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Nemesis
Chapter 4- Songs From Those Left Behind

"Ah, the majestic cactus awakens!"
Isabela

Fenris stood in the middle of the dense crowd at the Orlesian festival and searched for Hawke, cursing extensively as he saw no sign of her among the mass of bodies. However, he had to commend Hawke for her daring escape; he never would have taken a room that high from solid ground but it was precisely that sort of wildcard behavior that had kept her clear from the warpath of the Grand Divine's wrath. This strange near-suicidal range of tactics had served Marian so well he'd simply come to expect them.

After all, Hawke's luck was the stuff of legends- so potent that even Varric had refused to play Wicked Grace with her, stating that the Maker clearly felt the dwarf deserved punishing whenever she went all-in, then with the cards on their backs would reveal her terrible hand before she inexplicably drew an unlikely flush or some similar trumping hand. The dwarf and Isabela had both on more than one occasion pinned her down and searched her for hidden cards, prompting hysterical fits of giggles while the mage tried to bat their groping hands away. She never drew the best of hands but more often then not somehow managed to hold cards better than her adversaries. That sort of maverick luck had introduced them and kept them together but carefully apart for six long years.

His knees ached from the leap he'd taken and the dark suspicion that he could be exiting his youth nearly overtook him for a moment when an unexpected violent shove nearly took him to the ground. He spun to face his attacker but upon his attempted confrontation, his supposed offender melted back into the crowd with a dark shout about the filthiness of elves. Such a prejudice was to be expected but he had never encountered such an anonymous, frightening wrath before.

The nature of the crimes likely to be perpetrated in this enduring masquerade had him extremely concerned for Hawke's safety. Thus his frantic search continued. Everything was a maddening symphony of color. Rich reds, decadent blues and vibrant greens swirled around him, each accompanied by an ominous concealed face. Anonymity hung over the celebration like a dark cloud, hiding the identities of the revelers from him. Naturally, he'd been correct- it would be nearly impossible to find Marian in this crowd. He stumbled through, sliding his hands behind the smalls of noble backs to guide them from his path while he pressed forward, sweeping his furious eyes across the crowd and cursing in his native tongue, letting the familiar syllables still his mind as he sought out the retreating mage.

Another arm shoved him and he spun to defend himself only to find the bodies closing in like a wave before he was completely overwhelmed with the crush once again. A scowl fell over his face as he contemplated his options before he dropped the mask over his face and pulled up the hood of his robes, falling into the heavy crowd just as surely as she had. If he couldn't see Marian then he'd not allow her to see him either- let them both be ghosts to one another.

More time in the square left him more disoriented than before and, looking up, he saw a vantage point where he'd be able to observe the crowd without being crushed by it. He made his way over and after displaying the Templar insignia to the on duty officer, managed to make his way to the uppermost platform, looking down on the crowd as he tried to divine Marian's robes from the mass of people. The dim light in the alley had only told him that her robes were no longer the blazing scarlet he'd seen her in last but he'd been able to make out aspects of the various cuts in the fabric. One of the guards presented Fenris with a simple question at the Templar presence in Lydes and the elf responded with steely silence until the man left him alone with a muttered curse.

He didn't need to answer to the Guard and so he'd stay his tongue.

Wide eyes continued sweeping the crowd but his efforts were met with no success. Regardless, he continued searching until a rush of guards moved beneath him. He leaped from the platform and followed. His stomach started flipping violently, knowing that mayhem tended to follow the spirit healer. Dashing forward, shoving all others aside as the guards moved to allow him into their ranks, he bolted toward the sound of panicked screaming. A young blonde man sat weeping on the ground as two guards patted his back comfortingly as they questioned him.

"She burned them," he stuttered in shocked disbelief, rocking back and forth and hugging his arms around his own narrow waist. "It was just fun but she burned them alive."

Instinctively, he knew it had to be her. The mage was no stranger to burning people to a crisp but never without provocation. This matter would have to be investigated once she'd been recovered. He lowered himself into a crouch and firmly announced to the shaking youth, "I'm a Templar from Starkhaven's Circle, where is the apostate?"

"She… she burned them. Laret… Jean… she killed them all," he repeated again. Being in closer proximity to the young man, Fenris noticed the tears and snot streaking down his young face and, more importantly, the gang tattoos that decorated his forearms.

"Which way did she go?" Fenris urged gently. At the boy's unresponsiveness, he took the younger man's chin and forced their eyes to meet. "Where is she?"

"You're looking for a woman, right Messere?" another voice called from the opposite end of the alley. A boy emerged, looking every bit a street urchin in his rags.

Fenris nodded quickly as he shifted his attention to the informant. "A dangerous apostate," he answered. "Have you seen her?"

"Might have," the boy replied and cracked an opportunistic smile. "I might need a little something to jog my memory, is all."

The elf reached into his purse and pulled out a sovereign, all but flinging it into the boy's face. If he had more time, he'd have forced the answer out of the boy but as it stood, Hawke could be in real danger and he needed to locate her as quickly as possible.

The boy's eyes twinkled as he regarded the coin in his hand, testing its integrity with a bite from his teeth. "She ran into the brothel," he offered quickly, taking his ill-gotten coin and adding, "Whatever he says, those men deserved what they got." Then the youth was gone, retreating back into the shadows lest his good fortune change.

"Watch him," Fenris ordered the two guards with the blonde as he began running toward the whorehouse. Shit, the brothel of all places. He wondered what the Blight Hawke was thinking as he became aware of three guards surounding him through the winding streets. Heavy plated boots unceremoniously kicked the front door down, leaving Fenris to follow them in. Squeals of both sex and shock resounded through the building as they began searching, leaving Fenris to wonder dumbly what he could possibly hope to do if he managed to find her.

The patrons and employees of this fine establishment appeared completely disinclined to assist, so he used his training and the lyrium to reach out for her. He felt her. He couldn't explain exactly how he knew it was she but he sensed her magic, felt it tickle along the brands along his skin and smelled it through the dense bouquet of sex and leather in the air. It was her magic's own strange aroma- the same he'd encountered the night they met, the same from the parchment he still carried in his pocket, the same he'd enveloped himself in at the cabin where they'd met so recently. He smelled her in the brothel, present at that very moment. She was there…

And there was nothing he could do- not without revealing her to the guards.

He dragged his hand though his hair and took a long look at himself in the mirror, silently cursing that he couldn't tear the building apart to find her. So long as the guards were there, he was paralyzed to truly search for her. His head fell gently against the glass and he closed his eyes, breathing her in and unable to divine exactly where she was but feeling her magic hum along the thick lyrium in his veins. Her scent was near but it meant nothing so he stayed there for a long moment, cursing at himself as he felt her magic slipping farther away until it receded from him entirely as she escaped.

He remained with the guards as they tore through the brothel, calling for her to surrender herself and refusing to tell them that she was already long gone from this place. They inspected the brothel from corning stone to floor plank in search but were eventually forced to give up on the search, returning back into the alley where Marian's attack had originated. For the first time, he truly witnessed the aftermath of the brutal assault his mage had perpetrated against a small group of thugs. To say the bodies were burned alive was an understatement. He'd seen funeral pyres make a less thorough job of a corpse. This sort of excess had been the result of malice.

One guard, Leopold, had seen Hawke depart with one of these men. When he'd seen the others follow after, he'd summoned other guards to check on the suspicious and dazed woman. They'd intercepted the lookout, huddled in on himself and screaming like a child about the witch before the Guard found the smoldering remains of the burned gang just outside the back entrance to an elegant hat shop.

