mute

part two

-.-

"Easy, Blondie." Varric's voice, soft, warning.

"I'm fine." Anders, now. Anders's voice laced with another whisper behind it, all acrid power and hot lyrium.

A gentle snort. "Of course. That's why your eyes are glowing."

Silence from Anders and Justice both, and then the cool tingling wash of healing magic dancing over her feet and her hands. It feels—depressed, somehow, and far-off, as if the caster is reaching the edges of exhaustion.

"It's been hours. You need to sleep. We all do."

The magic quivers against her skin and slowly siphons away, and then Anders's voice says, ragged and muffled through his fingers, "You're…you're right. That's all I can do for now. Merrill—your turn for the cuffs."

Her eyes are so heavy they might as well be glued shut, and yet the rest of her feels curiously weightless, as if she is floating a few inches above the bed. Candlelight flickers on her closed eyelids and she hears the crackling of a fire; she is inside, then. Her hands and feet feel peculiar and for a moment she can't place the feeling, and then she realizes—they move. Though her fingers and toes still throb, the healing not quite complete, they are loose, free for the first time in a month; their bendiness is intoxicating, and she rolls her hands on her wrist for the sheer blissful ache of it.

A faint step sounds beside her as a light weight settles on her bed at her hip, and then suddenly, there are soothing, gentle fingers on her forearm. Merrill, her mind informs her from very far away, then lazily adds, of the Dalish. Merrill's hands trace the edge of the manacle where it meets bare skin for a long minute, probing the blood magic that still seals them. Hawke feels the green vine of her magic twining into the ridges of the fetter and then her power surges like a root delving into a boulder to break it, and with a lyrium-laced crack, the metal splits clean through.

Hawke's eyes snap open, weariness utterly forgotten. She can feel—

She can feel her magic.

The chasm that has yawned in her mind for so long she can barely remember it not existing—it has not vanished, but it has narrowed, and suddenly she can hear the voice calling from the other side through the buzzing, the siren song of the Fade crying out to her, distant but there. She stares ahead but sees nothing: not Merrill perched wide-eyed beside her or Anders hovering at her shoulder; not Varric in a chair by her bed (her bed, her bed, in her room); not even Fenris, half-risen from his seat by the door. She is a drowning woman offered a glimpse of sunlight through the swelling waves, and she must breathe or go mad.

"Mer—Merrill—" whispers Hawke—begs Hawke, because she is begging and beyond caring about it. She will do anything, anything—she will beg, if Merrill wants; she will debase herself at her feet; she will crawl on her belly for the rest of her life—if she will only give her back her magic.

Varric puts a wonderful warm hand on her shoulder, but not even he can seem to find words to comfort her. Hot tears slip their way down her cheeks to pool in the hollow of her throat, lingering to sting in her cuts. "Please. Please, please," she begs, until the word has lost all meaning and is just a collection of sounds. "Get them off, please."

Now Merrill is crying too, wiping the tears from her face even as she reaches across her stomach for her other arm. "I will, lethellan, right now, only please don't cry."

Hawke's bare arm is narrow and filthy, crusted with dirt and dried blood and striped with infected sores where the manacles dug into her skin, and it is the most wonderful thing she has ever seen. She can't stop crying, regardless of what Merrill asks; when the second cuff bursts open and she feels another exhilarating flood of magic, when the chasm in her mind closes that much further, she presses the heels of her mangled hands against her eyes and lets out a dry sob.

The third manacle cracks. The chains draped over her waist begin to slide away; so used to their weight is she that she hadn't even realized they were there until they thump to the ground in a jingling heap. She feels Merrill pat her knee comfortingly, and then the last fetter splits right down the middle, and very quietly, the chasm in her mind—closes.

The buzzing is gone. The Fade is at her fingertips once again.

The sobs turn into racking, half-hysterical laughter. Hawke drags the palms of her hands down her face and the grit in the creases of her skin scrapes her nose. "Varric," she hiccups, desperate for a distraction, her voice thick with tears and grating with rust; she fears that if she loses herself in the heady rush of her magic returning, she might never find her way out again. "Can you—talk about something?"

His hand tightens on her shoulder. "Like what, Hawke?"

"I don't know." A giggle splinters out of her. "Anything. The luxury of your chest hair. Why the river runs to the sea. What happened to Aveline and Isabela? You know. Mysteries." Fenris still stands by the door, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his face unreadable. He is as tense as a nervous cat, as if he might bolt with a bottlebrush tail at the slightest provocation, and Hawke giggles again at the image.

Varric shakes his head with a smile, but there is wariness in the motion that he cannot hide. "Some of those are trade secrets, you know. Bound to the honor of caste and clan. No Champions allowed."

Some Champion, she thinks with more regret than bitterness. Varric shifts at her shoulder and she feels the pressure of his hand slide under her head to lift it—and then a skin sloshing full of water is pressed to her lips, and she forgets everything at the taste of it. Hawke sucks at it greedily, unable to control her gasping breaths between swallows, barely caring that her whimpers are almost wanton under the crackling of the fire. She drains the thing in a matter of seconds and leans back to the pillow with a choking sigh that sounds more like a sob.

Varric chooses not to notice. "Aveline's gone to the Keep to request a temporary reinforcement of the Guard so she can mount an investigation. There were pockets of these cultists all over the city—seemed like every night, more would pop up like pockmarks. Sure made it hard to track you down, too." The chair creaks as he shifts his weight. "And Rivaini? She's gone to Blondie's clinic in Darktown for supplies. Apparently not even his friendly passenger can heal you all in one go."

"I heard that," says Anders, and Hawke rolls her head on the pillow until she can see him. He is pale, his skin drawn tight around his mouth and his knees unsteady under him; he looks as though he might either pass out or be violently sick at any moment. "Not that it isn't true," he adds ruefully. Steadying himself on one of the posts of Hawke's bed, he leans over Merrill and carefully touches one of the thick sores on her wrist with a finger. "These need to be cleaned as soon as possible. All of you does, to be honest. No offense," he adds almost as an afterthought. "Maker, I need to sleep."

"Bodahn said there's a room downstairs set up for you. Rivaini can meet you there. You don't need to be wandering Kirkwall in this state." Varric sounds perfectly sincere, but unspoken is that Anders doesn't need to be far from Hawke in her state, either.

Anders hesitates, turning Hawke's wrist over in his hands. "I should take care of these first."

"I will do it." Fenris's voice. Fenris, who is suddenly at her side like a ghost, drawing her hand out of Anders's, his markings iridescent in the candlelight.

Anders frowns, his mouth opening to protest—but Varric is already rising from his chair, already planting his hands on Anders's waist and pushing him to the door. "It's fine, Blondie," they hear him say as they round the corner out of sight.

Merrill rises, too, and the bed shifts as her weight leaves it. She cups Hawke's cheek in her hands, her smile not quite as sad as Hawke remembers, and then she leans over to peck Hawke on the forehead. "Sleep well, lethellan."

"Thank you, Merrill," Hawke whispers, blinking against the press of threatening tears. "Thank you, thank you."

"Good night," she says softly, and she follows Anders and Varric through the door.

-.-

As the latch quietly clicks closed behind her, Hawke lets out a little shuddering breath. "And then there were two," she says, striving for lightness. She is so tired.

