Author's Note
Once again, I'm grateful to my beta strangegibbon for her constant support and encouragement. With special thanks to Fever Dream and to everyone who read, added this story to their alerts or favourites and especially to those who reviewed. You made my day.
The Dragon Age Universe and everything in it belongs to Bioware.
Rated T, but may on occasion, trespass through M.
2. Point, Counterpoint
There was someone holding her eyes open to a blinding flash of light, and she tried to squeeze them shut against it.
"There's pupil reaction. Hurry. She's slipping." A warm familiar voice filtered through what felt like bales of wool packing in her ears. "There's haemopneumothorax, severe internal contusion-possibly multiple rib fractures. We to need to drain the wound quickly. I need an injury kit, or two. Make it three, she's haemorrhaging."
"Do you know what you're doing?" Another familiar voice, it was rich and deep. She tried to crane her neck toward it but her head seemed to be restrained. "The Hospitaliers at the Circle-"
"Are you mad?" The former voice cut him off, "do you think they'll just let her walk out again? Go away."
"She might live." The voice reverberated in all the right places with her; she wanted to sink into it, barely even registering the conversation.
"She'll be Tranquil."
"But alive."
"There's nothing they can do for her that I can't, now get out of my clinic."
Suddenly, a glow enveloped her. Comforting warmth spread slowly through her veins. Her eyes rolled back and she was lost to nothingness again.
Hawke woke chasing strange dreams in the Fade that vanished as soon as her eyes opened. Muted sunlight poured through; diffuse beams that dappled her surroundings in large swatches of light and dark. Ambient noises started to register with her, the low gurgle of pipes and the grind of shifting metal, the din of a milling crowd not too far away, the chatter of voices nearby, the clink of utensils and other little sounds that were mundane but strange to wake up to. As she inhaled, the cloying stench of death and sewage overlaid with antiseptic tincture burrowed into her nostrils.
Slowly, as her mind emerged from the depths of sedation, she grew aware that she was not alone, and certainly not at home in her bed. The cold, hard press of stone beneath her suggested she was not even on a mattress. Her eyes drifted around, slowly taking in her surroundings and when she couldn't identify her whereabouts, panic set in. With a start, she attempted to push herself upright but pain stabbed through the whole of her back and something sharp and stinging pinched her skin. The combination made her cry out, only to learn she was parched. Her head pounded, her back smarted and her limbs were a dead weight.
Slowly, memories of the night before trickled back and a face merged into her vision. Recognising the flat planes of the cheeks, the soft kind eyes and generous mouth smiling at her through day old bristles banished her earlier alarm and she relaxed, the sedatives coursing through her blood buoying her up on a sense of serene well being.
"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes." She tried to be charming but her voice came out in a decidedly unattractive croak.
"Shh. Don't talk. Here." He pressed something cold and hard to her parched lips. It was ice and it alleviated her discomfort. "Do you remember how you got here?"
Marian thought the healer was definitely less morose in his bedside manner. Also more attractive, how had she never noticed that little crinkle in the corner of his mouth when he smiled?
"Hawke?" He was smiling at her now and she felt elated.
"Partying," she replied, shifting attention to his question and wincing at all the black holes in her recall, "with Isabela." It was difficult to speak and Anders placed the ice cube back on her lips before she thought to ask. He was so good to her. She resolved to make him cookies or to trick her mother into making him cookies – she was hopeless at baking. She beamed up at him.
"Some party." He was still smiling, and Hawke decided the halo of sunlight framing his head made him look like a spirit of virtue and fluffy bunnies. "You had a six inch knife in your back, crushed lungs from massive blunt trauma and several broken ribs."
"Trauma Bay." She stated vaguely, beginning to drift again.
Confusion marred his perfect features. "What?" It had sounded cleverer in her head.
"Wounded Coast." She added by way of explanation, still pleased at her own joke.
He grinned, revealing a row of perfect pearly whites. "Do you know why you're so happy right now?"
Of course she knew. She was in love.
"You're loaded up on pure lyrium." That did seem a better explanation. "Now try to remember what happened."