A single mask lay cracked and broken on the cobbles, crushed beneath what had to have been pounding feet with its face elegantly painted and mouth in a permanent smirk, mocking him. His brows furrowed when he came upon the five burned bodies Hawke had left behind in her escape, ignoring the charred corpses in lieu of focusing on the three belts that were found lying next to them, barely singed from having been removed from the bodies prior to their immolation. It confirmed the urchin's assertion- these men had tried to rape Marian. It had been the last thing they'd ever done.

He felt no pity for them, was even grateful that Hawke had killed these men before they could hurt her or anyone else. Unfortunately, however, it had left him with a rather large mess he had to clean up.

"You're a Templar, correct?" one guard approached and asked. "Do you know anything about this?" Before he even had an opportunity to answer, another guard approached.

"Was it blood magic?" he asked quietly as though the question itself could make that terrible possibility a reality.

Fenris ducked down to check. If Marian were using blood magic, it would change the entire game. He was unsure if he could forgive that from her; it could have been the end of his affection, he feared. Regardless, he surveyed the scene as objectively as he could. The alley was devoid of stray blood. No knife spatters on the wall, no inexplicable pools on the ground. Finally, he took a deep breath and used his hand to waft the air surrounding the bodies toward his trained and sensitive nose. The scent of the embers of fire was revealed to him- not the strange copper, almond and rancid meat scent he knew to be blood magic.

He huffed a great sigh of relief when he did not find those odors- her soul was intact for the time being. As a Templar, he learned that two of those scents meant a likelihood of blood magic; three meant a definite presence of it. These bodies emanated none of them. He'd been able to recognize blood magic's stench since well before he began his instruction in Starkhaven but the education of the past year rendered him capable of identifying it with a near pinpoint precision.

"No," he replied authoritatively as he turned back to the nervous guardsmen. "There was no blood magic here."

"But she's still a murderer," another guard affirmed gravely.

"But the belts," Leopold retorted, "these men meant to…"

"Hurt her. She was defending herself," Fenris finished for him. "She must have been terrified." In all actuality, he doubted Marian feared for her chastity or her life. If the gruesome scene before him was any indicator, she'd not needed to exert much energy to dispatch these bastards… clearly not enough to inhibit her flight from the scene.

"Well, what were they to think?" an older guard asked gruffly, puffing himself up appropriately. "Young, drunk woman comes onto one of them, willingly follows a stranger away from the safety of the festival…"

"They should have thought that she wanted to get fucked by one of them, not raped by five," another guard, this one blissfully female, retorted angrily. Fenris could tell by the riled countenance of the woman that this was an argument these two had engaged in before as she approached furiously and silently dared the Templar to argue with her.

"Indeed," Fenris agreed quickly, sensing this woman was not one he should make into an enemy. Before the argument could dissolve further, the Guard-Captain mercifully arrived and beseeched him for a report, which he fabricated on the spot, concealing Hawke's identity and his reasons for searching for her from the aging man. The Guard-Captain helpfully promised to forward his investigation to the Chantry in Val Royeaux so the Templar could continue his search before the mage unleashed more mayhem along the festival, offering to house him in the barracks if he needed a bed for the night which he politely declined.

After getting rid of the guards, he stealthily returned to Hugh's Inn, finding the couple huddled together in the tavern and whispering quietly. They looked beyond distraught, the wife shaking and crying while her husband futilely tried to comfort her. Her softly wept apologies were answered with Hugh's own quiet self-admonishments that he never should have left her alone with the elf. Fenris huddled away from them for a few moments, listening to them repeatedly forgiving each other and trying to assume the whole of the blame. It was strangely touching, speaking to that aching piece of his heart at the obvious tenderness these two carried for one another.

Steeling himself, he stormed into the tavern and made straight for their table before slamming his hands down hard over the heavy wood, knocking over her pretty vase and setting the water and fragrant flowers spilling onto the floor. "Where is she going?" he asked Colette once more, seeing the tears well up in her eyes at his deadly serious regard. She was clearly the weakest link in the duo so he targeted her and ignored her husband entirely.

She grimaced and replied, "We do not know." The water on the table leaked into her lap but she made no effort to move out of the way, simply let the liquid soak into her dress as she stared at the table.

"I have spent the last two hours cleaning up her mess, falsifying my reports, lying to the Guard and to my brothers in the Order," he snarled, picking up one of the dainty pieces of curio and hurling it loudly against the wall. "Do not lie to me! Where is she going?"

She sniffled again and said nothing, prompting Fenris to pick up her beautiful vase and shatter it, too, against the wall. The woman flinched bodily at the sound of breaking glass. "We do not know," Colette replied again, quaking harder and burying her head in Hugh's shoulder while he clutched their joined hands visibly and brought the other to caress his wife's hair.

"Do you know what I have risked to keep your good names safe?" Fenris demanded furiously, bending over the table to lean maliciously into Colette's face. "Do you understand what dangers you'd face if I'd not intervened? What do you suppose happens to girls like Brigitte when their parents go to jail?"

She sobbed harder and began again. "We do not…"

"We gave her a horse. She's going to Cosazure," Hugh interrupted his wife, who pulled away from her husband and stared at the innkeeper with such unmitigated horror that Fenris knew he must have been speaking the truth.

"Hugh!" Colette sounded shocked and dismayed as she backed her chair away from her husband, staring at her life partner as though she'd never laid eyes on the man before.

"He's lying to the Chantry, Colette. He's helped her and helped us," he replied comfortingly and took her hand back into his before he returned his gaze back to the elf. "There's a boat waiting for her in Cosazure. She did not tell us what she plans to do next."

"Thank you," Fenris offered, pushing away from his chair and heading for the exit. If Hawke had a ship waiting for her, it likely belonged to one of her supporters and would anticipate her arrival and set sail upon her command. His window to find her was closing fast, so he needed to hurry. He'd forego the Guard's offer to house him, get Witchduck and beeline for the port. Perhaps if the Maker were on his side, he could get there before the ship sailed and her trail went cold.

Hugh spoke once more, causing the weary Templar to give pause. "I hope you find whatever it is you think she can give you, Leto. For what it's worth, I'm sorry we lied to you."

"As am I," he replied over his shoulder before leaving the safety of the haven Marian had made for herself within these walls for a few brief hours before he'd stolen the sanctuary away from her and sent her running into the cold night.

Making his way into the stable, he made quick work of the lock by phasing his hand to shatter the tumblers from within then cursed when he realized Witchduck had thrown a shoe, grumbling in Arcanum as he painstakingly took steps to reapply it; there would be no hope of finding a farrier willing to forego the festival at this hour. Hoping his limited practice would see them both to Cosazure without further problems, he painstakingly took Witchduck's obedient foot in his weathered hand and raised the mallet to drive the first nail in… but he hesitated. An imprecise nail could hit the quick and lame the stallion or inflict several other damages; then he'd be without a steed for at least a little while or at most permanently. He'd only ever shoed Witchduck under the careful watch of a farrier and the intolerably high risk of laming the horse far outweighed the benefits he might reap in his success.

Witchduck was not only his horse but also a gift of trust from Petra. She had raised the brutal steed from a colt, personally had him bred from the finest stock Starkhaven had to offer. The hesitancy marked his lack of skill and Fenris knew with no uncertainty that he couldn't reapply the shoe; thus he began the painstaking task of removing the other three, knowing that if he could at least even the animal's gait, the hard ride would be easier on both of them. Pulling the shoes off was easy, it was the task of filing the hoofs to evenness that he was loath to do. It was nearly dawn before he departed from Lydes- the sound of Lafayette's dismayed shouts at the destroyed lock echoing distantly in his ears as he rode off.

