The slam of the front door jolts him out of the thin doze. The world is precisely as he'd left it—Anton sitting on the bed at Hawke's side, hands aglow, eyes closed, Hawke herself still unmoving and grey—save that morning has come and the shadows have shortened with the hour, the sun high enough to escape the window over Hawke's bed. Only—the door, and Fenris lurches from the chair to the sunlit hallway, ignoring Anton's bleary confusion.

"You came," he says, rough with sleep and exhaustion. "You received the letter."

"I nearly ruined the mare in the process," Bethany says, tearing at the laces of her cloak as Media tries to help it from her shoulders. Her boots are discolored from heel to muddy knee; her shirt is stained every crease with sweat. "What happened, Fenris? Tell me everything. Start at the beginning. Is she awake?"

He shakes his head, and Bethany lets out a short, angry breath and singes the laces clean through. Media pulls the cloak away without pause; Fenris says, the words still strange in his mouth, "Anton believes she has been poisoned."

"Poisoned. Maker's breath, what's she gotten herself into this time?"

He tells her as he lets her into Hawke's room. Only the worst of it, the slavers and captives held against their will, conversation turned to argument, the fight that broke upon them in the aftermath. Bethany snorts at that as she curls a bare palm over Anton's shoulder, her eyes lidding. "I should have known. Show me what you've done."

Anton does, magic far beyond Fenris's comprehension. At Bethany's nod, though, Fenris continues his explanation, describing the battle and the terrible fire Hawke had called to sweep them through, the Antivan with feathers in his hair and poison on his knife. He skims over the blood magic and the lyrium, unwilling for more than Hawke to know that weakness; he does not, however, spare detail when he describes the stabbing, and Hawke sweating through her fire, and her fall.

"Has she thrown up?"

"Three times. Perhaps four."

"She will again before this is through," Bethany says grimly, and slides her hand down Anton's arm until it covers his on her sister's stomach. "Let me take it from here, please."

A shared breath as Anton gives one final push, and the glow of his hands recedes at last as Bethany's swells in its place. It is a swell, too, a tide rising without end to swallow oceans; it pulls at the lyrium in a way Anton's never could, insistent and implacable, and Fenris shudders at the slow draw. Even her hands burn so brilliant he cannot look directly at them, bright enough to throw sharp shadow in all the wrong places, a white sun in a room far too small for the pressure.

He watches Hawke's face instead. Five minutes and it does not move; ten; a quarter-hour. Bethany's healing does not wane, constant as the sea. Anton's efforts had been necessary and Fenris is glad of them, but he senses this is the magic as it's meant to be worked, an effortless strength beyond talent. He can't remember why he had ever thought her soft.

The change, when it comes, is so slow he thinks he imagines it. Hawke's brow begins to furrow, her lips to press together, and by the time Fenris realizes it is new and pushes up from his chair her eyelids have already begun to flutter. "Bethany," he says, his voice thick enough to choke.

She lets out a long, smooth breath, and the light dims but does not extinguish. "Slowly," she murmurs.

He doesn't wish to go slowly. He would have Hawke's hand in his already were Bethany not here, or his fingers in her hair—but his courage is not yet so strong, and he settles for resting both palms on the quilt at her side. Hawke tosses her head on the pillow, her hair stuck to her temples with sweat; then she opens her eyes, and that flash of blue is enough to make Fenris's fingers clench.

"Bethany," she croaks. "Again with the light show?"

Bethany laughs, a sweet sound for the tension in the room, and frees one hand from the light to smooth the hair from her sister's forehead. "You bring it upon yourself, you know."

"Coincidence. Just ask—" Her eyes fly open, raw panic displacing the levity. "Fenris? Where's—"

"Here," he says, and grips her fingers. Bethany is one thing; the fear in her face is worse. "I'm here, Hawke."

"Are you—are you all right? That mage—"

"I will live." He forces a smile. "As will you, it seems."

