disclaimer: disclaimed
dedication: to Emily, to Claire, and to you, if you're still around.
notes: up against the wall — the head and the heart.
title: searching for you nonetheless
summary: A baby. He brings her a baby. Oh, Creators. — Merrill/Fenris.
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Merrill thinks she might very well vibrate out of her skin.
It shouldn't be entirely surprising! It's very rude to spring something so large on a person when they're not expecting it. Even if they are expecting it, for that matter. And not that Merrill had been expecting it—although, Mythal, it's not as though she hadn't not been expecting it, either, if that makes any sort of sense—because she'd known that there had been something, but it's just that—
Well, it's just that he's Fenris, of all people, isn't he?
And of course, it's not as though Merrill—it's not as though she doesn't, in return. If she didn't, well, that would be an entirely different story, wouldn't it? But that's not the problem! It's not as though she doesn't!
Love him, that is.
It's not as though she doesn't love him.
Merrill watches him out of the corner of her eye. Then day's near done, now, sunset rippling in through the glass-patched hole in the roof crimson-late and purple-dusk, creeping its way towards ruined twilight. Fenris is entertaining the wee'un, and high-pitched baby-laughter fills up the rafters.
It's going to stay with her, Merrill knows. The image of her wee little Iseth crashing into Fenris' knees as he learns to toddle, the bright pearly shine of baby teeth behind his open mouth, the absolutely awful tenderness in Fenris' face. It's going to stay with her, and she's going to die with it in her heart.
A lump in her throat threatens, hot and wet with tears that don't manage to make it all the way out. They slosh around behind her eyes, never quite spilling.
It's terrible, and it's perfectly lovely, too.
Creators, it helps that there are things to do with her hands.
Merrill scrubs furiously at a pot that's already been scrubbed furiously within an inch of its life, fingers pruning in the filthy water of the dishtub. She doesn't mind doing the dishes and the laundry; she does mind washing the floors, and Fenris is just about as decent at the cooking, so they share that.
Her hands do the dishes, and she watches Fenris play with Iseth, and she very carefully doesn't think about the twisting anxiety in her chest.
Because it's true, it's not that she doesn't, but it's—
It's very different than loving someone who isn't Fenris.
Different than loving Hawke, is what Merrill doesn't want to face. There had never been any chance of Hawke loving her back! Hawke had only ever had eyes for one person, and that person was Isabela. Well, sometimes Varric, too, but that is a different story, so really: Isabela alone. It had always been Isabela for Hawke, and however Merrill might have felt about her was entirely irrelevant!
But it's… less so, when it's Fenris.
Less irrelevant.
And it's scary! That's really what it is. It's so, so much more frightening, and there's so, so much more to lose! There's Iseth and the way he makes her chest feel too tight when he falls asleep soft as stardust in her arms; there's the knot of her fingers when Varric looks between her and Fenris and grins, fond and slow and approving; there's Fenris himself, his palm curling warm at the crook of Merrill's waist when he ducks down to brush his mouth against her temple.
Little things, really, but they matter.
They matter, and the thought of losing them stoppers up Merrill's throat with a grief that she can't even begin to name.
A bright trilling shriek of laughter pulls her from the spiraling inside of her. Merrill looks over her shoulder, blinking, to find that Fenris has scooped Iseth up and is staring at him with a fervent, gobsmacked awe.
"Fenris? Is everything alright?"
He jerks his gaze to her, wild-eyed. Merrill finds herself, not for the first time, overwhelmed by the intensity of it. Fenris' eyes always make her think of the thickest briars of the Brecilian's underbrush, so dark and leafy-green; her breath catches, because it always feels a little too much like a home.
"He—witch, he said—"
"Papae!"
Wonder unspools in Merrill's heart.
The dishes clink in their tub, forgotten behind her. Merrill darts across the space between them, tucks herself to Fenris' side and together they peer down at the wee'un's bright little face. He's all big hazel eyes and nut-brown skin and midnight-ink-black hair, her baby, her baby.
Iseth, babbling delightedly at having them both within sight, reaches up to pat at Fenris' cheeks.
"Papae!" their wee'un says again, gleeful.
