Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 1050
Prompt: from vylits: 1. Female Hawke/Fenris 2. Hawke never goes to the Free Marches but ends up in Denerim with her family where she meets an elf on the run.
Notes: This will probably make more sense if you've read gaider's short story about fenris (top google result for "gaider short story fenris," if you haven't)
it still might not make sense, but hey, i laughed while i was writing it. extra thanks to w0rdinista for the quick glance-over!
—
If she didn't have such a weakness for bread, she'd never have noticed a thing. But she does, and her mother's made a fresh loaf—with nuts in, just the way she likes it—and even though Denerim doesn't sleep she still finds herself holding her breath as she creeps bare-footed to the kitchen, avoiding the boards that creak, stifling her exhausted laughter in her wrist. Like a child instead of a full-grown woman, she thinks, tugging her oversized nightshirt off the nail it's snagged on, sneaking like this through her own house in the middle of the night.
But—there. Wrapped in paper, only two slices missing from dinner. A precious bounty, especially considering the price of good flour in the markets, but Mother had promised it for her nameday and it's on the shelf—right there—
She's barely got one hand on it when the window rattles behind her. Half-expecting another rat, she turns—and there's an elf in the room.
"Oh," says Hawke, and blinks. Blinks again.
Still there. Rising from his crouch now, naked greatsword in one hand taking most of her attention, though somewhere behind the giddy disbelief she notes white hair, light armor, white-lined tattoos. It's a very large greatsword, she tells herself. A very strange elf holding a very large greatsword in her kitchen. Perfectly reasonable to feel a modicum of concern.
His eyes dart to hers as he straightens at last. Green, and the barest glimpse of something—hunted—and then his gaze flickers down her nightshirt and he smirks, and somehow between her certainty even now that he's an apparition and the sheer shock rooting her to the rough-sanded kitchen floor she can't make herself move. She just—stares as he trots forward, still smirking, reaching to the counter behind her—
It's not until something crashes violently in the street that she realizes what he's done. He's already around the corner into the front room; she races after him, high indignation boiling her blood, and not even the sound of banging at the front door is enough to keep her from leaping onto the elf's shoulders.
"You give that back!" she shouts, reaching over him for the loaf of bread in his free hand as he staggers to the door. Still warm—she can smell it! Her nameday bread! "Mine!"
"Get off!" he snarls, trying to shake her off without losing his grip on either loaf or sword. "Woman—they're coming!"
"You don't give me that back and I'll kill you myself!"
"You don't understand—"
"I understand that you're a thief, you bloody little bastard—"
"Venhedis," he snaps, hands stretched ludicrously into the air out of her reach, and the front door explodes off its hinges.
They both go flying. Hawke lands first, hard, just before the chair with the broken foot; the elf barely misses crushing her, the fingers of his steel gauntlet scoring white lines into the wooden floor. He's up again in a heartbeat, scrambling for his dropped sword; Hawke, dazed, takes a moment longer, and by the time she's to her knees and the room's stopped spinning the elf is standing in front of her, blade in hand, shoulders tense and hunched as he stares down the man in her doorway.
She doesn't recognize the livery, the maroon cloak falling heavy velvet around his shoulders, the gold pin at his throat beneath the scar—but she's fled enough templars to know the shadowed smile behind his eyes means precious little good for either of them.
The fact that her nameday bread lies crumbled beneath the man's rivet-studded boot, however, is what guarantees his immediate and painful death.
"Who is that?" she asks, her voice low. The elf edges a half-step back towards her and says nothing; then the tramp of feet, and two soldiers enter from the kitchen, another from the street behind the man in the maroon cloak. There's a glimmer of movement in the hall—she glances over just in time to see Carver's back vanish into the shadows again, shepherding their mother away from the fight. Thank you, Carver.
The man speaks. "Avanna, Fenris. Good to see you again."
Ooh, it's a cold voice. Cruel with amusement, and arrogance, and even if the elf—Fenris—is the one who broke into her kitchen and stole her nameday gift, this is the man she fears.
"I'm surprised you chose to try again," Fenris says. One of the soldiers levels a crossbow at his heart.
"You've made it personal, slave."
Hawke snorts. She can't help it—can't help, either, the reckless fury that sends her clambering to her feet, that spits fat gold droplets of fire from the tips of her fingers, sputtering like oil as they drip to the floorboards beside her bare feet.
"Mage," hisses the man in the cloak. Fenris has grown very still, gold drops caught in his eyes, hiding all expression.
She doesn't even know him. She doesn't even know him, and here she is, in her nightshirt in her mother's front room, her nameday gift crushed underfoot, emblazoning herself apostate for his sake. Slave.
"I'll help you," she tells him, flame licking up her arms. "I'll help you, and you'll replace that bread."
Light flashes across his face, catching weirdly on the white lines marking his throat. The crossbow creaks; the man in the cloak steps forward; Fenris looses a sudden breath and snarls, "I swear it."
"Good," Hawke snaps, her heart inexplicably racing, and they attack.