Fenris's expression tells her he is not convinced by her bravado, but he allows it to pass without comment. "Orana provided some hot water and soap, if you feel well enough to bathe." His voice is a study in disinterest, as careful as his movements as he settles on the edge of her bed in Merrill's place and touches the shredding edge of her grimy cotton shift. His breastplate and gauntlets are gone, she notices; his arms look strangely naked without them. "Or, if you prefer, you could rest instead." He holds her gaze steadily, neither pushing nor pulling, calm and patient as he waits for her to decide.

"I—" Hawke trails off, uncertain. A choice. She is being given a choice. It isn't even a difficult one—she desperately wants to be clean—but her mind flutters like a bird without a perch.

She is silent so long that Fenris's brow furrows in concern. "What do you wish to do?" he tries again.

Ah—ah, she knows the answer to this one—her vision is shot with stars by the time the hands around her neck loosen. The Mother's veil brushes her bloodied cheek, her voice a song in her ears. "What do you wish to do, child?" Her lips are swollen and she struggles to form the words—

"Only your will," she whispers, relieved.

Fenris starts off the bed like he's been shot. Hawke's eyes fly open—she hadn't even realized they'd closed—to see him staring down at her, his green eyes wide with shock. He looks pale under his tan.

Hawke forces a painful smile. "Sorry. I didn't—"

"Hawke—"

"Please. Don't." Don't make her think about it, the shame and the black veil and the stone room with the iron ring on the floor. Hawke draws in a breath, makes herself make a choice. "I'd like—to get clean. If you'll help me, I mean. I've got about as much strength as a soggy slipper."

"I'd recommend it," he says, his voice dry, but he still looks shaken as he fetches the basin of steaming water Orana has left by the door. Hawke sits up cautiously; her ribs creak in warning and the switch-marks on her back spike pain and everything aches, but for the first time in a month, she moves without the clanking of chains, and she revels in the silence of it. The muscles of her legs aren't strong enough to swing her feet on their own, so she digs her hands (hands she can move anytime she wants, fingers she can bend and flex and feel) under her thighs and pushes them over the side of the bed, one at a time. That motion in itself is exhausting, though, and she can do little more than wait for Fenris to set the basin and a pile of thick towels at her feet.

There's a little wicker stool with a red cushion by her desk; Fenris snags it with a foot and drags it over by the bedside. "Maker forbid we soak the sheets," Hawke mutters, more to be contrary than out of any real irritation, and allows Fenris to help her to her feet. Though she has every intention of walking under her own power, Hawke's legs haven't borne weight in a month, and her knees buckle almost immediately. Fenris catches her around the waist before she can fall and lowers her to the stool without harm to anything but her dignity. Hawke snorts. "That went well."

Fenris straightens, his eyebrow quirking. She's missed that eyebrow. "And yet, somehow, I expect you will survive all the same. Raise your arms."

She does so at once, a little shiver of obedient pleasure overriding the cuts straining the skin of her back; something like sadness races over Fenris's face, but it is gone so quickly she wonders if she has imagined it. He says nothing, anyway, and gently slides her cotton shift over her head, peeling it free with care where it sticks to dried blood and old wounds. Her chin drops as it pulls free from the fabric and she stills, stunned by her own appearance.

"I am a disgusting human being," Hawke murmurs, staring at her thighs.

Fenris's eyes narrow, his gaze suddenly snapping with green light. "You are not."

She looks up, startled, then snickers. "I meant—no, Fenris. I meant physically." Physically, at least in this moment; there is a deep crevice of lingering shame and humiliation somewhere in her heart, but she doesn't have the strength to delve into it now, and more than anything she doesn't want Fenris to see the grime left deeper than any bath can reach.

She pushes through the moment before it can snag either of them, and unembarrassed by her nakedness, she turns her winter-pale arms over to show him the dirt encrusted in every crevice in her skin, the dried blood that sticks to the half-healed cuts scattered over her stomach and back, souvenirs of her more enthusiastic guards. She fingers the matted hair over her forehead and winces as Fenris picks something out of it. Maker, please don't let me have lice. "I think my hair's a total loss."

"It will grow back," Fenris points out mildly, dipping soap and cloth into the basin of water. He circles her chair and she senses him stop suddenly, arrested by the sight of the long welts that she knows spread from shoulder to hip. "Oh, Hawke," he breathes, barely loud enough for her to hear; she feels him bend, brushing his fingertips like ghosts over the weal that runs longest over her shoulders. She can't help but wonder if it reminds him of his own scars, can't help but wonder if he thinks the less of her for bearing them—but he doesn't linger overlong, and with a tenderness that surprises her, he begins to wash her clean.

The water feels incredible. It has been rationed to her so severely for so long that it feels almost sinful to have it wasted on something as luxurious as a bath. She lets her eyes drop closed as Fenris sweeps the cloth over her bare back in long, smooth strokes, passing delicately over the places where the skin is split with the sure fingers of experience. It—hurts that he knows so well how not to hurt her, that he knows from experience just how hard he may press a welt without causing pain, how to let the warmth of the water soak into her aching muscles without stinging the open stripes. His hands knead through her hair and over the back of her neck with soapy water, working out the tangles as he rinses with slow, sure fingers. It soothes her until her head lolls forward, and then he draws the washcloth down over her shoulders in a fluid movement that leaves a cool damp trail in its wake.

He dips the cloth in the basin and wrings it clean, then kneels in front of her. One hand cups her chin lightly, raising her face to his; her eyes are half-lidded and weary, and Fenris smiles at her in something like gentleness. He wipes her face clean with his other hand, lingering over her eyes and her mouth until not a speck of dirt is left.

"How did you find me?" Hawke asks eventually, when he seems satisfied with her face and has moved on to her neck. And then a thought occurs to her, and she adds, "Where was I?"

The cloth slides over her collarbone. Fenris's eyes follow it, watching her skin for cuts to skim over; hers follow his. "We did not realize you were missing, at first," he begins, his voice pensive. "Each of us believed you were with the others or out on the Wounded Coast. More the fool, I," he adds, with a wry twist to his mouth that cannot quite soften his self-recrimination. "But then the day arrived for my lessons, and you did not come." His gaze flicks up to hers, just for a moment, and the darkness in his eyes makes Hawke realize how worried he must have been.

"Not like you really need lessons anymore, really." She tries to sound flippant, but her chest tightens at the thought of Fenris waiting in the empty echoes of his emptier mansion for someone who would never arrive. "You're reading better than most of Kirkwall."

His eyebrow quirks, and she sees a faint hint of a smile tugging at his mouth. "It's not the lessons that I look forward to, Hawke," he says, and the words seem to curl right into her heart to warm it. His hand lingers on her neck just long enough to make her eyes flutter shut, and then it slides away. The cloth dips with a noisy splash into the water, and when Fenris speaks next, his voice is more businesslike. "I came here that evening. Your man, Bodahn, said he had not seen you in four days. He was…"

"Fretting like a hen at an egg breakfast?"

The corner of his mouth twitches up again. "Understandably distressed. I thought to seek out Varric, that perhaps you had neglected to mention some previous plans, but Isabela arrived at your estate just as I was leaving. She'd come to speak to you as well—a missed appointment at a…hat shop, I believe, in Lowtown." That stupid hatpin, Hawke thinks with a rush of gratitude, and his fingers graze her shoulder. "We were searching in full force by nightfall."

The cloth brushes over her bare breasts and stomach and then stills; water drips from her hair onto his wrist. "You have lost a great deal of weight," Fenris mutters. His thumb bumps over her ribs one-two-three, like a child taking a stick to a fence.