The cloudy confusion in her eyes begins to clear, though not enough for her to return his smile. "Better than expected. I remember." She begins to say something else; then her mouth twists and she rolls abruptly to the side, violently retching over the edge of the bed into the pot below. Bethany follows to kneel on the bed behind her, lit palms flat to her sister's rolling back, and Fenris can do nothing but pull the hair from her face and wait. Anton still stands by the door, silent guardian, and when the second minute turns into the third and there is nothing left but water and bile and Hawke shuddering, shuddering, he brings the basin of clean washwater and a cloth from the dresser to the bedside.

She spits twice, trembling, and rolls to her back again with a hitching half-sob. "Sorry," she mutters as she presses one hand to the still-seeping wound in her stomach; the other she swipes across her eyes and then her mouth. "So much for good impressions."

Anton shakes his head. Fenris had not realized before how exhausted the man looks. "The debt is mine, magister. My family is grateful."

"Don't. Is Galis all right?"

"Home with his sisters and his brother, and with Gran. Media has prepared broth, if you can bear it."

Hawke looks to her sister. Bethany considers, the light around her hands dying out at last, and sits back on her heels on the quilt. "All right. In very small doses. Very small, sister, do you hear me?"

"Yes, domina," Hawke whispers, a ghost of a smile in her voice, and Fenris does not realize what she has said until Bethany's eyes flick to his in question.

He ought to be offended, he realizes. She makes light of suffering, of his once-mandated respect. He should be hurt.

But it is such a small thing when Hawke is awake at last, and Fenris is only glad.

The next few days pass slowly, but with neither Fenris nor Hawke managing more than a handful of minutes awake at a time, the hours make little difference. Media comes three times a day with food and supplies, Nirena and Drydas at her heels to do the chores Hawke and Fenris can no longer manage alone. Bethany spends most mornings either in Hawke's room or the kitchens, blending herbs and roots into clean water to keep the remnants of the poison at bay; Fenris barely manages to rise from his own bed for two days while his own injuries heal, exhausted beyond belief and aching to his bones from the lyrium's abuse. Only twice in his memory had Danarius ever disciplined him this severely, and he had not been given rest afterwards for the healing, then. He does not know if this is worse.

On the third day he limps from Carver's borrowed room to the central sitting room with its high cedar beams. He means to use the long sofa there, well-padded with pillows, as exchange for Carver's too-familiar walls, but—Hawke has beaten him to it, stretched armrest to armrest under the familiar crimson throw.

He stands over her for several seconds, alternately resentful and resigned, until she opens her eyes and blinks hazily up at him. He doesn't try to keep the disgruntlement from his voice. "Hawke."

"Fenris. Did I steal your seat?"

Already his strength is flagging, the room darker around the edges than before. He cannot even muster dissemblance. "Yes."

She huffs, presses one hand to the bandage over her stomach as she shuffles sideways against the sofa's back. "Come here, then. We can share."

"There's no room," he objects, though he's already stepping closer, already bracing one hand on the armrest by her head. Distantly his mind reminds him of the loveseat across the room, the armchairs set corner to the stone fireplace. He does not care.

"There's always room if you believe it in your heart. Move your knee. Other way."

If he were not so tired—but he is, and the sofa is wide enough against all odds, and somehow they manage to arrange themselves so that Hawke's legs fit between his under the crimson blanket, his sore arm safe around her waist, her head on his chest. Media has left one of the windows open to the cool morning breeze; Nirena laughs somewhere outside at her brother's call, the caw of faraway crows behind her.

He can feel Hawke breathe.

"There," she murmurs at last. "Cosy as houses."

Fenris doesn't bother to open his eyes. "Be quiet."

"Whatever you like," she whispers, smiling, and he is asleep.

He wakes more than an hour later to find Bethany knelt at the sofa's side. She holds her sister's wrist in one hand, counting the beats; at Fenris's startled look she only lifts an eyebrow and replaces her sister's wrist with his own. She counts a lifetime, then pushes to her feet.

