AN: Hello wonderful readers! I got you this chapter that wasn't even supposed to happen. I was literally typing up my bitter pill chapter when I realized there was a plot hole...so here is some fluffy filler! *unenthusiastic cheering*
Rated: ...the worst you might get from this is a toothache. Maybe T for some belligerent Fenris? I dunno.
Disclaimer: BioWare owns all of my boyfriends. It is putting a strain on our polygamous relationship.
"Fenris?" Hawke's voice cut through the hazy fog of sleep like a rusty saw. The elf groaned loudly and pressed his face farther into the cool ceramic tiles on the floor. He could feel his pulse throbbing angrily behind his eyelids like a hammer pounding a nail into a piece of wood. Every step the Fereldan apostate took towards him was deafening. Maybe if he held still and wished hard enough she would simply go away.
"Well well, look at you," the mage said flatly, clearly unimpressed. "Are you and Isabela in some kind of race to see which one of you can destroy your liver the fastest?"
Fenris grumbled something darkly in Tevine and tried to roll away from her. Hawke stepped lightly over his prone form and gazed down at him with her arms folded tightly across her chest, sporting a severely arched brow and a disapproving frown. He suspected she had never looked more like Leandra in the entire course of her life.
"You were supposed to meet us at the Hanged Man this morning," she informed him, sounding irritated. "Remember the Arishok? Big fella, likes to scowl and show off his rack? He asked to see me. By name. And you're the only person I know who even comes close to understanding all that Qun craziness." She gave a disappointed sigh. "I really could have used your help today, Fenris."
The former slave tried to push himself up into a sitting position so that he could properly apologize, but his arms felt like lead. He gave an involuntary tremble as cold sweat slid down the back of his neck. He could taste a sour bile rising in the back of his mouth. After four failed attempts to rise, he gave up and surrendered to his fate: a lifetime spent sprawled out on the dirt encrusted tiles of his rundown mansion.
"Come on," Hawke grunted, drawing one of his arms across her shoulders and trying to haul him to his feet. He didn't even have the strength to flinch away from her touch. "You should at least do your wallowing someplace other than the floor."
They hadn't made it three steps towards his bed before he heaved the remnants of his scant dinner down the front of his tunic. And the floor. And his bare feet. Not to mention Hawke's favorite pair of boots. It was a testament to her experience both with sick people and drunkards that she barely batted an eye at his humiliation. Fenris hung his head as she helped him settle onto the thin mattress of his cot.
"So," she began brusquely, "care to tell me what prompted this particular bout of self-destruction?"
"Not particularly," he managed to rasp out as he rolled towards the wall. "Thank you for your assistance, Hawke. Please leave."
"You're going to sleep like that?" she asked incredulously. "You're covered in sick."
"I'll change after you leave," he promised dismissively.
"Right, because I'm obviously going to believe that after watching you helplessly flop around on the floor like a fish." He could practically hear her rolling her eyes at him.
"I hate fish," he grumbled obstinately. Hawke laughed, and it felt like someone was trying to split his skull open with an axe. He choked back a whimper.
"Just tell me where your clothes are and I'll help you into a new tunic." The apostate chuckled. "And since I'm feeling generous, I won't even tell Isabela what color your small clothes are."
He was quiet for a long time. "...Fenris?"
"I do not own a second tunic," he mumbled to his pillow.
"You... What?" Hawke gasped in disbelief. "You get a decent share of coin on a semi-regular basis, you certainly haven't used it for the upkeep of this place...and now you're saying you haven't even bothered to spend it on an extra shirt? What in Andraste's name are you doing with it all?"
The only response she got was an anguished groan.
"You know, I could just heal you," Hawke told him, sounding vaguely amused. "A little wiggle of my fingers and-"
"No magic," he protested gruffly. "Just let me sleep."
"Fine," she said with a quiet huff of laughter. "But I'm at least going to help you get cleaned up." He heard her clattering around the room, presumably in search of a wash basin. Fenris curled tightly into a ball, covered his ears, and silently cursed the fact that one of his closest friends was also a horrendous busybody.
"Sit up for a minute and drink this," Hawke commanded him gently. Cool fingers pressed against his overheated skin, pulling at his shoulder to make him turn towards her. He managed to scoot his way into sitting up with his back slumped against the headboard. She pressed a goblet into his hands and he stared down at it in bleary-eyed suspicion.
"Water," the mage explained when he didn't follow her directions. "You're dehydrated, and this will help. Drink it slowly." He took a tentative sip. It wasn't exactly an instant flood of relief, but it was…better. If nothing else, it helped wash taste of vomit out of his mouth.