"I hear that happens with starvation diets," Hawke says, her voice light. "Varric said there were pockets of these cultists all over the city."

Fenris's mouth thins, but he allows her to redirect the conversation. "So there were." He soaps the washcloth again and his hands resume their trip down her stomach. "We did not realize who they were, at first. They seemed like nothing more than the latest plague of fanatics. But then, when you had been gone ten days, we intercepted the first letter."

"Letter?"

"Isabela found it on the body of one of the cultists. A Follower of She." His voice drips with scorn at the name. "It contained a declaration of intent from one cell of their wretched clan to another, stating that the Champion of Kirkwall was to be sacrificed in order to restore a great power that had been lost." He snorts, as if the very idea is too clichéd to be taken seriously, and Hawke wonders, not for the first time, what exactly the magisters of Tevinter considered commonplace. "Written in blood, signed in blood."

Hawke rolls her eyes, grateful for his derision; it keeps her own simmering hysteria at bay, at least for the moment. "How tasteless. I can just imagine the state of the printing blocks after that mess. And it was my blood, probably; I don't remember anyone else providing that sort of ink."

"Probably." He dodges a particularly vicious slice in her thigh and straightens her knee to clean the back of it. "But there was nothing in the letter to tell me where to search. It seemed as though the cultists nearly threw themselves upon our swords every night, but they carried nothing of worth. Even the ones who survived killed themselves rather than speak and we could not—I could not—" He crushes the cloth in a sudden fist and turns his face until his hair hides his eyes.

Hawke curls her hands as best she can around the tense lines of his jaw, pulling him back to face her. He cannot break in front of her, not now; if he falls apart she will fly into a thousand pieces, like glass. "How—" she starts, but her voice catches and she has to try again. "How did you find me, then?"

Fenris closes his eyes for a moment, turning his cheek into her palm, and then he draws in a long breath and relaxes. Her hands fall back to her bare lap. "Varric bribed every messenger in the city. It took…a very long time, but at last the Followers of She sent another letter announcing their impending revolution. It said that the vessel had been prepared adequately, and that soon their She would be walking among us once more." He pauses with her damp foot propped on his thigh. "I was grateful to them, then," he admits, voice rough, though he meets her gaze now without hesitation. "Because that meant that you still lived."

His smile is bitter, but so is hers. "They wanted to make me an abomination, I think. For a demon named Hanker."

"I wonder that they simply didn't force it on you." He finishes with one foot and switches to the other. The soap smells magnificent, and it is suddenly very hard for Hawke to stay awake. It feels wonderful to be clean.

"The Mo—they said I had to be willing to become the vessel. I suppose that was important enough to them that they felt they could take the time to make me so." She shrugs one shoulder, seeking refuge in callous unconcern. "They must have sent the letter the night I said yes."

The markings on his neck ripple as he swallows. "That was two days before we found you in the catacombs under Hightown."

"Blood mages and catacombs. I'm hardly surprised." Hawke yawns the last few words and Fenris pushes up from the ground, pulling a towel from the stack Orana has provided. He pats her dry, gently, and wraps it around her like a blanket. She pulls it closer over her shoulders as Fenris then turns down the coverlet and, despite her protests, lifts her bodily back to the bed. "I'm not a child," she grumbles as he fetches a roll of white bandages from her desk.

"No," he agrees, joining her on the bed. "Just as weak as one."

Hawke stiffens in shock, the breath rushing from her chest—Fenris recoils in revulsion. "Contemptible," he snarls, "and weak—such a shameful thing." He turns his back—stalks away from the cell, away from her

"Hawke." The room snaps back into focus. Her room, with her bed and her fireplace and Fenris grasping her arms above her sores, tense with worry.

It takes her a second to remember how to breathe. She shakes her head like a dog to clear it and her back twinges in protest, the pain just enough to remind her of where she is—and where she is not. "Just a dream," she says at last. "Or a memory of one."

His hands slide from her arms and he reaches for the bandages again. "There will be more," he says as he wraps her ankle where the sores from the manacles are the worst. She knows he speaks from experience.

"Probably."

He doesn't press her, and they are silent for a few moments as he finishes her other ankle and moves to her wrists. When he is finished wrapping the last one, he tears off the bandage with his teeth and tucks in the loose ends. Hawke shakes her head again, just to be sure the cobwebs of memory are sufficiently swept back, and then she tugs at the cloth on her wrist. "New cuffs," says Hawke lightly. "Gauzy. I like them." She mock-admires his handiwork, turning her hands to and fro like a hawker in the market before Fenris scowls and draws her fingers into his lap.

She doesn't try to resist, even in play. Her momentary amusement is sapped away by the blank grey fog of fatigue, and she watches quietly as he touches her wrist. His hand traces the edge of the white bandages, the lyrium lacing his fingers glowing faintly in the candlelight. They ghost over her palms, her still-sore knuckles, dance along the inside of her wrist where her pulse beats.

"I thought," he says, so soft she can barely hear him, "that not knowing whether you were alive or dead was the worst thing that I had ever felt." He straightens out each finger of her hand, laying them side by side on his open palm as if to prove to himself that they are no longer broken and twisted, and then he smooths his hand over the knuckles in short, tense strokes. She can't help but fold her hand around his, though the muscles of his neck are whipcord tight and his jaw works to get out his next words. "Seeing you in that cell, chained to the floor, was—unbearable, Hawke."

The hot sting of tears pushes at the back of her eyes. "I had dreams," she whispers, horrified that she is saying this aloud but unable to stop herself, "that you left me there to die." Her face crumples and he slides a hand free to cup her cheek, her tears defying her every attempt to keep them at bay.

His thumb feathers over her swollen cheekbone, green eyes bright with anguish, and then Fenris dips his head forward until his forehead rests against hers, until his lips brush her cheek where it is broken. "I am sorry I took so long," he whispers against her skin. His voice is low and heavy with emotion, his careful detachment crumbling all at once to overwhelm them both.

Hawke shakes her head mutely, unable to speak past the sudden lump in her throat. She swallows once, then twice, and then manages, "I'm just glad you came."

Fenris moves, sudden and fierce, wraps his arms around her and pulls her into his chest in one swift movement, buries his head in her shoulder like a man seeking home. "Always," he breathes.

Her heart leaps to her throat, then, and the prickling tears begin to spill over her cheeks in earnest. One of his hands slides into her hair and the other curls around her waist, pulling her so close against him she can barely breathe, his arms tightening around her as if he is terrified she might vanish. She cannot tell who is trembling more.

Hawke presses her face against his chest, fevering with pain and exhaustion and terrible relief, and she weeps.

-.-

She doesn't cry often. She's not a pretty crier for one, her red, blotchy cheeks and puffy eyes a far cry from the demure weeping of fairytale princesses, and besides, she's never been one for crises of emotion; all the same, Fenris's jerkin is soaked through by the time exhaustion stops her tears.

Hawke lets out one last shuddering sigh against his shoulder before she pulls back to free her hands, shoving her damp hair out of her eyes in a game attempt to save face. Though he watches her with concern, Fenris allows his arms to loosen until his hands fall to her waist; his fingers stroke against the towel still draped around her like a cloak, and she is grateful for the warmth.

"How do you feel?" he asks, and the naked worry in his voice sends a little tingling itch up her spine.