"Don't worry," she says at last, soft enough to keep from breaking the morning spell. "I'm happy she's happy, if nothing else."

It was easier before, when he could pretend what happened in this refuge was not real. "This is—Bethany, I am—"

"You're my sister's friend," she finishes for him, "and mine. That's more than enough for me."

He does not know what to say. She places a small cup of tea on the end-table, still steaming, and brushes a hand over her sister's forehead. "Make sure she drinks that when she wakes up," she tells Fenris, and adds with a sudden, terrifyingly prim look, "and for the record, do know this does not exempt you from merciless teasing."

He laughs despite himself. Hawke stirs against his chest, then settles again with a sigh; Bethany's expression softens, sadder, and she turns away.

"I'll check on you later," she says quietly, and Fenris watches her go until the door clicks closed behind her.

Even with Bethany's healing, Hawke's recovery remains a slow, gradual process. Fenris knows the convalescence frustrates her; he knows, too, how much it means to have her sister here for the first time in over four months, and despite Hawke's insistence that he is welcome at all times he gives them what privacy he can. Hours pass as Bethany regales Hawke with some new story from the Minrathous estate, or their father's reports from the Senate; whole afternoons slip by when Hawke begins to tell her in turn of her adventures with Fenris: the lake, the bear and her cubs, the continued growth of Media's children.

They sit together the first few days in the sitting room when Hawke is too weak to stand and Fenris's own slow-closing injuries to his thigh and ribs preclude easy exercise. Later, when she is stronger, Bethany takes her on longer and longer walks through the olive trees surrounding the cottage, down to the lake and up again, to the inn where Galis has begun training with his father's permission to join the army. One day Bethany rescues her borrowed books from Fenris's room with a perfectly innocent smile; the next he finds his audience for his evening lessons has grown by one, and when he reads the family's letters there are two sisters laughing at Carver's half-hearted efforts to train the dog to feign death instead.

They discover the only reason Bethany came alone is because she'd won the fight with their father, both of them shouting loud enough to wake the house after the courier had arrived in the middle of the night. She'd been against the political scheme from the start, but if it were to have any hope of succeeding both backing magisters could not abandon the Senate at the same time. Leandra could protract her daughter's supposed business only so long.

Bethany tells them, too, that despite their caution Danarius almost certainly knows they have hidden themselves in Napoca. Fenris cannot quite hide his alarm at that, but she does not allow it to grow; with the discussion so vitriolic in the Senate Danarius cannot abandon his position to his other supporters, not if he wishes to keep their support. Enough eyes watch his movements between Malcolm's spies and his own earned enemies that uncomfortable questions might be raised over his competency if he were to spend another fortune hunting down the same slave, lost to him a second time by his own hand. He knows they are in Napoca. He does not know precisely where, and as long as they take reasonable precautions, Malcolm doubts he will move against them directly until the vote.

Hawke sighs when Bethany finishes, her face clouding, but within the hour her sister's company has brightened her again even more than Fenris has managed the last few weeks. He does not begrudge Bethany that success; he knows Hawke cares for him, knows he cares for her as well, and he knows she does better with her family at her side. He would do more than write a letter to her sister if it meant she would always smile so easily.

Perhaps that should worry him, he thinks, one night when he has taken a bottle of Nevarran red to the back porch. The moon has waned to only a sliver's crescent, a handful of candles on the window-ledge the only illumination aside from stars, and Fenris leans his head back against the cool brick and closes his eyes. Perhaps he should withdraw, more guarded against the constant awareness of her presence. Perhaps he should leave entirely.

He could, if he wished. He could take the things that have become his and walk from the front door in broad daylight. She would not stop him.

He would rather stay.

The bottle is over half gone by the time he hears voices through the window above him, and the light suddenly grows with the strike of a match to more lamps. Hawke's voice follows, then Bethany's; Fenris does not move, defiantly lazy with drink, and with the scrape of chair-legs on wood and the clink of cutlery to a plate they settle again, still mid-discussion of a historic battle of the Storm Age. He knows the one they mean. He and Hawke had argued over it not three days prior, firmly on opposite sides; he had accused her of shortsightedness in regards to the Qunari offensive strength, and she had declared his sense of empathy withered to a crust for not considering the civilians in initial casualties.