When he glanced up at her, Hawke's brow was creased with worry.
"What is it?" he asked hoarsely.
"You're drenched in sweat." She leaned over and pushed the damp white hair back from his eyes before placing her palm flat against his forehead. Fenris shuddered. "And you're feverish. Did you spend the entire night on the floor?"
He shrugged noncommittally. Hawke heaved a weary sigh and handed him a small vial full of a familiar thick red liquid.
"Alright, I'll be back in about an hour," she told him. "In the meantime, I'd like you to take that health potion, it should help with your headache, and continue drinking water. Slowly." She gestured to the small table near his bed. "I put your wash bowl here, if you feel like getting some of the puke off of you."
He nodded silently.
"Hawke," he called after her as she walked towards the door. She turned back to see what he wanted. "Why are you doing this?"
She cocked her head in confusion.
"You're sick, aren't you?" she asked.
"So it would seem," he said with an air of sullenness. Hawke laughed.
"I'm a healer," she said with a shrug and a grin. "Should I go get Anders instead?"
He rumbled a vehement string of Tevinter curse words. "No."
"That's what I thought." She chuckled as she turned and walked out the door.
Sometime later, Fenris awoke to the sound of Hawke humming softly to herself and the discovery that he had been tucked under the thin blankets of his bed. He had drunk both the potion and the water in her absence, as instructed, and was feeling decidedly less miserable. The pain in his head and subsided to a dull ache, and his stomach, while still tender, had calmed significantly from the churning nausea that set him heaving earlier. He was still exhausted and clammy however, and he simultaneously hoped and feared that the reason his friend was poking around by the fireplace had something to do with food. He would never say it to her face, but the woman was at least twice as dangerous standing over a cooking fire than she would ever be with her stave.
Perhaps sensing his gaze, the mage in question looked over towards his bed and smiled when she noticed that he was now conscious. When she moved away from the hearth to come check on him, he observed that there was definitely a pot of…something brewing over the flames. Nothing smelled like it was burning yet, which was at least somewhat encouraging.
"How are you feeling?" Hawke asked, sitting next to him on the bed to check his temperature again. Fenris was lucid enough to flush with embarrassment when she put her hand on his brow this time. The apostate had taken care of him on dozens of occasions throughout the course of their rather dangerous acquaintance, but never for something so clearly self-inflicted…or stupid.
"Better," he said hoarsely, refusing to meet her eyes.
"Good," she said, sounding pleased. "Your fever seems to have gone down a little. Are you hungry? I'm making an attempt at soup. It should be ready in a few minutes." The elf fought back a grimace.
"Your confidence is overwhelming," the mage commented dryly. She grabbed something near the foot of the bed and held it out to him. "I brought you one of Carver's old sleep shirts. You can borrow it until you've had a chance to clean yours."
Fenris fingered the rough linen uncertainly. It felt wrong to take something that had once belonged to her brother, even if it was only temporary. Even now, Hawke wore his bracers on her arms, the worn leather oiled and tended to lovingly.
"Ah. Right," the apostate sputtered awkwardly as she got up and stumbled back towards the fireplace. There was a strange amount of color rising on her cheeks. "I'll give you some privacy. I should probably be keeping an eye on the food anyway."
The elf's mouth curled in quiet fondness as he studied his friend's silhouette in front of the flames, her arm raised to rub at the back of her head. Hawke was always like that, always sensitive to his...oddities. Fenris enjoyed his privacy, as he had been granted so little of it as a slave, but he hardly needed his friend to treat him so delicately. He supposed that it was just as likely that she simply had no desire to see him half naked if she didn't have to. The thought made him frown.
"It has been more than three years since I came here," he said softly as he undid the toggles of his soiled tunic. "And seven since I first became free of Danarius. Last night was something of a celebration, I suppose."
"Drinking six bottles of wine by yourself and blacking out on the floor? Sounds like a party," Hawke said flippantly. He could see the discomfort in the stiff lines of her shoulders.
"Not my most ingenious plan, I admit," the elf sighed. He pulled the clean shirt over his head and tossed the other carelessly to the floor. "Tell me...what do you do when you stop running?"
"I'll tell you when I find out!" the apostate said with a laugh. She was quiet for a few minutes as she rummaged around in search of something to serve the soup in. She eventually managed to unearth a pair of mismatched wooden bowls that apparently met her standards of cleanliness. He studied her face in profile as she spooned their out their meal, and her expression appeared pensive. "I guess you stop, and take a breath, and start anew."
