1. Luck and heroes
Anders kissed him as as if it were easy. Which meant, in a strange way, that it was. Simple warmth and pressure; the small weight of Anders's hand resting against the side of his face. Fenris could feel the other man's smile as he let his own hands slide up into Anders's hair.
He fisted, slowly. The healer groaned, and it caught at him, and it was simple to open his mouth and let the world narrow to shared air: a sudden suck and pull and press of teeth that made them both gasp. Easy to press and swallow and, with his skin too tight and his heartbeat overloud in his ears, suddenly hard to pull away.
Anders rested his forehead against his own, and Fenris let his hands fall to the other mage's shoulders. His ears burned. He swallowed.
"You are an ass," Anders said, again. "You're an interfering, stubborn, domineering, argumentative—"
"—I'm argumentative?"
"Argumentative ass, Maker help me, and it is really just rude that you kiss as well as I thought you would."
Fenris stepped back, scowling. "That makes no sense."
Anders grinned, and the odd pull Fenris had always felt, seeing that bright, fey expression, made new sense. He gritted his teeth against a blush.
"I'm free," said Anders.
"And reckless."
"Always was." Anders shrugged, fingers tapping his lower lip. "But you didn't ask a demon to eat me, so I'd call it a success."
"Your expectations of me are…bizarre." Fenris sighed, and was proud that his voice did not betray him. "Why do this?"
"For luck," Anders offered. "Nothing else has helped with Denarius so far."
Fenris laughed. "A fine distraction."
"No, it's true!" Anders's eyes crinkled at the corners. "Heroic kisses before final battles. You've seen the plays." He shrugged again. "For luck. For joy. Because I'm not afraid of you. Because I can—"
Another kiss. A shock of pride as Anders's surprised laugh became something soft and deep and shaking. Cautious, curious, he let his hands move, spanning man's back and shoulder, his chest. He felt the slip and pull as Anders swallowed, Fenris's fingers light against the hollow at his throat. Slow, wondering, he drew his hand up, grazed the edge of his thumb across one sharp cheekbone.
When they broke apart again, neither could speak. But Fenris nodded, and Anders took Fenris's hands in his.
2. Bait and switch
Hawke stood outside the tall, narrow, Hightown mansion, letting the building's shadows cloak as much of her and her growing audience as it could. Eying the motley group, she could not help a sigh.
Varric was there, Bianca polished to a shine. Isabela, willing to help out for the price of a pint and a promise to chase something lost and valuable down Kirkwall's dark alleys, was laughing as Merrill asked her about the practicalities of fighting in high boots. Her two leads—the mages who, so-said the pirate, would pay very well for Hawke's help, seemed bedraggled and tense. Varric shook his head and grinned at the sight of them. His narrative hunch.
Hawke straightened her shoulders, looking up at the taller of the two. "Isabela says you're a healer."
"I am," he said. He looked a little like he was fighting the urge to salute, which made her grin. That, and relief. For all that Kirkwall—Gallows, slave statues, and overshined Templars all—seemed peculiarly oblivious to mages and their large assortment of blindingly obvious magical staves, asking Bethany to throw power about still felt stupid.
The thought felt like Carver. Hawke grimaced. "Good," she managed. "Glad to have you. I'm Hawke."
"Anders," said the healer.
"She keeps her first name in a box, somewhere."
"Varric—"
"—what? It gives you an air of mystery."
"We should move on." The other stranger glared at them, face drawn under torchlight. His robes flapped. Hawke let her head list to the side, eying him.
"You must be Fenris."
He nodded. "Isabela said you have a sister," he said, abrupt.
Hawke's jaw clenched, tight enough that pain spiked up behind her eyes. "Isabela," she said, watching as the pirate fit an arm briefly about Merrill's waist, "Says a lot of things, apparently."
"This magister has mine," he said, and turned to mansion without a backward glance.
3. Small horrors
Inside, the world narrowed to creaks in the floorboards and Shades in the shadows. Fenris stalked ahead, seeming to pull half of the ghastly things apart just by glaring at them. Merrill tended to make the remaining creatures explode. There had been slavers by the doorway. They'd taken one look at Fenris and started shouting in Tevene. Easily dealt with.
"Why is it," Hawke asked the air at large as she wiped blood from her face, "That I am always surrounded by mages. And demons. Mage demons."
"Your warm and welcoming personality?"
She groaned. "Shut it, Varric."
"Just putting it out there."
"It is very easy to follow you." Merrill was breathing hard, fumbling at her belt for a mana draught as the walls dripped from her latest spell. "You've got a way of making all sorts of messy things simple. It's soothing!" She paused. "Or it would be, if there were fewer bodies."
"Maker help us all."
"Venhedis." Fenris turned to face her, looking like he wanted to spit. "I don't think he is even here."
4. The Carta's promise
"Healer? Healer! Healer Bethany."
A pack of the Carta, breathless and glaring, was not the most alarming thing Bethany had seen that day. That honour still went to the hole in her wall, the woman on the pallet and the story she had to tell. But it did give her pause.
"Yes?"
The boy in the lead, narrow faced and ragged, often seen at Athenril's elbow, was looking uneasily at her wall.
"There's a bloody great—"
"Yes, I know. What is it?"
"Marc says Jake saw Aoife shouting about a Tevinter. Here. And coming for you." He paused. "Coming this way, anyroad."
"That's not—" she stopped. Nox was sitting straight up, struggling to move her bandaged legs.