He'd paid the man for a week and left after a night, thus was subsequently unconcerned at what cost the innkeeper would have to take upon himself to repair the simple lock.

The ride itself was long and miserable. He rode the horse like a man possessed, depriving them both of sleep until they'd nearly collapsed from exhaustion, then resting for a few hours before abusing their stamina once more. The vision of Cosazure panned over his tired eyes just as the sun began it's descent in the sky. His coin was thrown at the stable keeper with a simple bark to tend to his animal and check his hooves before he ran into the port town, asking the various dock workers if they had seen a woman fitting Hawke's name and description.

More bribes and veiled threats bought him passenger lists from the surly dock master, an aging retired merchant who doddered about with complete disregard to the urgency Fenris desperately tried to impart upon him. The list snatched into his greedy hands, Fenris began scanning the names of ships and people for anything that looked familiar.

"This one!" he demanded, feeling for a moment that his luck may have finally changed when he saw the name M. Amell scrawled in an hasty post-script at the end of one of the long lists. That made sense, it would be suicide to travel under her own moniker and Amell was still a name she could legally claim. "When does it leave?"

The harbormaster heaved as he approached Fenris, and replied, "The Veiled Blue? It already did. Sailed at dawn."

The information brought a growl at his tardiness but regardless, he thanked the Maker that her trail had not gone cold. "Then tell me where it is going," he ordered hopefully, feeling momentarily calmed.

"Tevinter, serah," he answered sounding bored. "To Minrathous."

That temporary relief evaporated and his heart struggled to pump his lifeblood through him, the deep red liquid suddenly thick and viscous with fear. Her destination felt like an act of betrayal. The witch had run to the one place she knew he wouldn't- couldn't- follow her. He scowled, pushing document back into the harbormaster's hand, heading furiously back to the stables to get his horse and head back to Starkhaven. The prince would be displeased that he'd let Hawke slip through his fingers, even angrier if he learned how.

He wondered briefly if Hawke would return from Tevinter. He quickly discarded these fears. Marian would return, he knew. A mage of her caliber could not suffer the corruption of the Imperium long. But power was a seductive mistress and could take the most noble of mages and twist them into monsters by mere degrees and he could not deny the possibility that the woman who returned from Minrathous may not be the same woman who had departed for there. If that were the case… he could barely stand to think of it.

There was nothing for him to do but head back to Starkhaven but his feet, regardless, turned away from the stables and headed into the first pub he saw. Alcohol's sweet embrace beckoned him like a siren's song.

He needed a drink. Void take him, he needed several.

Coins slammed down onto the dingy counter began what he would eventually consider one of the greatest binges of his adult life as so far as he knew it. Since his entry to the Chantry, his consumption of alcohol had dropped dramatically, leading him to forget that his vaunted tolerance was something that needed to be nurtured and maintained. Orlesian wine was his first choice of poison for the evening, sweet and disgusting and thick- like the Tevinters liked their candy- and he choked it down even as the sugars coated his throat. Spirits reminiscent of the Free Marches, accompanied by Ferelden liquors, followed the wine.

The bartender attempted to stymie his consumption sometime into the second or third or fifth hour… he was no longer entirely aware of time. He'd promised to behave, paying an extra few coins for the trouble before returning to his dark corner to drink. Then- and he wasn't entirely sure how this had come to pass- the serving girl brought over a double old fashioned glass filled with what was undoubtedly poison, some sort of chunky, milky green viscous fluid that coated the inside of his glass with a thick slime. It was almost insulting that someone thought him drunk enough to fall for this. She pointed to another corner, to a strangely dressed man who acknowledged him with a cocky tilt of his head. Irritation threatened to overtake him as he shot a glance at the man who held up his own glass filled with the same toxin and with a shout of 'Salud!' downed the drink in one go, sliding the glass back to the table and smiling triumphantly.

Fenris regarded the man further, his poufy, ponce clothing embroidered in rich purples and golds with a strangely crooked hat. Having assessed the man's fashion sense, he contemplated the beverage once more, wondering what the Blight he was even thinking to even consider putting this vile looking liquid into his body as he threw his head back, tipped the glass and tried not to breathe as the slime oozed coldly down his throat.

Ugh… the taste. Maker, what the Blight had been in that drink?

The man grinned widely and moved to take a seat with the elf, introducing himself as simply Moss and beckoning him to pick the next round. Fenris devised the most disgusting invention his inebriated mind could conceive… something with pepper, mustard, brine and some milky liquor he remembered from earlier. It was not a proper drink- no one in their right mind would have concocted it as a proper drink. The man nodded his approval as Fenris downed his first and grinned before following his example. Rather than trying to engage each other with fists, they began sabotaging their palates and livers with combinations of flavors that were less drinks and more cries for help.

Time moved around him and he found himself standing in the side alley of the tavern with his new friend unable to recall leaving the bar. A bottle of wine was in his hand but he had no recollection of purchasing it. The sour taste of vomit lingered in his mouth, he must have thrown up but the tilting of the ground beneath him told him that the night was still young. He hadn't punished himself this way since he'd left Marian after she'd begged him to stay, the words playing over and over in his mind.

"I thought you said your name was Leto," Moss mumbled and Fenris realized he had been talking, worrying what secrets his loose tongue was spilling even as it kept flapping and slurring his words.

"It was," Fenris hiccoughed, a small belch nearly turning his stomach into complete upheaval. "But magic took that, too."

"Even when it gives, it takes…" Moss slurred back at him, leaning heavily against the tavern wall and tilting his head to the sky. "My beautiful Flemeth. I left my family for her. She was a witch," he stuttered for a moment before he regained his composure, "I had a life… I had a family! I was nobility!

"But did she care? No!" Moss averred as he leaned too closely to the elf and his breath nearly sent the Templar's stomach heaving. His face was close, leading Fenris into the fanatical devotion in his eyes. He'd seen it before in blood magic but could not sense its intoxicating grip on the man… perhaps it was the alcohol that blocked it. "But you and I, we're enchanted… I can smell magic on you." He continued remorsefully for a second before stating emphatically, "I could never smell it before but Flemeth changed me. She loved me for my songs and then hated the ones I wrote for her. 'Like rotting Darkspawn corpses,' she called them."

Fenris shook his head in astonishment as he dimly recognized the woman Moss had become enamored with was none other than the Witch of the Wildes that Fenris had met on Sundermount with Marian. Somehow, he felt further comraderie with him for that- Flemeth had revealed herself as a master manipulator at her very core and he pitied the man who had fallen for her likely inescapable charms. "I'm sure they weren't that bad. Let's hear one," he offered, willingly submitting his delicate ears as martyrs for the man's sense of self-worth.

"Which one? I've got a hundred of them! She Told Me to Come and Then She Left Me. My Love is a Dragon- No Really, She Is. A Mage's Ode is not her Code. She Set my Heart and Hair on Fire..."

"That one," he emphasized his choice with a wavering point of his finger. "Do that one. She set things on fire. Always burning things down," he added as an afterthought, more to himself than to Moss.

Moss scurried away for a long while and Fenris allowed himself to vomit in the alley in his solitude, wondering briefly exactly where he was before his memory negligently kicked in and reminded him of Marian's departure to Tevinter, leaving him in his intoxication to wish again that he remember nothing at all. Already forgotten in the elf's inebriated mind, the bard returned with a lute and with several sad strums of the instrument began to play the song he'd written for the mage he, too, had lost in pitiful recital.

