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The Wild Dark
Chapter Two: Stay
"It happens when they least expect it. When their hands are bloodied and their muscles trembling."
Her room is warm and open and dimly lit by candle when Hawke wakes. She cannot remember a night she slept without dreaming of Bethany but tonight the Fade left her sleep uninterrupted. There is an ease in her waking. And when she wakes, somehow she knows he will not stay.
It is in the way the balcony doors lie open in the evening breeze, the way the candles around the room have burned all night, the way he sits at the edge of the bed, his fingers barely grazing her arm as she opens her eyes to his.
She does not say anything when she sees him fully clothed, waiting patiently for her to wake, but something she thought she left back in Lothering made her pull the sheets up to cover her chest as she slowly sat up. Fenris glanced at the subconscious motion but said nothing. She rubs at her eyes momentarily and glances around the orange light filled room before resting her gaze back on Fenris. His lips are tight. He looks down to her hand gripping the sheets.
"I…" his voice is rough and uneven, and Hawke wonders how long he sat practicing these words before her lids had fluttered open. But she makes no response. She only looks at him. Somehow she knows he will not stay.
His green eyes are on hers again. "I remembered everything."
There is a slight furrow to her brow and a tightening of her fist in the sheets.
"For a moment," he continues, clearing his throat. His fingers trace hers but her hands do not unclench from the sheets. "For a moment I remembered everything. And then it was gone."
It was like the afterimage of a flame. As though he blew out a candle and where once the flare burned alive and fierce and infinite, there was a sudden darkness and the momentary outline of a flickering glow playing on his eyes. Enough to make you wonder if there was ever a flame in the first place. His mind had reached for the memories but they were gone before he could follow them, leaving a lingering afterimage that posed more questions than answers left in their wake.
Hawke's eyes fall to the tattoos splaying his arm and she reaches out the hand not holding the cover to her chest to tentatively trace the lines. "Did it hurt?"
Her voice is colored with concern and wonder and her hazel eyes, when they meet his, are already reflecting what he knows he will say soon.
He sighs. "No. And yes. It is not the pain that has me…upset."
Her hand stills over his arm and pulls back to lie in her lap. She licks her lips. "But you are upset."
Fenris stands and walks to the open balcony, leaning one arm on the fireplace mantle as the light flames beside him slowly fade. His back is to her and she cannot see the pained indecision on his face. "I am sorry. I do not think I can do this."
Her voice is soft and expectant when she answers him. "I thought you wanted your memory to return." But there is something that tells Hawke this is an empty point, an empty sentence to fill the space she knows he will not cross. Not yet. But it is better than looking at his back.
He turns his head to catch her gaze over his shoulder. "Not like this. Not…" he swallows thickly, turns his head back to gaze out at the dark gardens below her Hightown balcony. "I do not want the memory of your touch to be tainted by such things." It is when he says these words that he knows she was right when she called him selfish. But he knows no other way to be and he thinks that he might have made a mistake to visit her bed tonight.
There is a ruffling noise as Hawke leaves the bed to stand sheet-covered at his side. She does not touch him, does not look at him. She stands there, and she breathes with him. When he breaks from his lean on the mantle to turn to her he has already expected the anger of her gaze, but it is tampered by an exhaustion that has nothing to do with her body. "Stay", she breathes quietly, harshly.
His hand rises to brush her shoulder but stops at the wetness dotting the corners of her eyes. She sniffs once, swallows, blinks away the moistness until her face is as empty as her voice. "Stay." Her whisper breaks him in ways she would never understand and he is already turning for the door.
Somehow, she knew he would not stay.
"Well, what the hell crawled up your ass this morning, Hawke?" Aveline sheathed her sword as she posed the question to the mage.
Hawke scowled at the Captain but said nothing as she returned her staff to its carrier on her back. The venomous spider she just dispatched with unusually furious flames was still squealing in its death throes as the last of the horde fell before them. Isabela looked up from her nearby rifling of the dead mine worker to quirk a brow in their direction. "Obviously no one who knows how to make a good impression."
Anders scrunched his nose in distaste. "I honestly could have done without that, Isabela." His hands were glowing over Hawke's elbow as she held her wounded arm to him.
"Quiet, whore," Aveline snapped, "Before I collar you for lewd and lascivious behavior." But there was something amused in her tone.
"Oh, I'm sure you'd like to collar me," Isabela countered with a smirk, rising from her squat on the Bone Pit's cavern floor. "I always did peg you for the role-playing type."