She frowned. Flashes of memory returned to her, the bandits, the ridiculously large hammer that had slammed into her – a dense cloud hung over the details. "Attack." Suddenly, she remembered more and her heart snagged. "Where is he?"
"Fenris?" Anders inquired, his pleasant expression morphing into one of distaste. "He wanted to turn you into the Circle."
Hawke blinked.
"I thought you were dying." The accused retorted marching in, dominating the room with his presence even though he was out of sight. "And I didn't think he was up to the task."
Her heart sped up at the sound of his voice, so rich that it was a sin. Each syllable slipping into her ears and curling up her insides, every word an indulgence - a wicked and guilty pleasure – as luscious and decadent as dark chocolate and just as bitter. His voice thrilled her to hear it even as his words made her bristle. Her buoyant mood gave way to one of annoyance. Anders had delivered at every turn; he had proved himself invaluable and deserved no-one's scorn.
"Thank you for having care of me." She rewarded the medic with a smile and he glowed predictably, but she pressed on feeling uninhibited. "You have such...skillful fingers."
The innuendo was lost on no one. Anders leaned gently over her, brushing a lock of her hair out of the way, her words giving him the confidence to stake a claim while the other glared, smouldering where he stood – she could sense him radiating anger even out of her line of sight. The standoff was amusing really, Isabela would have been delighted.
All of a sudden, he sprung into motion. One stride and he was hovering over her, face set in grim lines. Her eyes knew exactly where to find the little nick under his right brow or the small, insignificant groove across the bridge of his nose or the exact point over his chin where the lyrium veins were just slightly asymmetrical. His hair caught the light, glinting like silver and falling over his eyes. Isabela was right, by the Maker, they were beautiful. The last time she had gazed into those large olive irises was when he was braced over her and inside her and if Marian had been any other woman, the vivid memory scrambling her mind may have coloured her cheek, but she let it pass over her. She was of stronger stuff.
At present he was livid and his mere proximity raised the heat in her blood, in good ways and bad.
"You damned fool!" He hissed, and then swore unintelligibly in Tevinter or Qunari or whatever he muttered from time to time. "What if I had not been there?"
Anders reacted by trying to insert his arm between them. "Stop harassing my patient! Back off!"
"Where is he?" She interrupted them. The bickering could wait. "My dog."
Both men stared at her.
Fenris spoke first, recovering a little. "Chasing rats near the old mining tunnels. He's fine." He ground out each word.
"She needs to rest now." Anders insisted, clutching a shoulder to pull him away from the surgical bench. "You should leave."
"I'll be outside," He said, shrugging off the mage, eyes fastened upon Hawke. "When you are ready, I will take you home." Then he turned and swept out of the room, leaving a silence reminiscent of the stillness in a storm's wake.
After the moment passed, Anders turned back to her. "Now wasn't that a pain. Would you like something to soothe you?"
Once he mentioned it, Hawke realised that she was indeed throbbing all over. She nodded.
"This will help." He placed a hand over her forehead and a healing glow surged through her body, washing away all sundry aches and pains. "Now sleep."
She went out like a snuffed candle.
"Take one of these for pain, but not more than four in a day." Anders explained, tucking a packet of tiny red vials into her hand. "Go home and rest and I can take the stitches out in a few days." He cradled her face with both hands and looked into her sapphire eyes. He could pretend it was to reinforce his advice but Hawke suspected he just wanted to be familiar, perhaps even for the benefit of the elf leaning against the wall, brooding and glaring at them darkly.
"I won't get out of bed at all." Hawke let him have her gaze and he smiled, stroking her cheeks with his thumb.
"All right, then." He gingerly helped her off the bench. "No more parties like that one."
Hawke chuckled and shook her head, allowing him to assist her although she was confident she could have managed on her own.
She found her feet and stood, adjusting the remnants of her clothes so that they were serviceable enough for the trip home. When she looked up, sensing a change in his mood, she met not the affably pleasant expression she had been admiring previously but a wretched one as he stood before her wringing his hands. She raised her eyebrows, inviting him to share and regretted her curiosity the moment he snatched that cue and launched.
