A/N: A huge thank you to Leomonta, beta extraordinaire. And Judy, I'm glad you're enjoying the work, thank you for the review!
I spent some time improving and streamlining this story since first publishing. Looking forward to your comments! Hope everyone is staying safe and well 3
Fenris wished he hadn't had come, that night.
He'd…promised Varric he would. The brands that had been burned into his skin sixteen years ago had been utterly unbearable all week—no pain tinctures he took seemed to help. They usually throbbed and burned every day, but that day he had the dubious pleasure of them raging like a sun under his skin. Fenris sighed. Despite the pain, he'd promised to attend Varric's weekly card game at the Hanged Man tavern. It had been on one of his good days, when the burning was merely a smolder. But Fenris was a man of his word, and so he begrudgingly went. And, just like every other time he'd attended, he found himself being swindled out of his weekly food budget. Damned cheaters. Bread again, that week. Bread, and Marian Hawke sucking the Abomination's face off across the table.
A candle burned in Fenris' gut. She was doing it just to spite him, he was convinced of it. Her eye flicked to him whenever the two came up for air, searching for his reaction. Three years after their relationship had died, and she still found pleasure in taunting him with the man Fenris called the Abomination.
Marian hated when he called Anders 'Abomination.' It wasn't his name for him—he would've called the man much worse, had she not been there—but that was the term for a possessed mage. 'Abomination.' Even if he was an excellent healer, and used his magic to heal the sick and poor, Anders was still, in Fenris' eyes, the Abomination. Never mind that Fenris wanted to hang the man from his thumbs for stealing Marian from him. Never mind that the man put them all in danger, with his misguided political activism and his 'mages' rights' movement: Fenris of Kirkwall, formerly of Minrathous, called things as he saw them, and no amount of free healing services could make Anders the Abomination more palatable to his taste.
Marian was still kissing that man.
To make the evening even more unbearable, Fenris' body was complaining at the cold, stone chair he was sitting in. He had, unfortunately, forgotten to bring his cushion.
Salvation surprisingly came in the form of the barmaid, Norah, bursting through the door. "Serah Tethras," she cried, out of breath. "There's a problem downstairs."
"We're busy," Varric replied. "Have the barkeep deal with it."
"But they're slavers. They're attacking a girl—"
Fenris nearly dropped his loosing hand of cards. Slavers? In the Hanged Man? That was highly unusual. He was halfway to the door before Norah finished.
"Oi! Where ye going," Marian called from her seat. "Not our fight." She'd disentangled herself from the Abomination long enough to criticize Fenris.
Varric, thankfully, had gotten his crossbow from beside his chair. "Hawke, come on."
Marian swore into her drink, but eventually got out her daggers. Eventually. It took her lover to cajole her into doing the right thing, but she slammed down her cards and stormed past Fenris to the stairs.
Hm, Fenris thought. She's still using that rose oil I gave her for her birthday. That's pleasantly unexpected.
Venhedis, you're hopeless. You're still in love with her. Fenris heaved a sigh and unsheathed his sword. Five, six slavers. He could've taken them himself, for all this trouble. Mordhau, strike, parry, flank. He'd already beheaded one by the time the others had arrived. Beheaded one, ripped the heart out of another. No hands, no head, no feet. Can't haunt your dreams, that way. His brands burned and throbbed when the Abomination cast a Stonefist spell. The force of the boulder shattered the column holding the bar awning up, raining splinters and wood everywhere.
"Did you want me crippled," Fenris shouted between strokes.
The Abomination smirked while he conjured a protective Barrier. "Shut up, mad dog."
Fenris sliced under a slaver's chin in retaliation. If he adjusted his swing just a little to the right, line it up with the trajectory of that slaver's sword…No, he couldn't do that to Marian, no matter how much he hated the Abomination. 'Creature,' the voice in his head corrected. 'He's a disgusting creature, unfit for society.' He finished severing the feet on the last one, before the guards showed up. Guard Captain Aveline would have a fit, after reading the report on this. She'd be livid over what a mess he'd made, but he didn't care. She was half-expecting it, by now.
Fenris was not expecting the screams, however.
He turned abruptly to find his best friend, Sebastian, crouched next to the bar.
"Calm yerself," Sebastian said, trying to talk over the screaming girl huddled against the bar. "Calm yerself, ye're alright. Ye're alr—"
Marian rolled her eyes, wiping her bloody daggers on a rag. "They're dead, they can't hurt ye." She used her 'no nonsense' voice, the one she reserved for simpletons. "Stop crying."
Fenris cursed. "Venhedis, will you stop it?" They looked at him, then. All of them, like he was on fire. "I-It's obviously not helping."
"Ye got any ideas, Ser Scholar? Ye deal with her," Marian said. The barkeep was busy shouting at the Abomination over the bar, Marian went to intervene…and left Fenris to tend to the wailing girl.