Aveline pursed her lips in a retort but Hawke interrupted them first. "Can we just finish clearing out these passages so my men can get back to work?"
The wound on Hawke's elbow had closed over and the magic left Anders hovering hands. But he held her elbow gently as she moved to pull away. She turned to him questioningly.
"Are you sure you're okay?" His voice was low and meant not to be heard by the two other squabbling women beside them.
Hawke huffed at first but softened at the look of concern in his eye. She inclined her head toward Anders and smiled slightly, though it did not reach her eyes. "Thank you Anders. But yeah it's…it's fine. Nothing important."
He released her and stepped aside to move along the passageway with her. "If you say so. Just know that your friends ask out of concern," he glanced at Aveline and Isabela arguing behind them, "However misguided it may be." He chuckled and looked back to Hawke as they walked further into the mine.
She shrugged noncommittally. "I just…I just have to be mad for a couple days or something and then I'll be good. I promise. There are worse things in this world."
Anders' look was somber as he eyed her. "Yes there are."
There was something warming and comforting in his presence beside her as they walked, even as Hawke knew it would take more than a few angry days to settle her.
But she was right. There are worse things in this world.
She learned how to look at him without looking, how to speak with him without speaking. And he learned how to accept that it was more than he deserved.
"Is that a letter from your brother?" Fenris asked the question after several minutes of hesitation, trying to decide if it was worth asking since she probably wouldn't talk to him about such things.
They were all sitting gathered at the wood table of Varric's room in the Hanged Man. There were pints all around the table. The warm heat from the candles surrounding the room mingled with the laughter and voices to settle comfortingly on Hawke's bones. The relaxed air was something missed lately since her return from the Deep Roads. Around the table, Varric and Isabela were teaching Merrill how to play poker while Anders and Aveline interjected occasionally, throwing the whole table into arguing the finer points of the game.
Hawke had pushed her chair from the table just enough to pull the letter from her robe pocket and read it in relative privacy. Fenris hadn't been paying much mind to the haphazard card game their company was playing and instead watched Hawke as she perused the paper in her hands. There was nothing in her face to indicate the message's contents but the paper was worn and looked as though it had been folded and refolded a few times. It was a letter she had read before.
When Fenris asked the question quietly he didn't really expect an answer, but she looked up at him. She pursed her lips and refolded the letter, sliding it back into her robe pocket. "Yeah," she finally answered. "The one he sent from templar recruitment."
Fenris nodded at her answer, looking at their companions around the table. He shuffled in his seat for a moment before continuing. "He has not written to you since?"
She leaned back in her chair, her hands coming to rest on the arms. "A couple letters. He mostly writes to Mother." She paused as she watched him before adding on acidly, "Besides, he really shouldn't be associating with a mage, right?"
Fenris lowered his eyes. "You are his sister."
"Yeah, and that means nug shit compared to the corruption I harbor, right?" Hawke's voice had risen slightly, but she was careful not to warrant the attention of the whole table. Her eyes were narrowed accusingly at Fenris alone.
He pulled in a slow breath, staring at her through confused eyes. "I never-"
She sat forward, her hands gripping the arms of her chair. "Oh but you've thought it. That's what templars are for, after all, to keep the malicious mages in line. And I bet you're just waiting for the day my brother turns me in. It wouldn't be the first time I saw a man's back." With her last words hissed through clenched teeth, she pushed her chair back sharply, catching the attention of their companions around the table as the laughter suddenly halted. Hawke glared at Fenris one last time before throwing a few coin on the table for drinks and storming out of the room.
Everyone was left to look around the table in bewilderment at her sudden exit. Fenris gripped the arms of his chair, his jaw set rigid. Anders set his cards on the table and leaned back to glare at the elf. "What the hell did you-"
"One word, mage," Fenris seethed, not looking at the man as he too left his chair at the table and headed for the door. "One word more."
Fenris was out in the chill night air and halfway up the walk to Hightown when Aveline caught his arm with a gruff "Hey!". Fenris whirled, snarling, but settled as Aveline crossed her arms in front of him. The Captain of the Guard was not someone he wanted to make an enemy of in this city. "What?" he asked lowly.
Aveline sighed and uncrossed her arms, her face easing into something Fenris almost would have called soft if he had not known her. "Four years," she said simply, as though Fenris had any idea what she was referring to. At his look of question she continued, unaffected by his glower. "I don't know what you two were talking about when she stormed out and-," she raised a hand to stop whatever words were forming on Fenris' tongue when he opened his mouth to retort. "And it is none of my business."
