Fenris's particular secret was that he had nightmares every night. The figures were always hazy, always addressing him in muffled voices, always giving him to Danarius, whom he would promptly stab through the throat-only to realize that he'd stabbed his own throat with Lethandralis. Fenris would often wake up screaming, with Lethandralis aimed at some indistinct point in the darkness of his bedroom.
He'd had such a nightmare when a flurry of knocking descended upon his front door one morning. Late morning sunshine streamed in from the windows, almost blinding him. He threw the sheets off, pushed himself, from his bed and made for the wash basin in one corner. Fenris already knew whom it was; the particular enemies he'd made never knocked.
"Coming, Hawke!"
After Hawke gave him the coral, Fenris's afternoons and some of his evenings were becoming...increasingly occupied with chatter. The chatterer was usually Hawke, ranting about Kirkwall's nobles, complaining about her mother's expectations, gossiping about their companions. But strangest of all, sometimes, Hawke would come to Fenris's mansion and spend the afternoon sitting silent. Sometimes, she'd stare out the window; other times, she'd help him drink another bottle to emptiness-always, she'd leave him something like a slice of cake or a piece of chocolate, and once, a painted figurine of a vhenadahl tree, just like the one in the Kirkwall alienage. The tree, Fenris placed in the middle of the dining room's long table, right next to the red coral, untouched since the night Hawke gave it to him.
Thus, he had come to expect-but could still not quite get used to-being roused from one of his brooding moods by Hawke's spirited voice echoing his name over and over again. That morning, he wrenched the front door open and noted that she had a basket of bread, cheese, and grapes slung over one arm. In the other, she held a book bound in red-brown leather.
"Boddahn bought this new Orlesian cheese down at the market yesterday," Hawke said by way of greeting. She brushed past Fenris and set the basket down on a nearby long table, one leg of which was propped on a small chest. "I thought it would go well with your wine. Oh, right! I have something for you."
She held out the book. Fenris took it as if it were a small snake-the poisonous kind. His forehead crinkled in consternation over the familiar but absolutely senseless letters embossed on the front cover.
"It's a book." Fenris hadn't told Hawke that he could no more read that book than read the volumes Hawke's gaze spoke whenever it lingered on the table with the vhenadahl tree and the coral.
"It's a subject you're familiar with," Hawke said. Fenris looked up; Hawke had a tentative sort of expectation on her face. He knew she was trying to be helpful, and so he steeled himself for the direction that this conversation was undoubtedly heading. "The book is by Shartan, the elf who helped Andraste free the slaves. You know about him, right?"
"A little," Fenris said. He had no idea what he was about to unleash when he opened his mouth to say, "It's just...slaves are not permitted to read. I never learned."
After that, Hawke came around twice a week with regularity, although she never dropped by on the same two days from the previous week. By the third week of his reading lessons, Fenris had given up trying to find a pattern. If she kept this up long enough, he feared, he might start expecting her always and Danarius's bounty hunters, not at all. In fact, he was starting to fear her a little-perhaps not Hawke herself, for she was a patient teacher, having experienced teaching her twin siblings to read years ago-but for what her visits had come to mean. He chalked it up to how difficult it was to read fifty-two characters, both capitalized and not; in fact, he always went to bed exhausted now, as if he'd been training all day.
Their lessons took place at the dining room table, the coral and the vhenadahl tree always in view. Fenris suspected that Hawke had chosen that spot on purpose, as if he needed further reminding that she would not leave him alone.
"What is the point of all this, anyway?" Fenris asked one afternoon, disgusted. He had pushed away the Book of Shartan for emphasis. Learning to read, he realized from the get-go, was nowhere near as instinctual as learning to fight. As soon as he thought he figured out how a word was supposed to sound, Hawke would point out a combination of consonants around the vowels that defied the rules.
"I know what you're thinking," Hawke said from where she was sitting on his right. There was a time when Fenris would have been irritated at Hawke's assumption that she could at all guess what was on his mind, but these days, it amused him. "'I doubt remembering that 'sound' and 'wound' don't rhyme will smite Danarius where he stands.'"
Fenris grunted and cradled his forehead in his hands.
"Reading is for when you don't have to fight," Hawke said, pushing the Book of Shartan back to him. "It's so that you don't go looking for fights."
"I don't go looking for fights, Hawke," Fenris released his forehead and looked her squarely in the eyes. "In case you've forgotten, the fights come to me."
One corner of her mouth quirked upward. "Well, I don't see any fights here now. Unless you're planning to smite me where I sit?"
Fenris said nothing to that. He glared at the letters on the book, unseeing. He knew he was being unreasonable and impatient and that reading had very important practical uses, but he also felt slow and helpless. Like...like when he was a child at the beginning of his time as Danarius's slave-
Hawke's voice tugged him out of the past. "Besides, how will you read any letters sent to you?"
Fenris scoffed. "I don't get letters. Danarius's bounty hunters also don't tend to announce themselves like that."
Hawke grinned. "I could write you letters, Fenris."
Fenris realized he must've picked up Hawke's habit of raising a single eyebrow, because he did so now at her. "Why would you do that when you come here so often? What would you even say?"
Hawke's grin grew wider. "You'd have to learn to read to find out, wouldn't you?"
Fenris was stunned at first, but then he gave a throaty chuckle. "Hawke, you are the second most infuriating woman I've ever met."
"Really? Only the second? Whom must I best to be the first?"
"Isabela."
Hawke's laugh was hearty and made the corners of her eyes crinkle. "Maker's breath, think of all the ravaging, pillaging, and stealing of precious Qunari relics I'd need to do! I'll just have to settle for second, then. But seriously, Fenris, I could write to you if you like. Little notes that say, 'dear Fenris, don't scowl at the book too much or your face will freeze that way.'"
Hawke was miming writing on a piece of paper now, while her chin rested on her free hand and her eyes were on him. Fenris smiled wryly.
"'Dear Fenris, I think you're a little impatient, but a good student,'" Hawke continued.
Fenris snorted, mostly to stave off how conscious he felt of her gaze, of the short distance between his shoulder and hers. Why did it feel like she could read him so clearly? It was just unfair. "Really?"
"I mean it," Hawke said, and her gaze was piercing now. There was something about the way she said it and the way the rays of afternoon sunlight washed over her curves and edges that made his breath catch. She was so bright, so unlike the darkness of his mind. If he but reached up, he could touch her face. What would she do then, he wondered.
Fenris felt that ever since she moved to her estate that she should be there more often, among the clean and expensive furniture, the servants, the cluster of nobles itching to get in her good graces; that's what any other person moving up the ranks of Kirkwall's nobility would have done. It's what a mage moving up the ranks in Tevinter would have done. But Hawke spent so much time getting into all sorts of trouble in Lowtown that Fenris wondered what point living in Hightown served her.
I know you made a promise, but why do you keep visiting me, Hawke? Why are you here?
"'Dear Fenris,'" Hawke breathed, eyes shining. "'I-'"
Just then, a pigeon-so many of them had migrated to Kirkwall from Ferelden of late-flapped in from an open window and scooped up the red coral in its beak.
Hawke stood up. "-I think we need to catch a pigeon."
But Fenris sat rooted to the spot. He remembered that he had not had a nightmare recently. And as he put two and two together, watching Hawke move in and out of the sunbeams after the pigeon, he suddenly realized why.