"Already? And here?" As Bethany turned towards her, she spat off the side of the bed, voice breaking. "He'd come all the way into filth for the markings.
The Carta boy shifted. "He's looking for something," he said. "And the boss doesn't want you messed with, see. So she—"
"Yes, I see." Bethany smiled. "If she sent you to fight, I won't turn you away."
"He'll kill you all." Nox's voice was despairing. The boy flinched. The men and women behind him shifted their axes and knives, muttering.
"Tevinter's looking for a face," she heard. "A face like that."
Bethany sighed. "Maker," she muttered. "The idiocy. Excuse me a minute." She turned, meeting Nox's distraught eyes.
"I told you that people made sure I was safe, here. We have warning. No one will just come and take you."
"You have no idea."
"No." Bethany sighed again, resisting the urge to touch the other woman. Touch, she thought, would be no reassurance to her. "But I manage. You stay there. I don't want you opening up that leg and bleeding on everything."
5. Right hand and left
"Not here?" Hawke's eyes flashed, but she kept her tone level. "Where, if not here. And how do you know?"
Too long to explain. Fenris sighed, watching in no small amazement as the others spread out around them, dispatching Denarius's horrors. "He's close enough that I can sense him," he said, watching her face for skepticism. He could feel Anders at his back, the glyphs and shields the healer cast crackling on the edges of his awareness. "But he's not here. It's…underneath, somehow."
"Underneath."
"Yes. There are many caves under this city."
"Oh, Maker's breath." Hawke ran a hand through her black hair, wincing as it tangled in a gauntlet. "Darktown."
They ran.
6. Fear and smoke and Bianca's regards
Men and horrors poured into the clinic, and the first time one of them stiffened and died, smoke leaking from her mouth, Bethany barely noticed. Some nasty Carta mage trick. The sort that Athenril had always hoped Bethany might learn.
When twelve slavers dropped in a semicircle around her, just as her own magic froze what looked like a rage demon to the spot, she turned to find Nox snarling from a corner of the bed. Her leg was bleeding freely again, and she shook.
"Did you just—"
"—shut up," Nox shot back. "This is not important."
"It looked like—"
"_-He's not here yet." Nox's voice had grown hoarse. A shade slipped through a crack in the opposite wall. Bethany hissed, pulling more cold to stop it. Her temples throbbed.
New screams, and it was the Carta who fell, bleeding and coughing and dying as a tall, beared man stepped through the hole in the wall, pale eyes overbright.
"There you are, little fox."
He was smiling. Smiling and distracted. Bethany shifted her stance, hands tight around her staff as she pulled force and threw it at him, raw and direct and one of the first spells Justice had ever given her, wearing her father's body. He staggered, pressed to the ground.
Her mouth tasted of metal. The throb in her temples turned into something spiked and jittery and three deep breaths short of a migraine. But she smiled.
Until her breath caught, deep in her chest, and her throat started to burn.
"Finish it, Nox."
Bethany forced herself to turn. Nox stared at her, shoulders slipped, face slack. Tears dripped from her nose, off her chin.
"Finish it," said the magister. He made back to his feet as Bethany felt her pulse speed up, her throat clench and close. "It's past time to come home."
"…no."
A tiny whisper, thick with rage. Bethany heard it. Justice heard it, and there was a hitch in the fire. A small, dark pause where Bethany could drag in a breath.
She wasn't sure which one of them started to scream.
"I think," said Isabela, grabbing Merrill by the forearms and lifting her over a corpse, "We're heading in the right direction."
"I hope not." Hawke's face was set.
And Fenris, running ahead, paid no attention.
Bethany let a sleep spell hit Nox square in the chest, ozone staining the air.
"I'm sorry," Bethany whispered, throat raw. The magister—Denarius, she supposed, started to laugh.
"What are you?" he asked, apparently heedless that none of his party were alive to flank him. They, with every single Carta member, were sprawled about the clinic, together or in pieces. Bethany, seeing it all in this brief respite, wanted to be sick.
"Not an abomination, I think." Denarius stepped closer, expression quizzical. "But certainly carrying—"
"You will die, magister." The words were torn from her, furious and hardly her own.
"Yes, dear girl." Denarius sounded delighted. He stepped over another body, carefully hitching up his robe. "There it is. A spirit. Perhaps I will take you with me."
A quarrel buried itself in his shoulder. Bethany pushed him back as hard she could, as hard as the pain and fear allowed.
It was hard enough. Another wall splintered.
She heard a cry of triumph. Her sister's voice blending with the push and strike of another's magic. Something that tasted of blood and pine needles. Merrill.
She heard Varric laughing, and saw flashes of steel as her sister and another woman she did not know circled the enemy mage, who was glaring fire and fury at someone whose magic pulled and swirled and made him stumble backwards, choking and pale. There two of him, wavering around the black spots that were rapidly filling her vision.
Mana drain. Even Justice had its limits. Falling against Nox's bed, she watched as the two unknown mages stared each other down, and she tried to cry out when she felt Denarius reach, shaking and sick, for what felt like one new spell.
Her voice was gone.
Light flooded the world.
AN: And this is the point where I've caught up with the fic on A03, so expect a couple of days before the next update. A recent change from nightshift to dayshift has been murder on the brain, but I do have this thing almost fully outlined, so updates are still going to be regular. Thank you for the wonderful feedback and commentary. It was unexpected and much appreciated.