He stopped at that.
"But whatever she has said to you in anger, please, understand that it comes from someplace still hurting." Aveline touched her hand to her chest, as though to signify her words. "Tomorrow it will be four years since her sister Bethany died. And with Carver away from home now…"
Fenris blinked at Aveline, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. He turned his gaze from hers, looking up the path to Hightown that would eventually lead to Hawke's doorstep.
"Sometimes," Aveline continued, pulling in a chill breath from the night air and wrapping her arms around herself. "Sometimes worse than not having family is having family you cannot be with," she finished pointedly.
Fenris turned back to Aveline and quirked a brow at her. She simply shrugged, rubbing her hands down her forearms. "Something to consider." With that she turned and headed back toward the Hanged Man. Fenris was left to watch her.
It happens when they least expect it. When they are running through Bartrand's haunted halls and the voices and possession are rampant. When they are each screaming in their violence, hands deft on swords and staffs and the song of lyrium is hidden just beneath the rushing of blood in their ears. When his sword is mid-arc through the air on a path to the abomination rampaging her. When the energy of her magic is blinding in its explosion from her. When she is sure she was not fast enough but somehow, the abomination is slumping before her and she sees green eyes and glowing skin sprayed with blood. Her vision floods but she has no time to thank him, no time to do anything but swing her arms around to the mercenary raising a mace in his grip. A sheet of ice rushes from her hands and stills his swing just as Varric's bolt comes from beside her, shattering the frozen man to the floor at their feet.
And so it goes, for the first wave, for the second and the third. When in each of their movements there is apology and there is forgiveness and it is only for each other. When their hands are bloodied and their muscles trembling. When it is only one and only the other and there is no time to explain this blistering thing called emotion between them. When all they know is the fight and how to survive it. When the bodies have stilled and the air is singed with magic and agony and they stand beside each other, Varric shaking Bartrand in his madness. When their eyes meet and she whispers "okay" as his hand slips into hers and she learns to accept that he needs time. When there is understanding where there wasn't before and they are better for it now. It happens when they least expect it.
When Hawke and her companions had encountered Feynriel in the Fade, Fenris had not expected to betray Hawke so quickly. It weighed on him. It was what brought him to her door this night. He had stood before her mansion for several minutes clenching and unclenching his fists until Bodahn had opened the door by chance and stumbled into him. The dwarf ushered Fenris in quickly, calling to Hawke upstairs before he made his way back outside to head to the market. There was a moment of quiet anticipation when he caught her at the top of the stairs and each had stared at each other silently, breathing in trepid hesitation. She had moved first, motioning for him to come with her toward the library as she lit the candle sitting on top of the table in the center of the room. They sat in unison and Fenris had always hated awkward silences.
"I must apologize," he began, his hands resting atop the table as they sat together before the fireplace. "I cannot believe that I was so swift to turn my back on you in the Fade. There is nothing I can say that may atone for that." His eyes were grave, his knuckles white as he gripped his hands together.
Hawke watched his tense position for a few wary seconds but sighed resignedly after some consideration. There was too much now before them and between them and behind them to think of atonement. She only shrugged and leaned back in her own chair. "It's alright, Fenris. It's the Fade. It's hard to trust anything in there." It was something she had known for years.
"But you were steadfast in your conviction. You never faltered. How is it that I was so weak?" His eyes searched hers and she understood that there was no answer she could give him that would make any sense.
She sighed, reaching back to rub the back of her neck. "I've had experience in the Fade. As a mage, it's…it's something that never leaves you." She eyed him for a moment, gnawing on her bottom lip.
Fenris lowered his gaze to his hands. "And that is the temptation you face every waking moment?"
There was nothing accusatory in his tone, only wondrous. It was enough to keep her talking. "Yes." She leaned forward, laying her own hands on the table, feeling the heat from the candle between them. "It's like – I don't know…otherworldly. It's freeing and powerful and dangerous. Because I know how close to destruction I come every time I allow that freedom inside." She put a hand to her heart, feeling the comforting thump beneath her fingertips.
"Not all mages are so…unaffected…as you are." His words were firm and unrelenting. Regardless of everything he had seen in her. But she would have it no other way. She would rather he be strong in his convictions against her than be weak in indecision.
She felt no anger though, and it surprised her that she could not fault him in this moment. An experience that should have nurtured something of awareness if not respect to mages' situations had only seemed to dig him deeper in his distrust. "And not all demons are as convincing as you've seen," she retorted.