Her fingers lingered, quick and sharp
And tapping on her cheek
Hot like coal and cold as carp
A tempered magi freak

She set my heart and hair on fire
She put my soul aflame
She threw my love on a funeral pyre
Then left me to my shame

I'll ne'er forget the Mage I met
While wandering through the plains
My sweetest, zombie love-baguette
The love that ate my brains.

"Perhaps she did not appreciate that 'zombie love-baguette' line," Fenris offered lamely, his mind stuttering over the man's wretched prose.

"I was better," Moss promised. "I was better before I met her… oh, wait!" he exclaimed as he frantically patted himself down for a quill, likely seeking a way to remember that line. Moss made several huffing little noises as he searched before going oddly quiet. A few moments passed until Fenris regarded his companion and followed his gaze to a small group of men blocking the alley entrance.

"Why don't you just hand over your money and we'll let you two lovebirds get back to it," said the leader, letting a blade glint romantically in the moonlight.

Lovebirds? Oh Maker, these men thought they'd caught lovers. For some reason, it was more important to him to explain that he and Moss weren't together than it was to process that these thugs meant to mug them so he began, realizing midway through his explanation that he was receiving blank stares from everyone including Moss. He was speaking in Arcanum, having temporarily forgotten the common tongue.

"Fucking Dalish never have any damned sense," the man pulled out a knife and waved it slowly, gesturing his next words theatrically, "Give. Us. Your. Money."

Those words made Fenris see red. They'd called him Dalish. That was it. Fenris had been spoiling for a fight and this man had finally obliged him. A gauntlet practically threw itself at the mouth near the offense, unsure if the suddenly bleeding mouth had even produced the statement. As unknown allies gathered to surround him, he hurled himself into haphazard combat, flinging his fists, feet and his elbows at anyone who dared to take on the drunken elf at all.

Even at his level of epic intoxication, Fenris was still a masterful fighter. His movements may have been a little laxer from the alcohol, but he rebounded from blows as though nothing had hit him at all, his muscles tensing only to deliver blows and not to receive them. Moss clocked his lute humorously over the head of a thug who came too near and Fenris choked out a laugh at the dissonant chord that rang out as he continued raining his fists down over their attackers until they lay unmoving and bleeding in the alley.

Somehow, they ended up back in the tavern. The bartender kept shooting them deeply concerned looks and Fenris, realizing his bloody, swollen knuckles and bruised face, couldn't really blame him. But the man kept the drinks coming and he and Moss continued drinking them in soft conversation about the women they'd lost. Drunkenness made Fenris talkative and knowing he'd likely never see this man again, his life story poured out of him as readily as the alcohol poured in. Moss listened in rapt attention until finally three bloody men entered the bar with six perfectly healthy, very angry looking men.

"That's them!" the leader from the alley called, pointing into the corner he shared with Moss.

"I want no trouble from any of you," the bartender shouted as the serving girls retreated behind the bar.

Groaning, Fenris took an empty wine bottle from a nearby table and smashed the base against the table to break it off, holding up his makeshift shiv as he replied, "It is too late for that, I fear."

The nine men charged, knocking over tables, chairs and barware to get to the furious elf and the cowering bard. He dispatched the first two without any difficulty, ramming the broken end into the neck of the first and shattering the body of the bottle against the next.

So now there were seven… or fourteen… his vision was sort of blurry.

He seized the first figure he could grab and threw him bodily into another, both careening backwards into the bar. Other patrons in the tavern noticed an opportunity to brawl and did so as Fenris squared off against another opponent. Before he could adequately focus his eyes to determine what manner of weapon the brute was holding, a flash of dark brown landing on the man and twin flashes of silver saw streaks of red flying. He turned his attention to the next, punching him squarely in the throat and kneeing him in the face until he collapsed to the ground. He turned to check on Moss and found the bard had retreated, likely a good idea, but the distant broken chords of his lute bonking repeatedly over some attacker's skull told him the man would be fine and prompted another chuckle as he turned, smiling, and slammed another man's head down onto a table.

The fight had erupted into a full-fledged riot and Fenris was no longer being attacked. Like some strange, dark beacon in the night, the dark Rivaini pirate appeared through the din and took him by the hand. Helpless against the familiar face, he allowed her to drag him through the mayhem he'd wrought, contentedly trailing behind the captain while she threw violent punches and kicks at the people surrounding him… completely willing to let Isabela take the lead and intercept the vicious attacks he'd wantonly provoked.

He followed her to an empty room and sighed obliviously as she began undressing him, her dark fingers wrestling against his clothing. That was the last thing he remembered.


"You're soaked," Hawke insisted as she shoved a bundle of clothing into his hands. "I absolutely insist."

It had been nearly three years since they met. They'd run into her house from the sudden summer rainstorm. Having engaged in drinking and cards at the Hanged Man, they were now recovering from a small skirmish they'd encountered on the way to their respective homes. The trip had been quick but relatively uneventful, save for the unexpected downpour and the tragic state of lawlessness in Hightown. Fenris stood in her foyer, dripping wet and shivering slightly against the cold after she'd bid him to stay put and left to dart further into her house. Without an express invitation to venture behind her, the elf remained where he was and wished that he could be retreating into his own home where he'd shuck his soaked armor to sit naked in front of the fireplace with a bottle of wine and his uncomfortable thoughts.

Hawke reappeared still drenched through, bearing a bundle of clothing she meant for him to wear. Carver's, she'd explained; he'd want the elf to wear it. Not wanting to argue with the slightly intoxicated mage, he followed her to one of the many guest rooms in the Amell Estate- she'd never personally acknowledged it as her own despite Kirkwall's declaration. Bashfully, she opened the door for him and he lingered perhaps too long at the precipice, wondering briefly if she'd follow him in. But she turned away dutifully and began to retreat from him as he closed the door. The soaked armor was stripped and set aside immediately. The soft, dry cloth of Carver's nightclothes was a welcome, if slack; a welcome change from the frigid linen and leather he'd rid himself of. Her brother's pants hung loosely over his narrow hips, making him grateful Hawke had been considerate enough to include a belt.

A soft knock sounded at the door and he opened it, only dimly surprised to see Hawke on the other side of it, waiting patiently as he knew the fiery mage was absolutely disinclined to do. Her clothes were still wet- she had waited for him to dress. A drenched lock of hair drooped sadly over her eye and a single droplet dangled precariously from its peak, threatening to fall with every miniscule movement she made- he desperately wanted to brush it away with the backs of his naked fingers, to touch her face, to even touch her at all. She smiled softly and held out her hands leaving Fenris to wonder stupidly what she could possibly want.

"Your armor," she answered his unspoken question with a shy smile, perhaps deliberately ignoring his eyes sweeping over her torso to the small pebbles straining against the fabric of her robes.

He fought the urge to unclasp her robes and pull the cloth aside to take the small beads into his mouth even as his fingers itched to do so. In mute repose, he watched her for a moment, unsure if he wanted to hand over one of his primary lifelines to her so unexpectedly. Oblivious to his thoughts- or perhaps hyper-aware of them- Hawke gathered her arms to clutch around her torso in an effort to stay warm, jutting her wet breasts out further and presenting those delectable mounds for his gaze.

"Orana can set it to dry," she finished unabashedly, seemingly completely unaware of her effect on his physique. "Though I could have Bodahn start the fire in your room. That would dry them quickly enough, if you wanted. I don't want to impose on your habits," she offered. He noticed a small uptake in her lilt as she spoke- she appeared oddly nervous though he couldn't figure exactly why. This certainly wasn't the first time he'd slept in these very quarters but she'd never had reason to take his armor before.