"I was meaning to talk to you for a while. There is something that weighs heavily on my heart and Justice is ill at ease. I know you sympathise with the plight of Kirkwall's mages."
In the corner, Fenris snorted derisively. Hawke did not so much as sympathise with mages as delight in outwitting templars. Her forehead furrowed and she exhaled with a long-suffering sigh. He had been so sweet too without all the melancholy. It was such a pity it was back. She nodded as gravely as she could, though her insides had begun to squirm already at the prospect of what he wanted from her. She resolved to refuse outright if it was a re-draft of his manifesto that he wanted her to proof read. She glanced at Fenris wondering if she could convince him to do it. She suppressed the giggle that nearly burst through at the idea and maintained an even expression.
"Have you noticed how many Tranquil are in the Gallows courtyard lately?"
Hawke walked out of the clinic much later than she had planned with Fenris cursing Anders under his breath as he tended to from time to time.
"Why do you hate him so- I'm no different- and what if he is right? Would you see me made Tranquil?" They reached the steep set of stairs that led down from the clinic and she stopped, contemplating how to negotiate the steps without pulling her stitches.
Fenris came around. "Can you get down?"
Hawke tossed her head and took the first step, but it made her wince. "I should manage."
Yet he was having none of it, and caught her arm. "Let me."
"What? You want to lift me, Fenris?" Hawke shook her head. "Can't touch my back, remember?"
He smirked and spun her around to face him, capturing her eyes. His hands slid around her waist, then travelled south, rounding over her curves, grasping the back of her thighs to pull her flush against him. Marian felt her breath hitch in her chest. His arms flexed and she felt the slip of his muscles pressed into her flesh as he lifted up. Her legs drew around him and she placed her arms around his neck; their bodies sliding into a well remembered fit. She did not avert her gaze from his eyes. Some masochistic part of her wanted to know if his mind had wandered to the same memories. Whether there was desire, maybe even regret lurking beneath.
He glared right back at her, steely as ever. No words disrupted the communion between them but her mind raced, churning with desire. She wanted to push him against the stairwell wall, claim his mouth and drink him in, bury him within her. The need so intense, it was a physical discomfort.
Yet all too soon, they reached the bottom of the stairs and he dropped her abruptly, unconcerned when she faltered a little, gasping for the breath that she had neglected to draw on the trip down. He moved forward without a backward glance and she was forced to hurry after him.
"You are not weak." He said once she was abreast of him. "That is the difference."
A dozen witty remarks formed in her head but she voiced none of them, concentrating instead on keeping pace. It was much harder than usual as he marched them without pause through the narrow, filth-strewn alleys lined with beggars holding a hand out for coin.
Hawke avoided looking at them. Most were Fereldan like her, refugees that never made it out of grinding poverty, now driven into the bowels of the city, subsisting on whatever they could scrape from the refuse. It was a festering pit, full of hunger and disease and people reduced to living like rats, among rats. Even making it to that squat shack of her uncle's had been a boon compared to what this multitude endured. If she had coin in her pockets she would have handed it out as she invariably did whenever she was forced to come down here; not for charity as much as to assuage the guilt she felt for her own relative affluence – for having escaped when so many with whom she had docked all those years ago, had not.
"Keep up, Hawke. We must move on." Fenris chided, turning around and seizing her upper arm to pull her along. "I want to see you home before nightfall."
Hawke bristled, pursing her lips in a line and hating that she was holding them back, but she was tiring and her back rippled with pain. It took all her strength to maintain the pace, leaving none for retorts. Besides, he was right. Darktown was dangerous and it was a long walk home through Lowtown beyond.
Another flight of stairs and Fenris reached for her, lifting her in the same way as before. It was agony being so close to him. The scent of his skin in her nose, the taste of him almost on her lips. If he was affected by her when she was wrapped around him, he never succumbed to holding her a moment longer than necessary and while Marian could scarcely tame her thundering heart, he betrayed no loss of composure at all.