Fenris watched her through hooded eyes. "You find me frail in the face of demons." It was a statement but even he was unsure of it.
"No," she answered, shaking her head. "It's hard to explain if you haven't lived with it. Let me…let me start from the beginning." Her hands were outstretched on the table, her offer open between them and there is nothing in her face that tells him she will think any less of him if he refuses. But he nods silently, motioning her to continue. There is more than curiosity in his decision. There is a need to understand why his dreams are filled with songs of lyrium he doesn't know the words to, and why there is nothing to settle the shadows inside him but the heat of her touch and the intensity of her gaze.
Hawke swallows thickly, pulling in a deep breath as she starts an explanation she is not even sure she understands herself. "Have you heard the Chant of Light? Or at least, the important bits the Chantry goes on about?" At his quirked eyebrow she rolls over his amusement and continues speaking, her hands motioning in front of her with her words. "Well, to be honest, I'm not a religious sort but my father wanted me to learn the stuff. Said it was important to know the arguments against our kind. And that there's more to be interpreted in the Maker's words than the propaganda of zealots."
Hawke stood from her chair and began to pace the carpeted floor of her library. "The Chantry teaches us that the Maker made his firstborn in his image but he was disappointed in them. He gave them a world of no substance and no struggle and saw that they created nothing. 'By your will all things are done. Yet you do nothing. The realm I have given you is formless, ever-changing. And he knew he had wrought amiss.'"
Fenris blinked in surprise at Hawke's direct quote from the chant. It stunned him into silence as he watched her move across the floor before him, her hands waving in motions with her words.
"So the Maker made man. And in man he created opposition, with sky came the sea, with darkness came the light, and all things came in struggle with other forces. This is the nature of man. And the Chant tells us that the Maker says 'To you, my second-born, I grant this gift: in your heart shall burn an unquenchable flame, all-consuming and never satisfied. From the Fade I crafted you, and to the Fade you shall return each night in dreams, that you may always remember me.' You see," Hawke turned to catch Fenris' gaze as she laid her hands on the back of the chair before her, "the Fade is the closest to the Maker as we may hope to be. And the spirits of the Fade only seek to gain the Maker's favor once more by inhabiting his second-born creation, men. It is in our dreams, in the world of the Fade, that we become nearer to our creator. And it is in possessing the creator's pride that spirits become nearer to their creator."
Her cheeks were flushed with fervor, her words quick and excited and Fenris could not keep his eyes from her as her words filled the warm air around them. "Magic is the breath of the Maker, what crosses the Veil to share our two worlds. It is in all of us. That is why blood is so powerful in casting spells. The magic is in the blood. Just as the magic is in the lyrium in the Fade. Lyrium and blood are the cross channels between the Fade and the mortal realm and the reason each has such a powerful pull is because in each of us is the urge and the need to belong, to be accepted by our creator. To find some purpose and reason for existing. And maybe it is not my fault for wanting such but the Maker's fault, for creating this 'unquenchable flame' in me that yearns for something more than what I can give. And though I know the spirits are only searching for the same purpose and fulfillment that I am, it does not stop me from recognizing the difference between our worlds. It does not stop me from recognizing that I may lose myself in the search for the Maker. And that is something I am not willing to yield. That is what makes me strong." Her words were breathless as she finished, her eyes bright with sincerity and a passion to her features that left Fenris in awe.
"And maybe," her voice was soft, hesitant, her fingers tight on the leather of her chair. Fenris could not help his instinctive lean toward her to hear her more clearly. She swallowed at the look in his eyes, but she understood that having convictions was more important than having the right convictions. And it didn't matter if her words meant nothing to him. Because they meant something to her. "Just maybe, mages are closer to the Maker than everybody thinks."
There are nights Fenris starts to wonder if the past is worth rehashing.
"Oh Maker, and I thought Hawke was trying to ask me out!" The group around the table burst into raucous laughter at Donnic's remark mid-story. Aveline smiled and blushed behind her hand, her other arm linked through Donnic's on the table. Hawke shook her head and took a swig of her drink. Wiping her mouth she pointed a tipsy finger in Aveline's direction. "You missy, had me in a rather uncompromising position." She giggled, her smile brilliant against her flushed cheeks. The music of the Hanged Man was especially joyous tonight in congratulations of the Captain's engagement.
Isabela set her mug down and pulled her feet from the table. "Well, I'm in a right mood for dancing now. Varric?"