Silently, he tore his lewd eyes away and left her to retrieve his gear, pushing it impatiently into her open palms. Those items, his salvation even more than his blade, were left to be cradled safely in her hands as he trusted her to tend to them. He wished now, more than anything, that he had found the courage to tell her that… to let her know how much he trusted her by letting her carry out the ordinary deed of tending to his armor, the only possession he still carried from his slavery in Tevinter.

But she knew. The gesture was not lost on her.

"Sleep well," she nodded quickly and turned away, cradling the leather and metal against her body as though it were something precious to her as she retreated from him into the estate's dim hallways.

"I'm not tired if you'd like to talk," he called at her back, instantly cursing himself for how insipid he must sound. She spun on her heel and simply beamed at him for a moment before she beckoned him to meet her in the library.

That simple act of taking him away from his sleeping quarters brought him relief that he couldn't even begin to explain. Too often in Tevinter his quarters had been shared and his sleep interrupted by Danarius for whatever deeds needed to be accomplished. Fenris refused to call it sex; refused to call it rape, even. It had merely been the status of his existence- just another feat assigned to him when he craved nothing more than the satisfaction of his master, when he would rest his head contentedly on Danarius' lap for hours on end and think of nothing more than gaining his approval.

Those hated acts were now simply tasks he knew he was expected to perform and meant as little to him as the magisters he'd killed or the packages he'd toted while he carried the fear of what could be if he failed in his assignments. Even asserting that as fiercely as he did, denial was no solution and Fenris knew himself to be irrevocably damaged- perhaps one day suitable for more but for the time being perfectly content to live his life celibate like a priest or a Chantry brother. He had seen the horrors of lust but for all the intimate violence and innocent blood he had seen he could not deny his want, even as he despised it knowing what terrors it could bring.

That was the main reason why his reaction to Hawke's flirtation was so confusing. Sometime after the first year he'd known her, he found himself desiring someone for the first time in his memory. Sex abruptly became something he wanted as opposed to something that previously had just happened to him. He wanted to touch his lips to hers and run his fingers over her body and squeeze strange sounds of pleasure from her mouth like the ones he had heard when she found a valuable trinket on some dead bandit, macabre as that was… that she was a mage barely even registered but perhaps part of what drew him to her was the familiarity of magic he associated with the humans he'd been closest to. Like Danarius, she carried magic with her but was wholly different in every way he could name, nearly a perfect foil to the man he was running from…

Perhaps that alone was why he found himself running to her.

Instinctively, he began to dream about her, his faulty memory filling in the blanks at the sheer mechanics of heterosexual sex with the imagined sound of her panting beneath him. He'd laid awake and touched himself, masturbation being an act he'd never felt a compulsion to engage in before in his life, thrusting his erection into his hand and moaning her name as his seed spilled negligently onto his sheets in his stolen mansion. The act brought no shame as Fenris was too far beyond it to feel any guilt over his fantasies. He reveled in them, encouraged them, filed away her innocent exclamations as fodder for his lust's cannon later. They were just another aspect of being free… for once he experienced the freedom to want something.

The freedom of actually having had never even been a possibility he considered… but surely enough, like a bonfire in the cold woods, Hawke was here and he knew that if he could find the courage in himself to reach into the abyss, it would be her hand that reached back at him. It both aroused and terrified him in ways he had never pondered. The urge to care for another had not manifested itself since his ill-fated dependence on Danarius and he wondered on more than one occasion if he had simply exchanged one senseless submission for another.

He waited in that vast open space surrounded by tomes he'd only begun to learn to read, sitting impatiently on the chaise and waiting for Hawke to make her appearance. His nerve was almost lost and he nearly retreated when she walked into the library, wearing that shamelessly short dressing gown of hers and bearing a bottle of wine, corking it efficiently before taking a deep pull of her own straight from the bottle. The glass tilted back against her lips as she crossed her ankles demurely, settling into her imposing armchair in a strange juxtaposition of eroticism and dominance and innocence- his mouth nearly watered at it while he pictured running his hands over her thighs and imagining what sounds she could make if he threw caution to the wind and simply bent before her and pressed his lips to the inside of her bare knee…

He realized she was looking at him expectantly and stuttered out a stupid, "Pardon?"

"I asked if you had anything you wanted to talk about," she repeated with an easy smile and passed the bottle to him. Maker, why was conversation so easy for her? "I'm usually pestering you with questions when we're in your home, I feel turnabout is fair play," she finished with a playful wink.

"Tell me about growing up in Ferelden," he replied quickly, feeling her that aspect of her life to be relatively neutral- if intimate- territory. He took a seat on the sofa next to her chair and watched the firelight dance over her face.

"Before we discovered I was a mage, I wanted to be a dancer," she confessed with a guilty smile on her face. "I had an instructor in Denerim who thought I had promise. He was petitioning for my admittance into the Royal Dance Troupe, I would have been one of their younger students. I'd already landed an audition for a lead role in one of their major productions."

That easy smile entranced him but he could sense the sorrow behind it when he quietly replied, "What happened?"

She released a breathy, bitter laugh. "I set a haystack on fire," she answered unapologetically before continuing, "Fortunately, no one but my father saw but," she paused, and drank from the bottle before passing it back to Fenris. "That was the end of it for me. Once you're a mage, you cannot really be anything else. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I'd never manifested magic… what kind of life I'd be leading if it had passed me over."

Fenris was surprised that she wondered at such things. Life was life, what happened had happened. But pondering the possibilities that could have been was something he was just now learning to do, so he allowed himself to think on it for a moment before he responded, "You'd still be fighting," he asserted. "You'd be stabbing those pretty pointed slippers through the slavers' throats. Your inherent sense of righteous indignation never would have let you stop at being a mere dancer."

"It was a childish fantasy, I'll admit," she laughed sadly at the images he'd conjured in her mind of her as a child, dancing in a ridiculous costume and pirouetting her way through bands of thugs. "You cannot deny it certainly would have been easier, though."

He realized for the first time that her life, indeed, would have been much easier if she'd been born a normal woman. But then where would he be, he thought darkly, back in the dark palace that had been his personal prison in Tevinter? He replied instead, "And you would be sitting here with some other man, wondering what your life would have been like if you'd been born with magic in you. You're destined for great things, Hawke. Quiet mediocrity would never suit you."

She smiled slyly, and shot him a meaningful look, "I could say the same to you."

He took a drink from the bottle and leveled his gaze at her. "Without you I would be back in Tevinter- a slave to Danarius once more."

She froze at those words, looking terribly disconcerted at them. "No, you wouldn't," she murmured quietly.

"Hawke," he began in an effort to rationalize with her and shook his gaze from her.

But she cut him off quickly, "I have no doubt in my mind that you would have somehow made it through without me. Perhaps even gone back to Tevinter to start another Canticle-level slave uprising."

"I was not that man," he confessed, trying to make her understand all these strange changes that had taken him since he'd met her. "Nor am I that man now."

She replied easily, "Look at the man you are now, at all you've done. How could you know if you never thought to try? What are you afraid of losing?"

"You, Hawke," he retorted angrily, combing his fingers against his hair. "You are the only thing standing between the hunters and my mansion. I ran for years. No one assisted if I couldn't provide the coin. I was alone until I found you. But you followed me; you fought even knowing I couldn't pay you adequately. You had no reason but you remained by my side..." and he couldn't speak anymore, the shame overcoming him for a terrible moment in time.

"Fuck Tevinter," she replied, his mind stuttered a bit at her usage of the Common curses, pulling him from his shame and shocking him into silence. His lip quirked a bit at the knowledge that she'd chosen her words deliberately to distract him from his melancholy. "That's why I stayed with you... Because it was right, not because it paid."