"Mmph. Soggy." She swipes at her eyes with the corner of her towel. "I think the Maker's trying to keep me humble."

He snorts. "I suspect even He might find that task formidable."

"Well, if it turns out like the Canticle of Andraste and the seas rise and devour you, then you'll know whose pride's to blame." She pats his hand where it rests on her hip. "I apologize in advance for any Maker-dispensed smiting."

Fenris frowns, but she yawns until her jaw cracks. "You should sleep," he says, his hands sliding away from her waist as he rises from the bed.

"No!"

The word tears out of her in a blind panic. Fenris stops dead where he stands half-turned and stares at her—her fingers have twisted into his shirt of their own volition to pull him back, and she can't quite make herself let go. Hawke lets out a little breathless laugh which does nothing to ease either of them. "I don't—I mean, I can't promise I'll be a good bedfellow tonight, but, please—I don't—"

The next words stick in her throat in as she hears her own desperation. She forces her fingers to unclench, to free him. I don't want to be alone.

But it doesn't matter; even as her hands are withdrawing his are reaching to catch them in his own, his long fingers swallowing hers to still their shaking. He grips her hands until she looks into his face. "I would not leave you alone tonight, Hawke," he says, and in his throat is a protective growl that warms her right to her toes, "even if the Maker Himself commanded me to go."

"Thank you," she gasps, too relieved to be embarrassed. His eyes soften at the corners as he frees her hands, and then he straightens again to undo the clasps down the front of his coat. His deft fingers make short work of the fastenings and he shrugs off his tunic to toss it to the desk; his gaiters and leggings follow, and then, as naked as she is, he banks the fire in the hearth and extinguishes all the candles but the one burning nearest Hawke on the nightstand.

"I assume you will wish to leave this lit," says Fenris as he pulls the towel from around Hawke and helps her lie down.

Hawke glances at the markings that twine over his bare skin; they are interrupted here and there by cuts and fist-shaped bruises, the unpleasant remnants of her rescue. When she realizes that he is watching her watch him, she forces a wry smile. "Unless you plan on glowing the whole night instead, I'd prefer it."

His eyebrows shoot up in amused surprise, but he inclines his head. "As you wish," he says, and then he circles the bed and slides between the sheets beside her. Hawke feels a split-second of uncertainty—she has been so long without a bed that doesn't quite remember how this goes—but then Fenris is carefully pulling her back flush against his chest, arranging the coverlet around her shoulders, draping the heavy weight of his arm over her waist. "Rest," he murmurs in her ear, and as simple as the order is, she relaxes almost immediately. His mouth presses against the nape of her neck, then, his breath tickling over her skin, and she feels rather than hears him say, "I am—relieved that you are safe, Hawke."

She snickers, an exhausted sound that flops into her pillow as it leaves her mouth. "Only relieved?" She laces her fingers into his, reveling in the simple pleasure of being able to move her hands as she wills, to touch his with her own, without pain. She hopes his presence and her tiredness will allow her to sleep, at least for tonight; she prays that together they will stave off the nightmares that creep at the ragged edges of her wakefulness, waiting to drag her under their pain-dark sea with long bony fingers.

"No," Fenris says, his arms closing around her to chase away her spidery fears, "not only that." He kisses her neck again, and then his lips begin moving against her skin in a measured cadence, a slow, steady litany of Tevinter words whispered smooth and soft through the quiet popping of the fire, curling around her heart and mind and soul with all the assuring warmth of total safety.

And she is safe, in her own room and in her own bed with a candle guttering gently on her nightstand, with clean skin and clean sheets and her own magic humming at her fingertips, with Fenris's words wrapping around her to keep her so.

Day one, Hawke thinks, and her eyes drift shut to the quiet rhythm of his voice, to the solid beating of his heart at her back.

The blackness does not blind her.

-.-

Day one, as it turns out, as well as days two, three, and the early part of four, are lost to sleep and a mild fever. Hawke remembers very little of it (a sensation she is growing quickly accustomed to); the days pass in the shifting scenes of the Fade, broken only by Anders coercing her to eat and by the dreams that wake her screaming. The faces are never the same when she wakes; sometimes she can see Aveline's red hair over Anders's head, and sometimes Merrill is the one who holds the spoon to her lips, and sometimes it is Varric reading her his latest masterpiece. Fenris is the one constant she can remember from moment to waking moment. He shadows her shoulder as Anders rouses her during the day, sits in a chair by the door as Varric reads, pulls her more securely against him at night when the nightmares tear at her mind.

The first night, she dreams of the old man cradling her head in his hands, whispering soothing nothings as the Mother pries out Hawke's eyes with her thumbs. Hawke awakens in a rush of panic, her throat still rasping out a violent cry, the sheets beneath her soaked through with sweat and sticky with fear; Fenris is already propped over her on one elbow, lines from his pillow creasing his face—or is that worry? she can't think straight, can't shift the stony terror sitting deep in her stomach—Hawke reaches for him with shaking arms and pulls his weight down on top of her, desperate to know he is real, that she is real, desperate for an anchor in the muddy shuddering seas of her mind.

Fenris buries his face in her neck, ignoring her sweat, pushing an arm between her shoulders and the sheets to secure her under him, and the loose strands of his white hair drift over her cheek as he turns his mouth to her ear, resuming the murmuring stream of Arcanum. His voice is rough and rumbling with sleep, but he speaks until her shivers slow, until her hands unclench from their white-knuckled fists to palm the curve of his spine, until the last vestiges of her fear twist into nothingness under his insistent solidity.

Eventually, she manages to sleep again. Her last thought before she succumbs is that surely, this first nightmare will have been the worst; she thinks this all the way up to the second nightmare, where her manacles shrink around her wrists, crushing bone and flesh and muscle beneath them, and surely this is the worst; then the third nightmare comes and her feet shrivel at the ankles to withered stumps that she drags on the stone behind her, the toes falling off one by one like overripe grapes.

In the end, Hawke learns to mute her shifting trembling terror in Fenris's strong shoulders, in the pulses of his heart at his throat, in the words skimming over her skin. It is not a perfect solution—she would prefer something a little more dignified, frankly, than mindless screaming every few hours—but for now, it is enough.

And then, on the morning of the fourth day, she wakes clear-headed and rested for the first time in a very long time. Fenris stands half-dressed at her bedroom window, one hand holding the curtain aside to allow a shaft of cool morning light to fall across his bare chest. His markings nearly glow as the sun glances off them, and she traces them with her eyes absently until they disappear into the waistband of his leggings. He turns, then, as if he has felt her gaze on him, and when he sees she is awake he lets the curtain fall free and pads over to the bedside.

"Morning," says Hawke with a yawn, pushing herself into a sitting position. "What day is it?"

"The sixteenth of Bloomingtide. You have slept for four days." Fenris rests the back of his hand against her forehead and draws it away, satisfied. "Your fever has broken."

"Another enemy, vanquished." She runs her fingers through her hair, yawning again, and wipes away the last of the sleep from the corners of her eyes. The nightmares seem such a distant thing in the sunlight, and her mind is almost unbearably clear. "Bring the next to fall before my feet."

Fenris brushes her hair behind her ears, his mouth hinting at a smile, and she drinks in the sight of it. "Since you speak of them," he says, his eyes glinting with rare humor, "the mage says that your own are mostly healed. You might consider conquering the standing position."

"A worthy foe indeed." Hawke wiggles her toes under the sheets to barely a twinge of pain, and she makes a pleased noise in her throat. "Anders does such good work. Come here and let me borrow your arms."