"I don't know how." the elf admitted with a shrug. "My first memory is receiving these markings, the lyrium being branded into my flesh. The agony wiped away everything. Whatever life I had before I became a slave...it's lost." He shook his head in frustration and turned his face away to glare at the wall. "I shouldn't trouble you with this, my problems are not yours."
"You really don't remember anything?" Hawke baulked in dismay, nearly spilling the bowls of soup in her hands as she walked back over to his bedside. "You don't know who you were?"
"Fenris is the name Danarius bestowed upon me. His 'little wolf'," the elf told her with a sneer of disgust. "If I once had another name or a family, then they were taken from me..."
Hawke wordlessly passed him a bowl, and the sorrow in her eyes was palpable. Their fingers brushed against each other during the exchange, and for some insane reason, he was tempted to take her hand. He didn't want her to be sad. Not for him...not for anything. Fenris had never felt like this about someone before, and he wasn't sure what the implications of such a thing might be. His mouth twitched into a puzzled frown.
She wrangled a chair and sat it next to his bed, staring down as she swirled the soup around like she was seeking answers in its depths. He glanced down at his own meal to see chunks of potato and chicken floating in a thin broth. Fenris took a careful sip, ready for anything. The meat was a bit overdone, the vegetables were a little underdone, and the whole thing could have stood few more shakes of salt, but considering that Hawke was the one who had made it, it was remarkably palatable. He told her as much, and she gave him a lopsided grin.
"Can I ask...how you escaped Danarius?" Hawke questioned after a few minutes of quiet eating. "I know you don't like to talk about it much, but-"
"It's fine, Hawke," he assured her. "I may as well mark the occasion in some other manner than slovenly drunkenness." Fenris paused for a moment, trying to sort out where to begin. "You've heard of Seheron? The Imperium and the Qunari have fought over the island for centuries, now. I was there with Danarius during a Qunari attack. I managed to get him to a ship- but there was no room for a slave. I was left behind. I barely got out of the city alive..."
"And he just...left you?" Hawke asked, clearly surprised. "I thought Danarius considered you valuable?"
"He wasn't given a choice," the elf told her with a dark chuckle. "The look on his face when the ship pulled out was priceless!" His friend smiled nervously, uncertain if she should laugh or not.
"There are rebels in the Seheron jungle called Fog Warriors. They found me and took me in, nursed me back to health." His mouth quirked in a faint smile as his eyes met hers. "Much like you did, Hawke."
"It's taken me a few years to get to the 'nursing you back to health' bit, and you're the one who found me, if I'm not mistaken." She grinned. He laughed.
"See if I ever try to compliment you again," the former slave told her with a smirk and a roll of his eyes.
"Just because you failed doesn't mean I want you to stop trying," she informed him cheekily, here gray eyes alight with mischief. "So, tell me about these rebels."
"I stayed with them for a time," he explained. "Until Danarius... finally came for me."
"Whether you wanted to go or not I assume," Hawke said with a hard edge of fury on his behalf. "Were you at least with these Fog Warriors willingly?"
"I had grown fond of the rebels," Fenris confessed softly. "They bowed to no master and fought for their freedom. It was...beyond my experience." He swallowed thickly. "When Danarius came, they refused to let him take me."
"I'm liking them more and more," the apostate commented with a grin. Her smile wilted quickly at the expression on his face. "...Fenris?"
"He ordered me to kill them," he told her in a choked whisper, staring fixedly down at his soup bowl. "So I did. I...killed them all."
"Why would you do such a thing?" Hawke gasped in obvious horror.
"It felt inevitable," he said brokenly, burying his face in his hands, sending his half eaten meal clattering to the floor. "My master had returned and this...this fantasy life was over."
"But once it was done," he continued in a jagged voice, apparently unable to help himself. "I looked down at their bodies. I felt...I couldn't... I ran. And I never looked back."
She tried to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off. He didn't deserve to be forgiven for this—he didn't want to be. He looked up at her helplessly and was met with nothing except pity. He cringed at the sight of it.
"Were you close to these Fog Warriors?" Hawke questioned him gently.
"I knew them only a few months, but in that time I felt as if I truly lived," Fenris told her solemnly as he stared down at his guilty hands, dark and rough against the discolored sheets. "They were...bold. Strong. Free with their affections... I was in awe of them, and owed them everything." He clenched his fingers angrily into the thin coverlet and glared up at his friend with self-loathing twisting painfully behind his eyes. "...and I turned on them even so."
"We've all done things we regret, Fenris," the mage said consolingly.
"Have you wiped out and entire camp full of people who not only saved your life, but then rose to defend it when they could have survived by simply giving you up?" the elf snapped angrily.