Merrill is perfectly breathless, lungs bursting with love. The entire world has gone still around them, has allowed them this. Her alienage is quiet outside. She looks from her baby to Fenris and then back again, and finds her own shimmering tenderness reflected between them.
Oh, but she's been very silly about all of this, hasn't she?
It's just Fenris.
Merrill tips her head up to catch the side of Fenris' lips. It's messy, baby fingers in between, more laughter than kiss. His arm comes up around her, the flex of his palm a helpless thing. It tingles through her, ar lath ma, ar lath, twined and twisted all up in itself. There's stew and sleet and starthistle lights, the old stories so easy on her tongue.
And he brought her a baby!
He brought her a baby, and he was only a little horrible about it, and they sleep together, now, and—and what else was she supposed to do, but fall in love with him? Merrill wants to tangle her hands into his hair and kiss the air right out of his mouth.
When Merrill finally pulls away, Fenris is low-eyed and a little rumpled, looking rather like someone had clubbed him over the head and he's still reeling from it. Iseth curls a tiny hand into one of the snaking locks of Merrill's hair, and they're all so close that they might as well be one living thing.
A tiny family, like an ember in the dark.
"You are going to be the death of me," Fenris says, voice like gravel, shaking his head. "And no one is ever going to let me forget it."
Merrill can't help herself.
She starts to laugh.
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The dream is strange, Fade-shimmery and shot through with silver, a body between her thighs hot and hungry. Knuckles and knobs and heavy warmth pressing her down; even here, this deep into the Beyond, she wants to arch against it, flow and melt and become something new—
Merrill wakes suddenly, blinking sleep out of her eyes.
It clings, does the dream, clings like molasses, darkly sweet and sticky. Merrill finds herself twisted in the sheets, trapped in a pair of ironbark boughs, unable to breathe, unable to move. For a moment, she forgets how to inhale; the air swirls in her chest too long, gone stale and panicky until she remembers how to make her lungs work.
It's a relief, too, to realize that the ironbark boughs are only Fenris' arms around her, and that if she really wanted to push him off, it wouldn't be so hard.
Nighttime is dead-dark and so quiet. Merrill allows herself to relax into the stillness. There's no sound save for her breathing and the steady th-thud of Fenris' heart beneath her ear.
It's a steadying sound.
Merrill cranes her neck back, and looks up at him.
Oh, but he's actually asleep!
She thinks that if she's very, very careful, he might not wake up, and she might be able to watch him sleep for a little while. He's very pretty, Fenris, when he's not scowling so! Merrill's had the thought before, but the truth of it is stark in the half-light of the fire's embers. Sleep leaves him soft, muscles gone slack. But the bones of him are still there beneath his skin: the long line of his nose, the sharp planes of his cheeks, the faint glow of the lyrium even through the nighttime gloom.
He really is lovely, isn't he?
It tightens around her heart, and Merrill swallows. Ar lath.
The words sit fragrant on her tongue, rosewater clear. It's not like choking. It's more like—wandering through gardens, and starlight, and the soft press of sand beneath her feet on the paths that crisscross the coastline. Merrill doesn't think they have a weight, but she's aware of them, and she's aware that she ought to say them aloud.
Fenris deserves to hear them.
Ar lath, Merrill wants to whisper into his skin. Ar lath ma.
But he's still asleep, and it wouldn't be right to cheat him of it. He was brave, first, and she can still feel it hovering at her shoulders: the seamless grey of the winter sky, the bustle of Lowtown, and the way her heart had stuttered to a halt in her chest, all hope and held breath.
Merrill wants to be brave, too.
There's a huff of air against the top of her head. Fenris wakes up silently always, as though he's expecting a knife in the back. But it's a slower thing now than it used to be, or at least less contentious. His hands come up to rub slow circles at the base of her spine.
"You are thinking very loudly, witch," he says. "I was asleep."
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean t'wake you," Merrill murmurs. "Y'can go back t'sleep if y'want."
When all she gets in reply is a deeply disgruntled noise, she finds herself laughing so quietly right in his ear. Creators, even just barely awake, he's so needlessly dramatic. Fenris grumbles something under his breath that Merrill doesn't quite catch.
