannot even protect yourself from me." His last words to her came out in a hiss of breath. "Festis bei umo canavarum."
You will be the death of me.
"And yourself," he added quietly, releasing her at long last and turning away. "Just go, Hawke."
When he looked again, she was gone.