"No," she conceded. "But I did kill my own brother."
"It's not the same!" he growled at her. "You had no choice."
"Did you think you had a choice, Fenris?" she asked him quietly.
"I-...no," the former slave admitted with a weary sigh. " At the time, I...You do not dream of freedom when you are a slave, or wonder at possibilities. You think only of your master's desires and what the next hour will bring. It...did not occur to me that I could be anything else until I had a taste of it."
He met Hawke's eyes and held them steadily for a moment, seeking something. She offered him a sad smile and he glowered at her for her trouble. Her expression deflated a bit and she moved her hand as though she had wanted to touch him, but apparently thought better of it. There was shame in that, too; that he couldn't even accept the comfort of a friend without the taint of something from his past spoiling it.
"...I did have a choice," he told her gruffly. "Even though I only realized it later. ...Danarius had already been wounded, and the soldiers he had brought with him would have been no match for the rebels and myself. We could have beaten them. The Fog Warriors could still be alive... and I would now be free."
"You are free," Hawke insisted vehemently.
"With my former master hounding my every step?" Fenris asked with a derisive snort. "You think because he has not made an obvious attempt to capture me within these three short years of our acquaintance that he has given up?" He gave sharp bitter laugh. "No. Danarius is an arrogant and devious man...he will come to claim what he thinks is his. Two days, a month, seven years, it matters not. He. Will. Come."
"And we will face him together," the dark haired apostate told him adamantly. "And in the very likely event he fails to see reason, we'll kill him and be done with it."
"Just like that?" The elf blinked at the mage in surprise. This was not the reaction he had been anticipating. Then again, it was hard to know what to anticipate with Hawke. "What if I betray you as well? What if Danarius—"
"Just. Like. That." Hawke cut him off in a firm voice.
"You...are a strange woman, Hawke," he informed her, affection and bafflement warring on his face.
"With even stranger friends!" She laughed.
"A fair enough point," he acknowledged with a thin rueful smile. "I…have never spoken about this. To anyone. …I never wanted to. Thank you, Hawke…for listening."
"Thank you for indulging my rude and invasive questioning even though you don't feel well," Hawke countered with a guilty grin.
"It is no bother," Fenris assured her, his dark eyebrows raised in surprise at the truth of his own words. The mage shook her head at him.
"You're sick and you should be resting, and here I am getting you all riled up…" Her words trailed away as she frowned in disapproval at her own actions. Then she sighed. "You should try to get some more sleep if you're finished eating. Do you want me to stay?"
"Stay?" he echoed dumbly. She was going to sit with him while he slept? She nodded.
"We can work on reading some of your book, if you want to," she suggested.
"I…would like that very much." Fenris smiled at her broadly, showing off white even teeth and crinkling the corners of his green eyes. He had meant to convey his pleasure at the thought of her company, but Hawke nearly fell out of her chair as she scrambled away from him, mumbling something about finding the book. What he could see of her face past the dark curtain of her hair was flushed with bright red embarrassment. The elf furrowed his brow in confusion. Had he said something wrong?
When she returned to her seat beside him with the tome in hand she seemed to have regained her composure, though her cheeks were still a bit pink. Hawke had not laughed when he admitted that he could not read. In fact, if she had been anything, it was righteously indignant. Not with him, of course. She had let out a long stream of utterly filthy descriptions of how Danarius' mother liked to spend her free time, most of it involving goats, and then she'd asked if he wanted to learn.
He had a tenuous grasp on his letters now, and progress in his book on Shartan was almost unbearably slow, but he had chafed at the idea of starting out with children's stories, so here they were. Hawke scooted her chair closer to him, leaning her elbows on the edge of the bed so she could read the book from where it lay in his hands. Fenris carefully sounded out each word, stumbling frequently. Hawke never intervened until he asked for help, or if he managed to completely mangle the way something was pronounced. The work was frustrating, but every new word he conquered felt a bit like giving his former master the middle finger, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Every sentence was a victory, a small triumph over ignorance and inhibitions.
He read until his eyelids grew heavy, sliding further and further down into his pillows. The light from the fireplace had grown soft and dim. Hawke was warm and still beside him, her breathing slow and even. He glanced over and saw that she had slumped over in her chair, her head resting on her arms. The ebony sweep of her hair hand fallen across her face, and he brushed it away and tucked it behind her ear without thinking, wanting to see her. She mumbled something indistinct and nuzzled further into the crook of her elbow, unwittingly moving closer to him. His face broke into a small drowsy smile that his friend was incapable of blushing at. She was so good. And with that last thought, Fenris drifted off to sleep.