"Is that a no?"
"It is a 'my witch is awake, and so therefore so am I'," he mutters into her hair.
"That's not a no, either," Merrill points out. "Y'really ought t'go back t'sleep, we're supposed t'go see Varric and the others later. I promised!"
"That dwarf is intolerable," Fenris grouses.
"You used t'say that about me, too," Merrill reminds him, smiling a little. She curls a little closer, head tucked comfortably beneath the sharp line of his jaw.
"And I was not incorrect," he murmurs. It might bite, but he manages to negate any misery entirely by fussing with the loose mess of Merrill's hair. "Remind me, witch. I must fix the locks."
"I still don't think y'need to—"
"Witch," Fenris says. He closes his eyes, exhales heavily. "It is too early to have this argument."
"Then go back t'sleep, and it won't be so early anymore?"
"No."
"You're being very silly about this," Merrill tells him.
"It will not be the first time," Fenris replies, and crooks a grin that makes all of her bones feel like jelly. She shakes her head against his shoulder, not quite laughing anymore, but not quite not laughing, either.
They drift.
Merrill isn't sure how long they lie there together, the slow crawl of Fenris' palms up and down her spine calming as an old lullaby. Time passes; it must, because the light in through the hole in the roof turns dawn-pale in increments, and already the alienage outside is beginning to stir.
They haven't fallen asleep. Merrill knows she's going to regret it.
But it's hard to worry about much of anything when she has Fenris' bare collarbone beneath her cheek, the warmth of skin and soul, the quiet hum of lyrium through the bruise-blue air.
It's a bit like belonging.
It's a bit like bravery, too.
Merrill remembers again that Fenris had been brave, first. In the bitter cold grey-white of the wind, the colourful hustle of the market, the smell of the ocean and death and beginning again; he'd been brave, first. Staring at the sky, following after her, reaching and hoping and trying.
I am in love with you.
"I do, y'know," Merrill says, aloud, into the space between them.
"Hm?"
"Love you," she clarifies. There's something very fragile inside of her, like a prism of light, or crackling glass, or a fracture rainbow. A held breath, her own heart so raw-exposed that a cool breeze would smart. "I do. I wasn't sure how t'say it, before! But I—I do. I do."
Fenris cracks open his eyes to look at her.
For a very long time, he doesn't say anything. Merrill's bravery drains away like water, and all of her words turn to melted sugar, sticky-tack saltwater candy, holes and tears. She drops her head to his chest and breathers in the quiet for a while.
"If you do not mean it—" Fenris starts, cutting himself off halfway through. Merrill wonders what it costs his pride, to ask. To let her know, in so small a way, that he still cares.
That she's not the only one with her heart taken out of her chest.
"No," says Merrill. She swallows, and swallows, and swallows so hard. She wants to be brave. She has to be brave. "I do. Ar lath, Fenris."
When Fenris touches her next, it's with a strange, dreamy hesitation, as though he's not entirely sure he ought to be allowed. Merrill tips her head back to catch his gaze, and it's there in his eyes: wonder.
It could be a life.
(Merrill and Fenris and Iseth in between, the alienage and its celebrations and its queer crooked corners, the weeds growing up stubbornly through the cracks. Varric making faces at the wee'un, and Aveline harrumphing, and Donnic spoiling the baby rotted clean through, because he's just that sort. Hawke and Isabela, when they come home, and Anders from so far away, and halla cheese and forest comfort and listening to him read by candlelight, tucked beneath his arm. It could be a life, a little life, and it could be theirs.
It's terrifying, how much Merrill wants it to be theirs. Mythal'enaste.)
"Merrill," Fenris says, at last. "I am going to kiss you."
"Oh," says Merrill. She blinks at him owlishly. "Yes, I was hoping you might?"
Fenris makes a noise at the very back of his throat, half-laughter, half-delirium. He curls a palm around the back of her neck, and then he's kissing her and kissing her and kissing her, sleep-sour and perfect.
It's nothing like the dream. It's everything like the dream. Merrill wraps her arms around his shoulders, and loves him, and kisses him right back.
Like this: a body between her thighs, hot and hungry.
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