"You are an odd, fearsome bird, Hawke- your father would be proud." He meant the words as a compliment but she looked away, avoiding his gaze inexplicably until he leaned forward and moved his head into her line of sight. "Tell me about him," he beckoned, suddenly feeling an urge to know what had wrenched that expression from her face.

Her eyes gazed into his. They stared at one another for a long time, each seeking answers to questions they wouldn't speak. Hawke stood up from her terribly imposing armchair and seated herself next to him, tilting her head against his nearly bare shoulder, assuming an intimacy that had only been unspoken before. On some level, he could understand that she needed that sort of closeness now and he wouldn't deny her, even while her hair tickled over the exposed skin of his chest.

She sighed heavily and said simply, "Father dreaded the idea that his child could be a mage." She went quiet again, seeming to struggle to choose the proper words to speak to the Tevinter fugitive.

At her silence, Fenris wasn't sure what sort of response to offer her, so he chose his obvious question. "I would have figured your father would be thrilled."

"Thrilled?" she snapped incredulously even as she pulled away from him to regard him with harsh skepticism in her eyes. "Mages are forced into the Circle or actively hunted. We cannot have lives or even families of our own. What sort of father would wish that burden on his own children?"

It was the first time he'd ever heard her speak thus. He typically expected this manner of discourse from Anders, never considering for a moment that a mage would ever want to be anything else. "I'm surprised your father didn't consider moving your family to Tevinter," he replied cautiously, hating each word he spoke as much as he meant them to comfort her. "A mage can be nearly anything there."

She bowed her head for a moment and took a long drink of wine before she leveled her gaze at him. "My mother suggested it once. I was six; it was before I ever displayed it. She said that if the twins or I ever manifested any abilities, Tevinter was always an option," she took another drink and passed the bottle back to Fenris, who followed her actions before she continued. "Father went… completely ballistic. I'd never seen the man lose control- not before or ever after. Mother nearly took us and left him for it. He just kept blowing things up and screaming that no child of his would be raised in the Imperium."

The cogs in his mind squealed at the sudden movement but he luckily retained the ability to remain somewhat diplomatic as he replied, "That is… an unusually violent reaction to Tevinter coming from a mage- especially from an apostate."

"You think so, too?" she asked grimly. "I have my suspicions that he may have come from there originally. I remember when I was a child some men came to our home in West Hill. They sounded like you- your accent, I mean," she corrected herself quickly. "I overheard something about 'making arrangements' before Father booted Mother and us from the house. When we came back, the men were gone, our things were packed, and we left in the dead of night. I never saw them again- I'm not even entirely sure that Father didn't kill them."

"Do you think he was an escaped slave?" Fenris hissed at the idea even as he spoke the words, knowing them to be false. If Malcolm Hawke had been a slave, he would have told his family as a warning of what could be or who could come for him.

"Perhaps," she mused but a meaningful look told him that she, too, found this possibility unlikely. "Or perhaps a dockworker or a farmer or even a…" she trailed off and he let her- didn't make her say the word he knew followed. Magister. She continued with a nod of thanks at his silent acceptance, "Father insisted his past was solidly behind him and that it should stay there. He never spoke about his life before Kirkwall."

"You've never sought to find out?" he asked, passing the bottle back to her as she tilted her head against his shoulder once again.

"If he was from Tevinter, the only important thing about his past is that he exercised the good sense to escape." He tensed, realizing her words applied directly to him as well, and left her in a quick stutter as she added, "Even Carver doesn't know I've considered this. He was too young to remember West Hill with any clarity."

"The senate loves to wax poetic about past magisters once they've departed. I've never heard anything about one by the name of Hawke." He'd offered the words as a consolation into her strangely blunted ear but the look she gave him, one of doubt and guilt and deep consideration, spoke her words for her. He understood with that perilous look that she believed Hawke was a name her father had assumed upon his arrival in Kirkwall.

Her father's true identity was a secret she alone carried, a lie she bore unaccompanied, likely a burden she'd concealed from even her own mother. But Hawke had kept her tongue stilled from questions about his own past and Fenris could do nothing less than the same. A look of understanding passed between them, a wordless question and an equally silent affirmation before she reached for the bottle at his feet and drank from it, closing her eyes against an accusation he would not level at her.

"I cannot think of you as a power-hungry magister, Marian, regardless of whatever your father may have done," he averred softly as he leaned closer to her startling profile, somehow afraid that the stones of the room may betray the secrets revealed within it if he spoke too loudly while he continued to nuzzle against her.

He used her given name, yet another secret they shared in private. As far as he knew, no one outside of her family called her by that name. Acknowledging her as thus made him feel more familiar to her… closer than she permitted anyone else outside of her bloodline. However, he always somehow knew her permission to call her Marian wasn't something she allowed to make him feel less a slave. In some odd way, he understood that she bade him to use it so he could feel like her equal.

"Do you, then?" she asked guilelessly and shifted temptingly closer, giving a careful glance sideways at the elf.

"Do I what?" he questioned, feeling her gravity pull him nearer until he could feel her short breaths on his face.

"Think of me," she answered and twisted her head to face him. "Do you think of me at all?"

He tilted his forehead against hers and felt a strange comfort in her skin… not the uncomfortable burn at a mage's touch he'd known in Tevinter but a warmth that radiated through him while he let himself become heady on the sense of her magic and the wine, let the burning lyrium branded into his skin touch benevolently to the Fade's chaos roaring within her. "You know I do," he offered softly to her while he brushed her nose against his and let his words grace across her lips.

Her breath was coming in shallow gasps when he shyly ghosted his lips over her cheek. He had virtually no experience with kissing, having witnessed enough of it in bars and brothels to gain a basic idea of the mechanics and little else. That limited understanding left him woefully unprepared for the intimacy of the act when his heart started beating harder and his breath came faster. His hands itched for a task so he stroked one along her thigh, dancing along the hem of her dressing gown before easing down to her knee and back up again, marveling at the softness of her skin. The air was suddenly thick and hard to breathe. He was mapping her face with his lips, exploring her from the arch of her eyebrow to the tips of her round ears to the sharp and elegant curve of her jaw. The room was silent save for the crackling of the fire and the roar of blood in his ears and the soft, nearly inaudible whimpers of the woman before him.

With a bracing breath, he pulled away from her. Her blue eyes, her fire-tearing-through-the-sky countenance gazed hazily back at him. She wanted the same as he, he could tell, but she wouldn't take the choice away from him. She was, he realized, letting him take the lead- would not take anything he'd not explicitly offered, would not pressure him to give more than he was able. It appeared she had her own suspicions about his life as a slave and chose to err on the side of caution, keeping her questions mercifully unspoken. Malcolm Hawke's silence had given his daughter enough working knowledge about the Imperuim to know that the people who escaped didn't want to discuss the things they'd had to do to survive there.

It was not her burden and he would not place it on her. He didn't want her pity or her horror, wanted her to keep that last vestige of innocence for a little while longer. But he was sick of running, of letting Danarius' memory taint everything he touched, of being a slave to his own mind and memories rather than a magister. He wanted- wanted her more than anything his limited memory could recall before.

Throwing all caution into the wind, he pressed his lips against hers, letting his slight intoxication embolden him. The sound of her relieved sigh echoed through him and he pushed harder and probed deeper until they were sprawling intertwined with one another on the decorative chaise. His hands slipped up her body and over her face as he held her against his onslaught. The mage didn't seem to mind and tangled her fingers into his hair and pressed her soft body against him, feeling very much like the flames she could summon with only a thought.