By the time they had climbed back to Lowtown, Hawke was exhausted; the trek and the tension having sapped most of the strength she had regained.
"Please, a moment." she said as they made the final landing. "I must catch my breath." It was a grudging surrender but there were more stitches in her sides than she had set out with in her back. She leaned against a parapet and drew a long breath. Lowtown was no garden but the air was still fresher than the dank, sewage vapour beneath the city. The evening sun dazzled her eyes and she squinted against it.
"You need more exercise and less drink." He scoffed, casing their surroundings carefully as was his habit. Once satisfied with that, he found a cobweb clinging to a spiky pauldron and dusted off his leathers with the same care. He never looked at her once.
Hawke glared at him slack-jawed and indignant, unable to think of a single retort. Beneath the aggravation, there was a stirring of self-doubt, had she really put on weight?
"About what happened," She began after much hesitation, deciding to ignore the gibe and file it away for later consideration.
"Save it. It is done. There is no need for a dissection." Fenris cut her off, and when Marian looked into his face it was unyielding.
It dawned on her that he was talking not of the night before, but the one before that. She studied his expression blankly, giving no sign that her emotions were churning as hope and dismay surged and she fought to contain both. The admission that it had been on his mind, as it had been on hers gave her hope but the cutting finality of his words dashed it again, leaving her ever more wretched. She looked away.
"Last night," She began again, trying and failing to keep a waver out of her voice. The segue she had chosen could have been mistaken for a correction of subject but the truth lay exposed between them in the rawness of her voice.
He glared at her. "How could you be so foolish."
Hawke snapped her head back to meet his anger. "I am not a child, Fenris. It was a short walk, one I have taken countless times." She countered, letting some feeling into her tone. She could be angry too. She could be very angry. She wanted to throw something at him, just to underline the point. "I did not think-"
"Yes, you did not think." He was in her face in one motion, caging her against the parapet where she stood. "You did not think that anyone could be your equal, your match. You traipsed about like you were master of all, but you were not, were you? You aren't."
Marian stared in shock at his face and the anger it harboured, caught like a deer in the sight of a drawn arrow. Air abandoned her lungs and she could not draw breath to reply. His words ripping as surely, as if he had reached inside and clenched her heart in his fist. Her hand clasped to her chest involuntarily as if to make sure his arm had not indeed phased through her body and only when she was certain she was inviolate that her lungs recovered function. This was no longer about last night. This cut ran deeper.
"How dare you!" She hissed, "You lout! How dare you!" She pushed against the prison of his arms but he did not give. "Release me at once!"
"Listen to me." He continued but Marian was willing to hear none of it.
"Unhand me, right now." She struggled to pry his arms from around her, "One thought, and you'll be sprawled on the ground, Fenris. I swear it."
"You know how that will end."
Marian cringed at the memory of the Fade, Feynriel, the Pride Demon and the battle of which he spoke. It had lasted all of two moments: two quick strokes and he had cut her down before she could cast a cantrip. Duelling was not her strong suit.
"When you helped me against Danarius' men, I made a promise." He spoke into her ear and she shivered, literally and embarrassingly. Her cheeks were inflamed with anger and indignity and whatever it was that he did to her. "Allow me to keep it." Her heart beat so fast she thought she would faint. "I brought you back from the Deep Roads in one piece."
"I need air."
"Heed this, you will go nowhere - at all- without me," She started to squirm, "and I will keep you alive." His hands were around her waist as he held her pinned against the low wall and she could feel the warm press of his fingers against her skin, even through her robes. Whether he had pushed the pads of his digits through the fabric with his strange lyrium powers, she did not know but she knew her knees were weak and her stomach was in delicious, excruciating knots. "Do we have an understanding?"
"Fenris." She breathed harshly, redoubling her effort to free herself.
"Hawke." As suddenly as he had captured her, he had released her, leaving her to scramble for breath and composure and put herself to rights before hastening after him toward Hightown.
TBC
Please click on the yellow bubble and leave a word!