Fenris could feel a headache coming on, in addition to the regular 'post-combat' pains. A jostle at his elbow made his mouth sour. Merrill. Merrill, the blood witch. Joy of all joys. His second-least-favorite person in Kirkwall picked her way through the splinters towards the girl.
"Here," the Witch said, hand glowing. "It'll keep her quiet, until we can help her."
He'd usually balk at magic, but that headache was worse, and the screams made his teeth rattle. As long as she didn't cast blood magic, he supposed, it would be fine. He hurt too much to care, at that point. Merrill crouched next to the girl, speaking low and soft in Elvhen. 'Da'lens,' 'lethallans,' all the stupid words no one outside the Alienage would know. Foolish, she could see the girl was clearly human, why traumatize her further?
Sebastian helped him carry the girl upstairs, once the Sleep spell took effect. She was short, for a human, probably came up to his nose, but that wasn't what surprised him. It was her clothes… the black leggings and tunic, her kohl-rimmed eyes, the myriad of bangles she wore. So unlike the riot of colors people wore here, in Kirkwall, yet was strangely reminiscent of his homeland. Even her dark coloring spoke of it.
She looked exactly like a stylish Tevinter girl, and left Fenris with far more questions than he had answers for.
The card game was forgotten, when they gathered in Varric's room. They crowded into Varric's bedroom, watching the Abomination examine the girl.
"She broke her wrist and twisted her ankle," he said, disinfecting the cut on her arm. "And there's a nasty gash on her head. Seems she fell."
If she'd worn those foolhardy heels while running from slavers, no wonder she'd fallen. But what sort of girl would do that?
'A fool,' the voice in his head said. 'A pretty fool.' He put some distance between him and the bed, for the brands' sake. Even if he was a healer, the Abomination's magic felt like holding his hand in burning, biting cold fire.
"Varric," Marian called from the corner, "ye need to see this." The girl's lurid pink satchel was tossed to the side, forgotten. "Never in me life have I seen such things." A black glass box—there was a larger one, inside a leather folder—a bag of metal tubes, strange cords with prongs on the ends. A pocketbook, embossed with whiskers and a cat nose, with squares in it. "Have ye ever seen such a thing?" A thin piece of ivory? No. Malachite? Carved with runes none had ever seen. One even had a black stripe on the back. "Look, her portrait! It's so tiny!"
Startlingly lifelike, the thing was. They stared in astonishment.
"What is this shit," Varric asked.
The girl stirred on the bed. The Abomination pulled his chair closer.
"You're awake. Good," he said, "I'm Anders. What's y—" If Fenris thought she'd screamed in the common room, he hadn't heard anything. "You're safe! We killed them. You're alright."
She scrambled away on all fours. "Trekné," she shrieked, "Ya eben el sharmouta, trekné." The tears came back, she clambered off the bed and shot into the corner. Arms wrapped around herself, eyes never off him.
Fenris knew that look, had seen it many a time in Minrathous. Unbridled hatred. Fear. The expression a slave had after a beating, before the hopelessness set in.
Anders threw his hands up in exasperation. "Maker's Breath, what are we to do with her? I can't help her if she's stuck behind the bed."
Fenris bit his lip, shifting his weight. Sometimes, moving helped with the pain. Sometimes. "You remind her of someone. Someone she fears greatly."
"Adiuava." He froze. W-What? "Adiuava." The girl wasn't staring at the Abomination, now; she'd fixed her gaze on Fenris. "Quaeso."
"What's she saying," Sebastian asked, jostling his shoulder. "Fenris?"
"She's asking for help, I think," he heard himself say. Her thick accent obscured her Tevene, if he could even call it that. It…sounded like Tevene, but it wasn't what he knew. A dialect, perhaps? Fenris unbuckled his gauntlets and handed them to Sebastian, who nearly cut himself on the fingertips.
Fenris crossed the room to her. "You are safe, they are dead," he said in Tevene. Low, in as kind a voice he could muster. The girl's shoulders tensed, but she did not bolt. "Who are you?"
"I am Rana." She gripped her arms to stop the shaking. He steeled himself from the burn and patted her hand.
"Do not fear them. They are friends." He used short sentences, to help her understand. "I am Fenris. You are a slave?" Her eyes went wide. "No, no. You are safe. I," what was he doing? "I was one, too." She didn't understand. He pointed to himself. "Slave. You?" Her eyes fell to the floor. Must have been, poor thing. "You are safe, they cannot take you. Do you have coin?" She shook her head. "How do you come here?"
"I," her eyes filled, "I do not know." What? "I-I," she pantomimed falling and hitting her head, "I do not know." He stared at her. "Ya Fenris—"
"What did she say," Varric asked.
"She must be a runaway. No money, doesn't remember how she got here."