"You have had them for days," Fenris says drily even as he braces her elbows with his hands. "That still does not satisfy you?"

"Absolutely not. Nightmares never count." Hawke swings her legs out from under the sheets, delighted that her strength is returning at last, and places her feet carefully on the carpet. She hesitates a moment, making sure her toes and ankles and knees are where she thinks they are, and then Fenris pulls and she pushes and just like that, she is standing on her own two feet. Though she sways dangerously and her knees protest by threatening to buckle, Hawke is nearly giddy with pride.

One of her short robes lies folded neatly on her nightstand (courtesy of Orana, Hawke guesses, as it smells faintly of lavender); Fenris helps her into it and knots the belt at her waist. Her knees feel treacherously rubbery under her and yet she can't stand the idea of lying down another minute, so she gestures at the window, and Fenris wraps an arm around her shoulders as she takes her first shaky steps in over a month.

It takes her much longer than she'd like to cross the room that suddenly seems foolishly huge, but when she falls forward at last to lean on the stone sill of the great window, she cannot suppress her laughter. "Victory!" Hawke says triumphantly, and loops her arms around Fenris's waist. It is early enough that the streets of Hightown are still empty and silent, too soon after dawn for the citizens to yet be about their business.

He rests his chin on the top of her head. "Victory indeed. Soon you will even master feeding yourself with a spoon and speaking in full sentences."

"Toddlers everywhere will be so proud." Hawke closes her eyes, soaking in the sunlight. It is pale and watery with morning at the moment, but she can feel the promise of heat behind the clouds; it will be a warm day in Kirkwall, hot and bright and glorious, and she relishes the very thought of it. "Do you think Anders will let the prisoner go outside today?"

Fenris makes a noncommittal sound that rumbles in his chest under her ear.

"Hmph. Typical. You always side with Anders."

There's a catch in his breath and for a moment Hawke thinks she's actually offended him—and then it catches again, and she realizes he is laughing. "Practically attached at the hips," she adds, absurdly pleased that she can still make him laugh, and thumps him gently on the chest with her hand.

Her fingertips brush skin that is not—right. Her smile suddenly vanishing, Hawke pulls away and turns her back to the window until she can see his chest clearly in the light, and Fenris's own laughter dies. There are two lightning burns on his chest, just under his collarbone, the patches of skin angry and rippled and just about the size of Hawke's fists.

"Ah," says Hawke. "I did this."

Fenris doesn't insult her by hedging his response. "Yes."

And—she remembers, reaches up and tilts his head away from her until the shaft of light falls squarely across his cheek, lighting up the sickly greening bruise stretching over his jaw. "This, too," she says, softer.

Gently, Fenris pulls her hands away from his face. "You were not yourself."

"Don't make excuses for me. Oh, damn it." Hawke shifts until she is mostly-seated on the sill, her back to the silent streets below them. She has not worked her own magic in a very long time, but this is intolerable—she can barely believe she turned against him so easily; she can stand less the idea that he still bears the wounds. "Stand still."

"Hawke, do not—"

"Fenris, I swear, if you tell me not to strain myself I will—I'll tell Isabela what your tattoos look like. In detail. Now. Stop. Moving."

It is hardly a serious threat—not even Hawke would be so heartless—but though Fenris's lips thin in disapproval, he allows her to rest her palms on the burns. Hawke breathes in, and then out, carefully sending out a quiet call to the pool of her magic. It is slow to respond, at first, sluggish and turgid as if it has settled with disuse, but she pulls just a little harder and then it comes in a rushing stream, singing in her skin, pouring out in a cool blue light up and over Fenris's chest and jaw like water.

The temptation just to let it all flow out of her until she is empty is almost too strong. The skin knits under her fingers and the edges of the bruise recede into themselves; she is drunk on her magic, drunk on freedom, drunk on the feel of his skin sliding under her palms—

"That is enough, Hawke. Stop."

Her magic fizzles out at the order as if he has turned off a tap. Hawke blinks, the blue light leaving afterimages in her eyes that blind her; when her vision clears, she sees dark eyebrows drawn down over green eyes and sighs inwardly. "It's fine," she says, knowing even as she does that it is useless. "I'm fine."

He shakes his head, apparently rejecting several things before they leave his mouth; at last, he says, "I would only ask that you exercise caution in the future. Not even the Champion may escape public displays of uncontrolled magic."

"Now you're just being gentle." Hawke smooths her palm over the rightward patch of shiny, new-healed skin on his chest, feeling the lyrium in his markings quietly pulling at her fingers. "I can be gentle too," she murmurs, and then she carefully leans forward and presses her lips to his chest where she has wounded it.

She feels his breath hitch again—she doesn't think it's from laughter, this time—and his hands grasp her shoulders to stop her or steady her, she doesn't know. She doesn't stop, though, and doesn't hesitate; her mouth passes briefly to the other place on his chest that is burned, and then Hawke curls her hand around his neck and pulls his face down to hers, so that she can reach the nearly-vanished bruise on his jaw.

Here, at least, she lingers. She traces his jaw with her thumb and follows it with her lips, brushing his hair out of the way where it is longest; when she feels the knot on the bone under his skin where the manacles had struck him the hardest, she darts out her tongue to lave over it, letting this be the apology she cannot voice. Fenris bites out something in Arcanum, his voice low and strained, and one of his hands slides to the windowsill to brace himself over her. Hawke hums against his jaw and feels him shudder; she lets her fingers wander to his ear and her mouth follows, and then her thumb grazes from his earlobe to the very tip.

The deep growl in his chest is all the warning she gets. The hand still on her shoulder suddenly grips the back of her head; she sees his eyes flashing more dark than green behind his silver hair and then his mouth is sealed over her own and the rumbling in his throat soars right through her. For all that she'd accused him of being gentle this decidedly is not, and yet she revels in it, rejoices that he is not treating her like a fragile girl to be carefully kept from breaking. Hawke opens her mouth under his, lets his tongue slip between her lips, winds her arms around his shoulders and pulls him closer because it has been thirty-four days too long and he still isn't close enough.

His leg nudges her knees apart and slips between them until he is pressed flush against the windowsill and she is flush against him. Her hands skim over his back, his arms, his chest, following the burn of lyrium in his skin like a map to guide her; his own move more slowly over her body as if he is trying to memorize the feel of it under his fingers. At one point he probes a muscle still bruised deep in her back and she gasps into his mouth—"Don't you dare," she adds when he starts to pull away, and nips his bottom lip for trying. Fenris growls again and she shivers at the sound; she kisses him while his throat is still rumbling, and the vibration thrums like a living thing in the air between them.

He bends closer to her and she arches her back to match him, ignoring the twinges of protesting muscles in favor of the heat slowly coiling in her belly. She sweeps her tongue over his and his hand spreads over her neck and her shoulders, the calluses on his palm slipping rough and wonderful over the freshly-healed skin, his fingers splaying into her hair to adjust her head better to fit his. His other hand ghosts over her breast through her robe, glides down her stomach to tug at her cloth belt.

"Fenris," she groans against his mouth—it's not enough, she has been without his touch for too long and she needs more—he makes a deep, possessive noise and squeezes her hip, then slides his hand under her thigh and pulls her knee up to his waist. Hawke lets out a sigh laced with frustration—it's better, but still not enough—her palms graze down his stomach and she feels the muscles jump under her touch. His mouth drops to her chin, teasingly brushes down her neck to the tendons of her shoulder; she lets her head lean back against the window jamb, baring her throat to him as she threads her fingers into his hair—

"Oi, Hawke!"