He pushed his tongue into her mouth, wanting her to understand his desire. She froze for a moment against his clumsy advances when he reached too far before forcing his tongue back to a comfortable distance where she began to caress it with her own, instructing by example. Her leg hooked around him as they settled into each other, arching her hips slightly against his and moaning softly while he studied her mouth with his and tangled his tongue in the shared space between, deciding he was quite fond of this whole kissing concept.

"And you?" he asked, pulling away slightly to look into her haunting eyes again. "Do you think of me?"

"Always," she answered, arching her chest into his hands as he slipped his hand up to unbelt her heavy robe, opening her clothing and finally exposing her flesh to his curious eyes.

"Show me," he groaned while he grasped her hand to pushed it down her body. She broke away, looking painfully shy for a moment- an expression he'd never seen before from her. He wondered where this unusual bashfulness was coming from… or if it had been some hidden part of her that she'd carefully concealed all along.

Redness touched her cheeks so he lowered his lips to hers again before he buried his face into her neck to hide his gaze from her. Freed from his scrutiny, she relaxed against him again and let him guide her hand further down. Her panting sounded through the room while she arched against their joined hands, whimpering when he suckled the skin at her neck and mimicked her movements. When he felt adequately tutored, he slipped his fingers beneath hers and took over.

They fell against each other, pawing and exploring as they learned each other- learned all the ways to make the other gasp, studied all the places that made their eyes roll back. Her body in comparison to his own baffled him. Where he was sharp angles and hard muscle, she was curved and soft though he could still feel the strength beneath. When her hand reached down and stroked him… even that was softer than his own touch. A wicked grin overtook his face when she started keening whimpering against him. Unbidden, memories of his enslavement under Danarius began creeping forward and those sounds of intense pleasure began to sound suspiciously like the sounds of unspeakable pain.

"Tell me you want me," he demanded impulsively, punctuating his request with a kiss to her neck. Her squeal could not be mistaken for anything other than abject desire but he made her say it regardless, because he needed to hear her soft pitch to keep his mind from going into darker places, to remind him that those words could be a plea and not a command as he felt himself approaching the end; her voice grounded him back into the present, so he made her pant her desire against his lips when he spilled onto her naked stomach, made her breathe it into his ears when she shattered against his insistent hands, gasping and whimpering as he eased her back down.

In the afterglow, he reached his hand between them and touched it gingerly to his rapidly cooling seed upon her belly. Pulling back, he stroked his dripping finger over her bottom lip before lowering his mouth to kiss it, suckling his bizarre benediction of their shared fluids away in an only semi-conscious effort to permanently associate it with her. When he repeated the movement, swiping his drenched finger this time along the crease of her lips, they opened to take to caress the offending digit inside with a chaste kiss while her eyes stared piercingly into him, exposing and accepting his terrible secrets onto her tongue.

It was important to him; he didn't want to explain why and she- thankfully- would not ask, pushing her head up to kiss him as she readily tasted the salty fluid of his sins from his lip before she extended her tongue out to taste more from his finger. Caressing his mouth with hers again, she let him drink the strange sacrilegious mix they made together once more from her mouth.

He understood for the first time why pleasures of the flesh could be utterly addictive.

They cuddled on the chaise for more than an hour afterword, a dazed Hawke running exhausted twitching fingers through Fenris' hair while he lazily suckled at her breasts, finding them utterly fascinating while his meandering hands mapped her, bringing her to that terrible precipice twice more, experimenting with his fingers while she quaked submissively beneath him. The library's fire had died down when he carried the drowsing mage to her bed before returning to her guest chambers. Almost unbidden, his hand had slipped south once again to caress his straining flesh into completion. He came, cursing and grunting while he imagined her writhing beneath him, conjured the feeling of her lips lingering over his ear, pictured her mouth so vividly in that soft, needy, panting 'o'…

… and he realized with unexpected clarity that wanting suddenly wasn't enough anymore. Something within him was changing, the tides of his solitary beach suddenly spawning a dock for travelers and he had no idea how he should even begin to deal with it. That unfamiliar port that she had opened left him feeling lost and confused as the sand shifted beneath his feet. He wondered, not for the first time, if he had simply swapped one master for another, one that needn't a chain to keep him- fearing that this hazy contentedness and complacency would end with the same acts Danarius had bid him to complete.

Two days later, he would travel with Hawke to Sundermount and an encounter with Tevinter hunters would lead him to Hadriana in all her terrible glory… and after he'd lost his precious self-control and restraint, he'd take Marian to her bed and claim her irrevocably as his own; that act would tear down the walls he'd built to protect himself and for a brief moment, his blessed amnesia would lift to reveal things so horrifying his vulnerable mind had no choice but to slam the floodgates closed once more. Then this strange tango he danced with her would reach a terrible three-year intermission while he struggled against his horrid neuroses and fears. But tonight, he stood nude in front of the window at the Amell estate, feeling the air from the cold glass coil around his flagging erection, acknowledging the strange flips his heart made whenever he thought of her, staring out into the black night and wondering what this could all mean.


His memories banished from his mind, Fenris awoke the next morning and with no hesitancy stumbled to the washbasin and promptly vomited into it, choking on the bitter bile mixed with the various alcohols he'd decided to poison himself with last night. His throat throttled and valiantly tried to close itself from the onslaught but to no avail. Heaving and helpless like an intoxicated newborn, Fenris used his morning prayers to beseech that the Maker- and death- would take him quickly.

He wondered passively in his sickness how many blood mages had fallen into corruption from this very state. He could think of at least four Senate lushes he had encountered during his servitude to Danarius that would have taken a deal with a demon to escape hangovers.

"Ah, the majestic cactus awakens! Good morning, puppy," came a brightly cheerful voice that grated in his ears and, he suspected, on his very soul as well. Death, it seemed had greater designs on him.

Isabela stood by the door, affirming that the Maker meant for him to suffer, arms crossed in a smug look of unusual sanctimony. Blearily, he checked the room, the sheets were rumpled and he was nearly naked, pants missing and his small clothes haphazardly fastened. Nothing else covered his lyrium-wracked body. His mind started spinning a blurry tableau of last night.

He'd been drinking, a flash of getting into a fight with some thug outside the bar with no memories of how it had started or ended and then… terrible songs- had he been singing to them? - And then Isabela taking him by the hand and being led to a bed. Then no amount of wracking of his mind could produce anything else. Maker, what had he done? Had he slept with her in a moment of abject weakness? He was so wracked with the aftereffects of the alcohol that he couldn't even tell if his body had been used. He choked out a curse and vomited again, nearly gagging at the scent of the venom his body was steadily pumping out. It smelled like something had crawled inside of his body and died horribly.

Eyes watering, he shot Isabela the evilest look he could muster and groaned when his stomach heaved again. "What did you do to me?"

The look on her face could only be described as expected shock… the expression born of a woman who knew her reputation but felt her friends should expect better. Her narrow hazel eyes flashed in hurt as they regarded his sorry state before Isabela unceremoniously threw a ball of clothing at the heaving elf, that pained look retreating so quickly he was unsure if he'd merely imagined it.

"Thank you, Isabela," the pirate began in a mockingly low voice meant to imitate his own, "for bringing me back to your own personal room to keep me from making a further ass of myself in that bar fight I started…

"…And for paying for the damages I caused with your own personal money," she continued in a rage. "And for darning my fucking pants, which I ripped whilst I was beating the shit out of someone. I'm so grateful," she spit maliciously, "that someone cared enough to ensure I didn't awake in a damned prison cell in fucking Orlais!"