He had enjoyed it. She'd been wrong, certainly, but she argues with him as she would any other, and if nothing else, he has come to appreciate that difference.

Then Hawke says his name, and he nearly topples from the seat. But he is undiscovered—she only brings him up to Bethany as proof of her point. "Which means you agree with Fenris. And that's exactly why I'm right and you're wrong."

"Maybe you just can't admit you're being stubborn for no reason."

"I'm never stubborn."

Bethany laughs, a fork tapping on china. "I can hear Mother sighing from here."

"Fenris says I have conviction."

"He does not."

Hawke snorts, and the creak of her chair tells Fenris she's leant it back on two legs again. "He's almost certainly thinking it."

A long pause. Then Bethany says, a little more distant, "Fenris thinks a lot of things, according to you."

"Oh, Bethany."

"In fact, your letters have been full of him."

"Don't be coy. He's practically the only person I've seen for months. Of course he's going to come up in letters."

"Sister, please."

"Sister, please."

"Don't do that." Too calm, unwounded by Hawke's mocking bite. And then— "Are you in love with him?"

A long, slow breath, the world hanging on the word. Fenris cannot move. The bottle dangles forgotten from his fingers; the trees themselves have gone wholly still, no evening breeze to disturb them.

Hawke says, "I don't know."

"Eppie!"

"I don't!" The thump of the chair legs to earth again, china rattling at the blow. "He's so intelligent, Bethany. Did you know that? Of course you did, you probably knew it before anyone else. But I didn't, and I didn't realize until we came how sharp his mind is. Or how funny he can be when he thinks no one's looking. And he's good, Beth, even though he hasn't got the faintest idea how to show it, because despite everything that's happened to him they still haven't managed to kill his heart. He's kind. He wants so many things, and he deserves them, and I…" A heavier swallow, now, her voice dropping. "I want him to have all of them. I want to help. I want him to be happy."

Bethany's words are a whisper at first, blank with dismay. "Oh, no. Oh, no. I warned you about this. Oh, how—didn't you hear a word I said?"

"Of course I did, but—"

"But, nothing." He can see Bethany's face in his mind, jaw set so like her sister's, her eyes flat. His fingers have gone white around the bottle's neck. "He's a slave. He's your slave, and you own him. He is afraid, can't you see that?"

"Not of me."

"Of what you could be, then. Of what we could be. Of what the magisters could do even now."

The protest is almost voiceless. "Please. Please, don't."

"You can't deceive yourself. Not about this. It's too important."

"Beth, he—" Half-sobbing, now, queer gasps between the words. He can barely hear her through the roaring in his ears. "He means so much to me. He means so much—and it's terrifying, and I can't—"

"I know, dearest, I know," and now she is gentler, the chair scraping as she rises, her voice following the edge of the table to her sister's side. "But in the end, that can't matter in the slightest. Don't you see? Not what he means to you, not when there's nothing he can do about it. The only thing that matters is what he chooses."

She gulps, a painful sound, and Fenris can hear Bethany's embrace. "I know," Hawke murmurs, muffled into her sister's shoulder. "Flames and pyre, little sister."

"You have to let him choose. You know that." Another squeeze, and a smile in her voice that aches. "And eventually, you'll have to let him go."

Hawke does not reply. Fenris himself can find no words, his pulse a hammer. He places the bottle on the porch instead, slow and silent, and pushes up from the woven chair as deliberately as if he goes to battle. Only—there is no enemy to fight, here, no war but the feeble candlelight against the sky. But if nothing else, if everything else she said is true, Fenris knows Bethany is wrong about one thing.

He steps off the porch into the night, draws in a deep, clean breath until his lungs ache.

He is not afraid.