Her eyes snap open. Fenris freezes against her. "Oh, flames," Hawke breathes, and turns to look out the window.

Isabela stands at her front door, looking up with a broad smile on her face. Aveline stands beside her with a covered basket dangling from one armored arm and her eyes hidden by the other.

"Not that I'd ever say no to a free show," Isabela calls, voice thick with laughter, "but Anders said you'd be up today, so we brought breakfast!" She elbows Aveline, who raises the basket without removing the hand over her face.

Hawke lets her head smack back against the jamb as Fenris shoves away from the window, retreating to the dim safety of her bedroom. He snatches his shirt from the dresser and snaps it open as a steady string of Arcanum invective spills into the room. His scowl is as black as thunder, and despite it—or because of it—Hawke snickers. She can't help it, and when Fenris throws her a dark look and shoves his arm into the wrong sleeve, it turns into a full-blown laugh that she has to muffle in her hands.

She turns to look back out the window in hope of a distraction, the stifled chuckles struggling to burst out of her. Aveline is red-faced with lingering embarrassment, but Isabela looks immensely delighted, a look that only grows when a particularly vicious "Venhedis!" floats out over the Hightown streets.

"Morning," Hawke says with a glance over her shoulder, choking back laughter. "You're here, um. Early."

"It's past eighth bell. Not so early. Especially not for you two, it seems."

Hawke snorts. "Give me one good reason not to have Sandal chase you off my stoop."

"Breakfast," Isabela singsongs, waggling the basket on Aveline's arm. A wicked look enters her eyes. "Unless you're already full…"

Aveline yanks the basket away from Isabela with a hissed word Hawke can't quite make out, then, still blushing, looks up at Hawke grinning on the windowsill. "Donnic made flatbread. With nuts, the way you like it."

"Donnic's nuts," Isabela calls up with a little mock-shiver, and Aveline throws her free hand into the air in exasperation.

Hawke shakes her head, still suppressing giggles. "Let yourselves in. I'll be down in a minute."

With an exaggerated salute from Isabela, they disappear into the front door; a moment later, Hawke hears their voices mingling with Bodahn's in the entryway, and very carefully, she slides from the windowsill to stand on her feet. She tugs her robe back down around her knees and runs her hand through her hair, trying to pat it into something presentable. Across the room, Fenris finishes the last clasp on his jerkin with an audible huff of irritation, and then he scoops up the soft leather boots Hawke wears indoors and brings them to her. He helps her slide them on and then straightens, a frown still lining his face.

"Oh, don't be angry," Hawke says, smoothing out the crease between his eyebrows with her thumb, though even she can still hear the faint traces of amusement in her voice. "Donnic made flatbread! You like his flatbread, don't you?"

Fenris leans forward, then, braces his hands around her on the sill until his whole body is flat against hers, until his lips just brush her ear. "I would prefer to have something else at the moment," he murmurs, and Hawke feels the heat from his lips on her cheek spread straight down to curl her toes in her boots.

"You certainly know how to charm a girl, don't you?" she asks, a trifle breathless, but Fenris only smiles.

"Breakfast," he says, offering her his arm too innocently, and Hawke fans her flushing face as she takes it.

-.-

Breakfast, as it happens, is a perfectly sumptuous affair. There is Donnic's flatbread (Aveline pointedly ignores the lascivious licks Isabela gives it every time she glances in the pirate's direction), along with two fresh round loaves, but there is also a veritable garden of fruits and vegetables, including more varieties of berries than Hawke can even recognize, much less name. The moment the smell hits her nose, though, it hardly seems to matter; she is absolutely ravenous, hungry as she can never remember being in her life, and Orana has barely placed the plate before her before it is empty. She goes for seconds, and then thirds, letting Aveline and Isabela talk over her head with occasional comments from Fenris. Hawke is content to simply eat.

When she goes back for a fourth helping of berries, Fenris pulls her plate away from her with a warning glance. She understands she shouldn't eat too much—and she's stuffed to the brim, anyway—but it still almost physically hurts her to see food go uneaten and wasted. He hands the plate to Orana, and then, as if a thought has occurred to him, pushes back from the table to follow her from the room. Hawke hears him say "soft foods" and "clear soup" and privately resolves to speak to Orana on her own later; she refuses to exist on a menu consisting of watery gruel. Absolutely refuses, point-blank, and woe betide the elf who tries to get between her and a tender cut of braised beef, dripping with its own juices, still simmering with wet heat—

"And now," says Isabela grandly, and Hawke's attention jerks back to the breakfast table, where Isabela is pulling the basket towards her and rummaging through its innards, "the real reason for the visit. Or my part of it, anyway. Aha!" She withdraws her hand, grasping a thin metal blade—Hawke feels her heart stutter in her chest before the rational part of her mind tells her, quite firmly, to get a grip—and Isabela opens the blade at the base with a flourish to reveal—

Scissors.

Hawke tries to catch her breath, hoping no one has noticed her slip, and Isabela turns to face her. "Hawke, my dear girl, you are in bad need of a haircut. Now I know these are not my usual daggers," she says, brandishing the scissors with a snap, "but I do know my way around a coiffure or two, and right now, yours is screaming…well. Corpse-y."

"Corpse-y."

Isabela shrugs. "Corpse-y. Corpse-ish, cadavre chic, if you like. It's not a good look for you, poppet, is what I'm saying." She rifles through the basket again and comes up with a short black comb and a little hand-mirror that she hands to Hawke as evidence.

Flames. She does look…corpse-y. Her cheeks are hollowed, throwing the bones into sharp relief; her hair hangs in dark, thin clumps to her shoulders, still matted in the places where Fenris had not been able to work them free. Her eyes are sunken into her head, strangely bright in the shadows under her brow. Hawke sighs heavily and pokes at the circles under one eye, dark from both fatigue and drained blood, then prods the half-healed broken cheekbone that is still yellowed with bruises.

Isabela meets her eyes in the mirror and smiles sympathetically. The corner of Hawke's mouth turns up in response—even now, Isabela's smiles are infectious—and drops the mirror to her lap as the scissors make their first snip.

There's a knock at the front door, and Hawke starts to turn to look before Isabela lets out a disgruntled sniff and straightens her head again. A few moments later, Bodahn's voice sounds in the entryway, and Varric enters the room with his writing-case slung under one arm.

"Morning, Hawke," he says, slinging the case onto an empty place at the table. "Ready whenever you are."

Hawke blinks as a stray hair falls onto her eyelashes. "Good morning to you, too. Ready for what?"

Aveline shifts, then, straightens her kerchief with an unnecessary movement as Varric glances at her. "Hawke. I…" she trails off, sighs, adjusts her headband. "Look, Hawke. I promise that I would not be asking this if there were another way, but…I need to take down your account."

"My account," Hawke repeats. Isabela's scissors click quietly over her head.

"I am not allowed to authorize a full investigation without a…witness's account."

Hawke tries to laugh, but it comes out strangled. "A victim's account, you mean. Thanks for buttering me up with breakfast first, then."

Aveline nods, unsmiling. "A victim's account. We know there are more clusters in the city of these fanatics, but the Guard is spread too thin for us to manage them on our own. We need reinforcements, and to get them, I need you, Hawke."