What if Danarius sent her? He pushed it away. His old master could have sent her. That was a disturbing thought. Danarius had been trying to recapture him for the past twelve, thirteen years, with no success. Perhaps this was his latest tactic…
Fenris sighed. "She'd be captured, if we let her go her own way. She's in no condition to keep running."
"So. Who'll take her," Marian asked. They stared at her. "What? Can't keep her here. Our house is out, too."
'Our house.' Fenris hated it almost as much as slavers. His eyes went wide when they all turned to him. "I don't know what to do with her!"
Sebastian wore a wheedling smile. "Ye did fine, when ye calmed her. Just fine." Fenris shot his friend a 'please shut up' glare. "We dinnae have anyone else."
"But—"
"Just for the night. Ye can do that, aye?"
He bit his lip and looked to the girl. What was she? What if Danarius had sent her? The brands tingled; his palms itched. He wanted to run from the room and never look back, but he couldn't. H-He couldn't just do that—
Say something, they're waiting.
Fenris sighed. "…One night. I'll go tell her." His common sense beat on his skull, begged him not to do it, but he couldn't renege.
Fenris of Kirkwall was a man of his word, after all.
The walk home from the tavern with Sebastian, Marian, and the Abomination was slow. They had fashioned a crutch of sorts for Rana, but her limping slowed their pace considerably. Fenris fell into his usual—scan shadows, check corners, listen. Keep an eye on his companions at all times. It was rote, doing that. Ingrained in him. Marian and the Abomination had gone ahead, as they were wont to do, whispering and giggling. It made his stomach churn.
"Green is not yer color," a voice said next to him. Fenris jumped, brands flaring. Sebastian. Maker save him, he was not up for this…
"Hence why I wear black," he replied. Deflecting with humor was opposite of what Sebastian wanted him to do, but he didn't care.
Marian waved from the vestibule before locking her door. They stopped at the Chantry's side door.
"I'll see you tomorrow," Fenris said.
"…First thing tomorrow, after morning prayer. We'll find a place for her. I promise." The door shut, and left him alone with the girl.
You don't know what she is; what if he sent her?
He stuffed down the panic building inside and plastered on a smile. "Come, this way." She was amenable enough. She tried her best to thank him, on the way, to remark on his 'good,' as she called it.
"You are good. I give you thanks." He fiddled around with the lock.
"Thank you." She cocked her head. "'I give you thanks.' Thank you."
"Ah! Thank you." He lit the taper he kept by the door and led her to the well, or, at least, tried to. She kept stopping and staring at the atrium.
"It is" she drew her hands apart. 'Big.'
"Mhmm." Once she realized what he was doing, she offered to draw the water while he hauled it. As he didn't feel up to either, he didn't protest. He still had to light the fire and get the basins. A groan escaped him, when he finally found himself alone for a few minutes.
What had he gotten himself into?
Several things became evident, over the next few hours:
1. Rana must have served in a Tevinter city, because she had no idea what to do with the wash basins. She was just as bad as he'd been all those years ago, when he'd just arrived in this plumbing-less hole of Southern barbarity. He spent ten minutes showing her what to do, and he was still uncertain she understood.
2. If she didn't hear him approach, she'd scream.
3. She had a very interesting tattoo on her back he supposed was some sort of writing, although it was just squiggles and dots, to him.
4. She had no clothes to change into.
He should've thought of that sooner, instead of letting the girl shiver in a linen towel. Fenris found a housecoat he'd washed recently.
He clapped his hand over his eyes and held the coat out. "Here. To wear."
"T-Thank you."
He nodded and practically ran to the atrium. The last thing he needed was a half-naked girl running around his house at whatever time it was. What time was it?
Don't act like you wouldn't mind it; she's attractive.
She was. Very much so. But he'd always preferred dark-haired women, so it wasn't surprising he'd find her attrac—she cleared her throat.
"You," she pantomimed scrubbing her arms. For a moment, he couldn't get over how she looked in his housecoat, like she'd always belonged there.
You're staring.
He started and hurried to the laundry room, secretly relieved she couldn't see his face. His…very hot, very embarrassed face. He fought with the buckles on his cuirass and shoved his pauldrons onto the chair.
Thank the Maker she was only staying the night.
He knew he wouldn't get much sleep. The brands were absolute agony from the fight at the Hanged Man, even his sleepshirt bothered him. On such nights, he'd forgo one, but that wasn't about to happen, not with Rana there. He shook out his bed roll—he hated that thing—and laid it out beside his bed.
Rana stared at him in disbelief.
"What?"
"Y-You sleep here?" She clutched the housecoat to her chest. "Here?"
"To make us safe." He slid his spare longsword next to his bed roll. "See? Safe."
Whether or not she believed him was yet to be seen, but she didn't run. The Chantry bells ran four times, he heaved a sigh. He waited until she climbed into his bed, and blew out the taper.
It had certainly been an eventful day, to put it lightly.