At his name, the dwarf finished the drink in his hand and stood from the table, his laughter rumbling up from his chest. "Alright, Rivaini, but watch where you put your hands. Bianca's the jealous type."
Isabela mocked a gasp, a hand to her chest. "I would never, Varric." But she was beaming as they stepped onto the floor and Donnic and Aveline were already following them.
"My lady?"
Hawke's attention was caught by the hand outstretched to her and she looked up the arm to find Anders' warm face smiling down at her. She grasped his hand and pulled herself up, stumbling slightly into his arms as they laughed together and moved toward the other dancing couples.
From where Fenris sat beside the bar, Anders' hands were just a bit too comfortable on Hawke's hips, their bodies were just a bit too close and her smile was just a bit too bright to not be shown in his direction.
"Wait a minute, wait a minute. His name is DuPois?" Hawke raises her eyebrows at the name but at Emeric's look she can't hold it in any longer and cackles into her hand. Fenris rubs a hand down his face and Hawke wonders silently if it's blasphemy to laugh at a templar.
There is nothing he can say that will make sense in this horrible mess of too-late and not-enough. There are no words that will do anything but insult her grief so he just stands before her as she holds her head in her hands and whispers "Mother" over and over. There is no more heat to be felt from the extinguished candles in the room. There is no more comfort to be felt in the silk sheets of the bed she sits on. There is no more strength in her hands to rub at the tears so they fall unabashed and uncontrolled down her cheeks as her shoulders tremble.
But he cannot just stand there. So he moves silently toward her and sits beside her on the bed, the cool breeze from the open balcony reminding him of that night she had asked him to stay and he had turned his back on her. He looked away from the open doors and turned his gaze to her shuddering form. She did not reach out to him. She did not lean into him. And when he hesitantly reached a hand to touch her shoulder he could have sworn there was the slightest flinch from his touch. But it was barely there and she was too far past caring that she didn't move when he laid his hand more assuredly along her shoulder. The air was damp and clenched in her lungs as she sobbed into her hands. His touch slid along her back and drifted to her neck. He swallowed, and there was a moment where he felt he might have been wrong to come to her tonight.
But before he can second guess himself she lifts her face from her hands to lock eyes with him and he cannot move. There is nothing glorious in her pain, nothing magical or ethereal in her tears. There is nothing but brutal, unadulterated vulnerability in her eyes and her throat is raw with the screams. Her hands are shaking. There is nothing beautiful in her grief. There is the strangled hiccup in her throat as she sucks in a shaky breath, the catch of more tears threatening her voice and then her head in his lap and tears and snot and worse being smeared into his tunic as she grips the material to her face and tries to quiet the wails. His hand is in her auburn strands and there is nothing romantic in the way the filtered moonlight lights upon her hair. It is only stark and strange and makes him run his hand from her hair to her neck and rest along her shoulder blades in motions that he hopes are comforting but knows are nothing more than graceless.
So he does what he knows. He does what he feels, and his hands are rough and unexpected when they pull at her shoulders to raise her to eye level. Her eyes are muddied with tears and there is the caked streak of Quentin's blood still clinging to her cheek. She is gasping for breath in between sobs and her fingers are trembling as they wipe at her nose. She moves with his direction because the ache in her chest is too strong to allow anything else. And she doesn't care if he hates her like this. There's a part of her that wishes it even now.
"Hawke." Her name on his tongue is like nothing she has ever heard. It is like a song she used to know but can't recall and it brings fresh tears to her eyes as she squeezes them shut to his demanding green ones. But he doesn't let her.
"Hawke," he repeats, harder, surer, shaking her shoulders so that her eyes open to his and he can taste the salt from her tears when his lips are on her cheeks. But it is not enough to hold her, and her fingers grasp at his chest when the throb in her heart has found its way to her throat and nothing she says can make it out alive and unscathed. So his hands find their way into her hair and his mouth has found its way to hers.
There is nothing tender in the way his breath fills her mouth, nothing soft in the way his tongue slides against hers. And there is nothing comforting in his hands as they hold her face to his, nothing gentle in the way he presses into her. But her whimpers have quieted and her shudders have ceased and there is nothing now that can stop him from tasting her.
When she breaks from him suddenly, her fingers digging into his arms and she can feel his breath fanning her cheek, she finds his eyes in the dark and discovers her voice has filled the room before she even realized she had spoken.
"Stay."
Her whisper breaks him in ways she would never understand and he is already leaning into her again, already sighing into her mouth as they breathe together in the wild dark.
Somehow, she knew he would stay.