"It's nice to be needed." Hawke lets out a breath. Even the thought of trying to explain her captivity, her little room with the iron ring in the floor is making her heart race. She closes her eyes, knowing that a month ago she would have already been charging out the door, stupidly grateful that Fenris is not here to see her trying to pretend she is not a coward. "I don't—can't we just go look for them on our own, later?"

She hears Aveline sigh, and then Varric speaks, his voice unusually serious. "There are other girls, Hawke."

Her eyes open, but she says nothing.

Varric is looking straight at her, a sheaf of empty pale parchment under one hand and an inkstand in the other. Next to him, Aveline tugs at her kerchief again and takes over. "I didn't want to say anything," she admits, "but yes. Other girls—all women, all mages—have gone missing. They've been taken from everywhere: the streets of the Gallows, from their homes if they were apostates, even from the Circle itself. You were not the only woman we found in that prison, Hawke."

She remembers—there is a bloodstain by her chair in the center of the great hall, as if something has died and been dragged away—and suddenly, she knows what Aveline is going to say. "I was just the only one still alive," she says for her, and Aveline inclines her head. She presses the heel of her hand against her eyes, trying to push back a sudden headache, then pulls it away in a sharp motion. "Fine," she says. "Fine. Just—Varric, don't turn this into a—story."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Hawke," he says softly, and sets quill to paper as Aveline begins her questions.

The first questions are easy enough: what did she notice about her surroundings, did any of her captors mention other locations, did she ever see the other girls. The next questions are harder, and Hawke finds herself shutting her eyes in self-defense against the pity she knows she will see in their faces. She tells Aveline of her cell, when she asks, and of the chains too short for her to stand; of the slit in the door that afforded her her precious light and sound when she was allowed it; of the bread and water she was given once a day when she had done nothing to have it taken from her.

Isabela fluffs her hair in a comforting distraction, the dark ends of it just brushing her jaw, now, and then Aveline, voice almost steady, asks her about her injuries, and Hawke balks. It's not that she doesn't want to help—she does, because it kills her that another girl might be going through the same thing even as they speak—but oh, it terrifies her to speak of them, because those memories are still too near the surface and she dreads to step back willingly into the place where she had no name, no will, where she was nothing but a vessel and nothing but the Mother was real.

"I—" she starts, and her mouth is too dry; she swallows, but it doesn't help, does nothing to stop her voice trembling. "I—" She cannot tell them this, even though Fenris is not here to hear it—she cannot. A silence falls over the room, thick and cold like a winter fog, muting even the soft snips of Isabela's scissors—and then the scissors still, and Isabela enfolds Hawke in her arms from behind.

The pirate's bandana slips a little over her dark hair as she nestles her cheek against Hawke's. She smells of salt and the sea, reminds her of clear skies and crisp white sails swelling full in the freeing winds. "You don't bend your head to anyone, my girl," she murmurs. "You are stronger than them."

"Not then, I wasn't." A bitter laugh escapes her and she drags a hand over her face to muffle it. "If I say it out loud, it—I don't know. It becomes—real. And I don't know if I can keep that reality from—" Her throat closes and she makes a helpless gesture in the air. Isabela's arms tighten around her, a silent reassurance that she is not alone, and Hawke tries to force back her trepidation.

"I swear," Aveline says, "I would not ask this of you if I did not need it."

She knows that's true, knows that her head at least has decided to speak, but fear still sticks her tongue to the roof of her mouth. She searches Aveline's face, looking for the last impetus she needs to break her silence, and though she suspects the other woman does not know precisely what Hawke needs, she gives it all the same when she says, "Tell me what happened, Hawke."

And so Hawke does, the command unsticking her tongue, and Isabela's arms loosen as she steps back. At first, she waits for Aveline to ask questions before she speaks, but by the time she gets to the training in the chair in the center of the great hall, her mouth takes over like a faucet with the handle snapped, and her words rush out too closely for Aveline to get a word in.

She tells them everything.

She starts with the chair, with the women in black veils who'd twisted her hands to break them; she tells them of the old man who brought her food and water, who taught her that he was the only thing to be trusted; she tells them of her thirty-four links of chain and the eleven flagstones and the dreams they gave her to dull her hope. Aveline tries to say something, to stop her, maybe, but she cannot, cannot stop now, because if she does, she will be lost where she leaves herself, so she tips her head forward until it is braced on her closed fists and keeps talking.

She tells them of the training, and of the Mother. Even she can hear the note of reverence in her tone when she begins to speak and it takes a conscious act of will to suppress it, even when she tells them of the beatings and the punishments for her recalcitrance—and she was recalcitrant often, in the earliest days of her training—and of the days when the Mother and her guards left her sagging in the chair, back alight with fire, mouth thick with blood and vomit, and everything in her perversely grateful to have even that human contact. She explains, too, how the Mother used her disobedience to sap her of her will, how she teased her with tastes of magic until she became a woman dying in a desert of thirst, willing to do anything, anything, to touch it again.

She hears movement in the room: a footstep, a murmured word, but she ignores it. It feels as though she is speaking of someone else, or watching herself speak from very far away, unable to stop herself and unable to interfere. She has been ordered to speak and it is a terrible relief to obey that order, so she continues to tell Aveline what she wants to know.

She tells them of the demon Hanker, and of herself as the vessel and the old man who convinced her to be so, and she tells them of how she learned to shy from the memories that displeased the Mother, because those were memories that only brought her pain. How one by one she severed names from faces and faces from meanings, her childish dreams of rescue turning in on themselves like an enormous whirlpool, dragging everything she remembered, everything that hurt, into its violent undertow.

She tells them of how she ceased to think of them at all, until her world became the Mother, a cell, and a hatpin to scar the floor with, and then—she is finished.

She is finished. There is nothing left to say.

The room is silent save the last scratchings of Varric's quill. Her eyes feel hot, dry, and gritty, and her voice is as hoarse as if she has been screaming. She coughs to clear it and just like that, she crashes back into herself, the distant feeling gone, and she is made suddenly and starkly aware of exactly how long she has been speaking, of what she has said. Leagues beyond what Aveline had asked, what she needed to reveal; she has spilled out everything she never in her life meant to actually say aloud.

Fine. Fine. She has told them, now let them dare to pity her. Hawke throws her head up defiantly, knowing she looks like a fool, her bruises and cuts a testament to her definitive lack of strength when she needed it most, but she is through cowering at the memory of the Mother's feet. Except—there's none to be had. Aveline's eyes are watery, yes, and her skin is a little pale under her freckles, and Varric's hand doesn't look quite as steady on the page as when he began, but both of them meet her eyes in open honesty, sympathetic without a trace of condescension. Isabela stands off to one side, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, but Hawke barely registers her unusually tense figure, because she has looked from her face to the doorway where the footstep sounded earlier.

Fenris is standing there. Has been standing there, has been there the whole time and heard every word, one hand on the jamb as if arrested mid-step by her laundry list of degradations. His green eyes are wide and staring straight at her, into her, as if she is the only thing in the room, and in one terrible instant that steals the breath from her throat she realizes that the look in his eyes is not surprise but recognition.

If she thought she had exposed herself to Aveline, she has laid herself bare before him.