His hands unfolded the packet she had hurled at him and observed the cloth and leather that the enraged pirate had thrown at him, noticing a long rip had been artfully repaired, the stitching clearly the result of a craftsman who understood the integrity of the leather he wrapped himself him. He groaned, realizing his terrible folly before he turned to hurl more of his stomach up into the basin.

"Sorry," he choked pathetically, praying Isabela would take mercy on him. "I'm not in the best of forms."

She stomped furiously toward him and wound her weather-ridden fingers into his white hair, forcing him to look into her eyes. "I'm a slattern," she reminded him with a fierce yank, "Not a rapist, you prick." She pushed his head violently against the wall again, prompting another round of uncontrollable gagging.

"What happened?" he asked between coughing fits.

"Nothing nearly as bad as what you did to yourself," she growled, still sounding clearly offended as she strolled over to callously slap a cold cloth on the back of his neck and set a glass of water next to him, "Even if either of us had wanted to, I doubt you could have." She heaved another weary sigh and gestured to the chaise she'd slept on throughout the night. "I miss Varric being your blackout babysitter. I had to pull your sorry ass out of the bar before you hurt yourself. You were hitting the bottle so hard it decided to hit you back."

"I need to find Hawke," he stuttered as his stomach began to settle and he reached for the glass of water, pounding half of it down before he regained the forethought to know better. He leaned back against the paneled wall and wiped the sweat from his brow, cursing whatever demon had possessed him to try and take on a mug of Dwarven ale on top of the spirits he'd imbibed to start.

"So you're a bloodhound now?" Isabela joked mirthlessly. She pulled away to seat herself on the sofa again, pushing her stolen bed linens out of the way and crossing one of her bare thighs over the other. "Bet you wish you were more of a retriever… they're bird dogs aren't they?"

"I wouldn't know," he growled at the pirate before his stomach ejected weight of the water he'd just imbibed, bracing himself for a moment before he took a cautious sip from the glass again. "Where is she?" He cursed that his voice still trembled with weakness.

"She who?" Isabela asked coyly. Fenris said nothing, just stared coldly at the woman before him until she sighed in disgust. "She's not with me if that's what you're asking."

He snorted, feeling that action choke some residual stomach acid back into his throat. It burned and caused his voice to crack as he spoke, "That is not what I'm asking. I am asking you where she is- not where she clearly is not."

"Such a shame, I could tell you a thousand places she isn't," she sneered angrily as she strode about his room and began gathering his things. "On the moon. In my pocket. Rutting beneath the finest beast on my ship, his name is Harold by the way…"

"You are unfunny, Isabela," he groaned- to call the words pathetic would have been a gross understatement of his condition.

"I'm only here to amuse myself," she grinned as she shoved his armor into his pack. "Any incidental humor is completely accidental. Besides, judging from last night's bender, I'd wager you already know where Hawke is. I put her on that ship myself."

The muscles of his face contorted painfully as he dropped his head, his neck deciding to abandon the arduous task of supporting his skull- so it was true… Marian had fled to Tevinter. "Why is she going to Minrathous?"

Isabela paused, seemingly unsure of what answer she should give before she ducked her head and offered, "Two reasons, the first was to escape you. The second she didn't tell me. But she apparently already had plans to go. The ship took sail a half day before you arrived. She barely made it onboard."

His head tipped back and he groaned, barely repressing the heart-wrenching howl that threatened to surface. Hated tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill over if he couldn't control himself... but he couldn't and so they did. Squinting his eyes shut as hard as he could, the water from his eyes leaked and fell maliciously onto his cheek.

She was gone.

He'd lost her all over again.

The sound of a chink of glass echoed from the windowsill beside his head as Isabela placed a narrow vial before him. Far too sick to question whatever it was, he downed its contents without hesitation, trusting the woman before him in a way he'd only trusted Marian before and feeling any retribution would be well deserved. Instantly, his stomach started to ease from the knot it had coiled into and his headache dulled from a magnificent roar into a mere pounding pain.

"You've been invited by the city council to leave the port," she informed him, "I've already taken your horse on my ship; mucking him will be your responsibility. We sail at noon for Cumberland."

He nodded dumbly, all his effort expended on keeping his emotions contained. "Thank you," he answered.

He heard her shuffled around the room a bit longer before she stood before him again. "She asked me to give this to you," she said, pushing an envelope against his prone legs.

His hands shook violently as he took the envelope and slid the letter from its holster. What would it say? That it was too late? That her hated heritage had finally told her that the Imperium was where she belonged? There were only two words scrawled on the page in her elegant hand and they managed to bring him more comfort than anything he could have ever considered. A soft smile crossed his lips as he reread those two words over and over again. She planned on returning, it seemed. Allowing himself to breathe a sigh of relief, he rested a moment before Isabela, practical wench that she was, spoke again and tore all that consolation away in so few words.

"Did you at least protect her, Fenris?" the pirate asked. At his confused glance, she clarified, "Were you safe?"

"I don't understand what you mean," he mumbled as he folded the paper and toyed with the edges.

She ducked before him and placed her naked hand against the bare skin on his shoulder, ignoring the reactive lyrium as she softly asked, "Could Hawke be pregnant?"

Those quiet words knocked the wind out of him better than a hammer to the chest. Same as the first time he'd taken Marian to bed, he'd been completely negligent toward contraception. He struggled to breathe against the very real possibility that he could have left Marian with child… his child. Was that why she'd gone to Tevinter, to chance raising his child without him? Some sort of terrible sound came choking from his throat as he found himself for once unable to maintain the stoicism that had carried him through more trials than any one person could have ever known.

"Yes," he answered roughly, trying to hold back the onslaught of emotions threatening to overtake him.

He felt her weight shift down to the hard floor next to him as she took his heavy head in her arms and pulled it against her breast, breathing, "It's all right, puppy. She won't stay. Go ahead," she murmured into his sharp ear as she stroked her rough fingers through his soft hair. "I won't tell anyone."

He rested his head on Isabela and felt the hated tears overwhelm him, unable to fight them any longer while this weakened state and these turbulent thoughts left him so vulnerable. Feeling a freedom he'd only ever felt before in Marian's arms, he clutched at Isabela and wept, cradled against her chest as she rocked him comfortingly while she whispered soft reassurances into his ear, whispering things that she clearly had not known. He sobbed harder and buried himself farther into her skin as his mind spun at the implications of all she had said along with everything that he could not completely understand. Her soft assertions that Marian was not lost to him only prompted him to weep harder.

Due to his own raging hormones and unwillingness to acknowledge his feelings and prepare for at least the possibility of sex, he would be left unknowing- perhaps forever- if in the passionate abandonment they'd found in each other's arms, he and Marian had produced a new life between them.

No. She was not gone forever, he reminded himself as he clutched the paper in his hand as tightly as he could without crumbling it. Hawke hated Tevinter and would return. If she were pregnant, she would certainly return. Her father's memory would not stand for it and neither would she. He unfolded the paper and allowed his eyes to read her missive to him again. Two lonely words that were as much a declaration as a solemn promise to return:

Fuck Tevinter.

Those were the only words the mage had felt she could offer him, the common cursing meant to shock him from his melancholy. They would have to be enough for now.


A/N- So, after the last chapter I told myself that I was going to shorten the subsequent chapters so I could put them out more quickly. Not only did I fail to make the chapter shorter, I actually made it longer when I tried to cut it down and it took me several days longer to put out! I'M WINNING!

Damn, Fenris just has so much backstory! And I've got to set up all these damn dominos to knock down!

In any case, thanks to everyone who reads and reviews! Especially to my beautiful anonymous reviewers for whom I cannot use PMs to thank personally.