He sees into her as if she were glass, all of her pain and her shame and her debasement laid out before him, a sacrifice to the humiliating altar of helpless gratitude, and she drops her gaze to her knees before she cracks. She should never, never have spoken so freely where he might hear—he, of all people, who would know best the bitter frustration of impotent servility, and who knows now because she told him, idiot, that she did not chafe against her shackles by the end but reveled in them. She cannot imagine the abhorrence he must feel to know that she learned to cherish her captivity; she cannot block out the quiet echoes of the thing she fears most—"Beast," he says, snarling. "Contemptible, and weak."—that rattle in her head.

It is not until he crosses the room in three swift steps that she manages to break her paralysis, to turn her face away from him. He stops a handsbreadth short of her knees, looming thick and silent and his skin hot on hers even across that distance. Her words hang like an ocean between them, a wide surging sea that any moment might split open to swallow them both.

"You should probably go away," Hawke says, off-handed and light, like she is not burning from the inside out with shame.

Fenris puts one hand on the back of her chair and leans over, just enough that his words stir the hair behind her ear. "That will not happen, Hawke."

"I recognize nothing if not a cue. So long, Hawke," says Varric in a brilliantly cheery tone, and wood creaks as he and Aveline push away from the table in one motion, gathering their sundry papers and ink and lists of stupid horrible revealing questions scattered amidst the remnants of breakfast. Isabela's earrings jingle softly as she pauses once at the door, only for a moment, and she throws a thoughtful look over her shoulder that Hawke can't quite understand. Fenris doesn't move in the slightest as they depart; but for the faint slow brush of his breath and the too-hot flush of his skin, she might have been alone.

"Look at me." Fenris's voice is soft and commanding and she hates him for it, but the order thrums in the back of her head and she finds her eyes turning up of their own volition, just to the barest edge of his face.

"Go away," she says more softly, and this time there is a quiet wiry steel threading through her voice. "I'm serious, Fenris."

His eyes narrow. "I will not."

"Please."

He lets out a harsh breath that chills the back of her neck, and gooseflesh spreads down her arms. "You should not torment yourself like this."

She scoffs, fleeing behind the brittle wall of bitter humor. "Hardly tormenting. It's simply an appreciation for the right honorable Champion's utter failure to live up to anything even remotely approaching that title. I mean, come on; if you think about it, it's practically comedic how ineffective I was."

"Enough posturing. You should not be so embarrassed by their deeds."

She cocks an eyebrow, turning in the chair to face him fully, her earlier reluctance displaced by disbelief. "Oh? Because from where I'm sitting—" she gestures at her unsteady treacherous feet, her pale trembling fingers, her sunken cheeks and cropped hair, "—it's looking pretty embarrassing for everyone involved."

Fenris catches her hand in his and replaces it in her lap, straightening his arm in front of her so the sunlight burnishes the twining brands of lyrium in his tanned skin into sharpened silver. "And this?" he asks, his voice level, his white hair falling into narrowed eyes that glitter like ice. "Should this shame me?"

She jerks her hand out of his. She wants to shove out of the chair and stalk from the room; she wants to run as far as she can get from this conversation and the bloody stubborn elf she's having it with, but Fenris is nearly pinning her to the chair and her knees are too rubbery to hold her anyway, so she settles for crossing her arms across her chest, trying to control the muscles jumping in her jaw. "Because that is such a perfect example," she says tightly, and then her words stick in her throat and she falls silent.

"Explain to me how it is not." His hand doesn't move from her thigh.

Her mouth is open already to answer him before she recovers herself. "Stop that," she snaps. "Stop giving me orders."

His eyebrow quirks like she's said something idiotic, and she can barely tamp down the sudden rush of irritation. "Do not obey me, then."

"If it were that simple, I wouldn't have a problem." Hawke struggles to rein in her rising temper; she knows he realizes exactly how impossible it is to be disobedient, that he's deliberately provoking her to uncover the root of her shame like a falconer flushing out a hunted bird. What irks her more is that it is working. "As you know perfectly well. We can't all be strong enough to—"

She clamps her lips shut, but Fenris has already seen through her. "Strong enough to run," he finishes for her, and there is a tone of incredulity in his voice that sends her shame spiraling into heady new heights.

"Can't tell you how much I appreciate your understanding," she says, struggling to recover her mask of indifference. "Means a lot, Fenris. Really."

His lip curls as he straightens, looking down at her in the chair from his full height. "I do not pretend to understand such foolish sentiments. You were brutally conditioned for weeks to obey that woman and her cohort in every respect. It is little wonder that by the end you could not free yourself."

"Ha!" Her laughter is short and sharp and devoid of amusement. "And that's the thing, isn't it? The difference between you and me." She chews the inside of her cheek, desperately wishing she could at least stand eye to eye with him. "You spent your entire life as a slave. You didn't even know any other existence, Fenris, and yet, even with that lifetime of 'brutal conditioning,' somehow—" she laces the word with exaggerated wonder, "—you were still strong enough to leave Danarius on your own and—as you said—free yourself."

His mouth opens, but she cuts him off with her hand. She can't keep the mask in place; it shatters like bone and her next words are flooded with all the despair and self-loathing and bitter frustration that she cannot swallow. "I was their captive for a month. One month. Thirty days, Fenris." She drops her eyes, her naked soul suddenly on display, the grime, filth, and soft-bellied weakness exposed for his judgment. The white bandages on her wrists stare up at her in blank accusation. "And I forgot everything. Kirkwall, freedom, sunlight." Her voice softens, a lump rising in her throat at her own failures. "Your name. Thirty days, and I was theirs. Entirely."

He crouches before her in a swift motion that startles her into looking up again, and he looks—she doesn't even know how to name some of the emotions in his eyes. Shocked, yes, and blindly furious, although the lyrium lit faintly in his skin is proof enough of that; bitter in the lines around his eyes, and grieved at the corners of his mouth; and still further under it all, there is a fierce, protective tenderness gleaming through like sunlight between closed fingers, and she recognizes at last the too-bright green stare he'd given her a lifetime ago in her cell.

"The fault is theirs," he says, low and vehement, and though he has not given her an order, she suddenly cannot tear her eyes away. "The guilt is theirs. Your pain is not a testament to your weakness but to their depravity—the tortures that occurred in that cell stained their souls, not yours, and you do not bear the shame of this, Hawke."

She cannot speak. Suddenly she is in the chair at the center of the great hall again, and again his words are piercing through the shadows like arrowing light. His eyes hold her gaze without wavering as if that alone might convey his earnestness; his hands drop lightly over hers, strong and warm and safe and she clings to him, home's harbor in a roiling tempest. It feels like something dark and oily is being pulled from her heart on a narrow line, thin and stringing and very slow, but it leaves the whispering clarity of absolution in its place.

"I did not win my freedom alone," Fenris says, and the words soak through her; she remembers the Fog Warriors, and his sister, and she realizes that the long road that stretches out before her has been trod before. Fenris knows better than anyone the struggles she faces, the furious guilty weight of knowing how completely she submitted to her captors, her weakness, and he does not despise her—and that in itself does more to lift that weight than anything else has thus far. "And you will not be forced to, either," he adds more gently, and squeezes her hands to anchor her.

Hawke leans her head forward against his shoulder, nearly boneless with relief and a desperate sort of gladness and thousand emotions she can't even begin to sort through. It is not quite as simple as Fenris would have it; she cannot pretend her shame is a torch so easily extinguished, but maybe, maybe she can learn to dim its glare, to shutter it at her back and not be blinded.

She will have him to guide her through it, after all.

-.-