w0rdinista asked: F!Hawke, Fenris: Haunt me.

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Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,500 (if I can't write a drabble, I'm going to at least do round numbers, darn it!)
Prompt: Haunt Me: one character watches over another.
Summary: Everywhere Fenris goes, he carries his past with him.

Notes: This kind of ended up in the same space as Offer Me, but I promise it's unintentional. Happier stuff is just around the corner, I'm almost entirely certain. :D

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Oh, oh, little slave, little wolf, sweet swift-running heart-stealer, what are you doing? You look with those wanting eyes, those guarded and cold and hungry eyes, and you let yourself grow bold. You know what you are; you know where you belong. You know that despite your yearning reach, your hands have only ever closed around black-feathered death.

You are only a slave. What are you doing?

—

Fenris does not sleep often. He has many reasons to give Hawke when she asks, easy things to explain given his history and her own, her demons, his ghosts. It is simple to overpower an escaped slave who is asleep, he tells her; the lyrium in his skin gives him stamina and strength greater than many men; Danarius disliked laziness and took care to discourage it in his household.

All of these things are true, and Hawke accepts them, but none of them is the truth.

Fenris does not sleep often because when he sleeps, he dreams.

It is not the faces that disquiet him, though something thickens in his throat at the glimpses of a girl with red hair turning to glance over her shoulder, of an older woman beside her, tall, elf-eared, both smiling and sad as they look for him and are swallowed by darkness. Neither is it the memories as bright as life of Danarius, laughing, his fine-boned fingers drawing over his cheek, his shoulder, the dip at the small of his back where there is no lyrium. That shame-hot impotence he has known since the first days of his waking life; that deep-rooted terror he keeps in his given name.

No, what wakes him cold and sweating in the dark hours of the morning when the Fade is thick and not even the moon gives light—is the voice. It speaks quietly, and with hard, bitter truths, telling him what he knows already, reminding him when he is stripped of all defenses what is left of him beneath the armor, beneath the lyrium, beneath the careful walls he has built over seven years of flight.

It is no demon's voice. It is his own.

—

Where is your place, nameless thing? Look at you, crouching in your master's home, shielded by your master's armor, clutching to your empty heart the sword your master gave you. What do you know of freedom?

You have so many pretty words, stray-running wolf, if no tongue to speak them with. Your master taught you to flatter him; court her the same way, quick, before she takes in hand the lead that still dangles from your muted throat.

And she will, if she can. You know it.

—

He cannot sleep, so instead when night falls Fenris takes up his sword and steals out into the Hightown streets, a ghost in the dark. There is work there for a wolf, even one on a heavy chain, and death too, and between those things there are moments when he feels near enough to free that he almost forgets the weight of his shackles.

And when Hawke joins him on those nights, quiet and smiling and demanding nothing but his company, he forgets to guard against his dreams. Street by street they take the city, and lane by dim-lit lane, each road opening ahead of them like a promise, unspoken, unfolded to sudden swift-glancing hope. She hopes, he knows; he can read with the eyes of a slave every fleeting word in his master's face. But he has hopes too, and dreams, and when one night he stumbles blind into her home with death and hatred cupped in his hands she makes it a simple thing to let them go at last.

But sleep does not bring him the peace it brings her, and as the Veil flutters around him like a wind-caught shroud and the hole of his memory flickers with the bright broken-glass shards of a thing that was once whole, Fenris remembers that there is a ghost at his back and a hand around his throat. It tightens to squeezing when she wakes, when she looks at him with—hope, but white-knuckled fists do not make the voice less true when it whispers: slave, unworthy dog, beg and kneel and run—run—run!

—

There, wolf! Even when you wish to you cannot sheath your claws; even muzzled you snap at gentleness. There are shackles on your wrists heavier than any struck from steel, you spineless slave, and iron chains built by your own two hands that bind you fast as a whip's tail. You deserve no touch that is not a blow.

Close up your heart. There is nothing but weakness there, no softness but the putrid rot that sickens and poisons all who touch it. Shore up your walls, you heartless thing, you hate-choked death-giver. Protect her. Protect yourself.

You deserve nothing of freedom.

—

So Fenris runs, even if he does not leave, and as the years roll over the city he pretends that distance is enough, that denial is enough, that he does not lie in his stolen bed at night, sleepless, dreaming with his eyes open of those things a slave has no right to touch. He has eaten once at the master's table; let that be enough, a memory to wash smooth the rough edges of the rest, an ember to warm his fingers against the time when Hawke will reach for another more suited to stand beside her. He knows the place he has given himself, wolf bound to her heel—and he knows too the bitterer truth that if she holds his lead it is only because he placed it in her hand.

But Hawke does not turn elsewhere, and she does not call him to stay; instead she looks at the red-cloth shackle he has made for himself as if it is a hopeful thing, as if what it means to him—means something to her.

And when one morning he steps from his uneasy dreams into a waking nightmare more horrifying for being real, Hawke is the one to teach him that not all ghosts are beyond the blade, that just because an evil thing is strong does not mean it cannot be slain. He opens his mouth and the noose around his neck unknots; he says you are no longer my master and though there is another layer behind his words, another master left in place, it is his own breath he speaks with, his own voice, his own heart.

That is what he gives Hawke, later, when she comes to him in the house she thinks of as his, to the hearth she thinks of as his. It is only a slave's heart, a little thing that she owns already, soft with the deep black rot of constant fear, but despite its faults it is all that he can offer, and when she takes it in her hands like a precious thing he hears the distant clear ring of a shackle breaking open, of a length of chain slipping free to fall on shining stone.

She pries it open, looks in fearlessly. No rot, she says, touching his cheek, no poison. Only bruises.

—

Little slave, little wolf. What are you doing?

—

The voice is quiet that night, soft and hissing like fired tongs thrust into still water, but for the first time in the unsteady mire of his memory there is no strength to it, no conviction, no more solidity than any of the shades he has hunted and killed with the woman who sleeps beside him. No truth either, not in the way it whispered to him once, with hard words that chased him to peace and from it again as if he were the only one with a heart that ached, the only one with a shadow haunting his steps.

But there is no master so cruel he cannot be killed. Fenris knows this now.

Slave, ghost, shade of what has been—he banishes them all, these tattered shreds of a life he no longer lives. Those chains have been broken; those memories he has no need to keep so close in his fists, not now, not when there is hope and truth and new memories to be made that carry no fear in their making. His choice he keeps wrapped around his wrist; his heart is bound with it.

"Fenris," Hawke murmurs, smiling, and he knows his name for his own.

—

No turning back, heart-stealing wolf, not anymore. You've broken hers; now you must mend it, no matter the trembling in your slave's soul, in your slave's hands.

You've closed the path behind you. Look up. Look forward.

Yes, he thinks, and he closes his eyes, listening to Hawke breathe softly against his neck where there is no chain, no collar, no lead. Just because he is hers does not mean he is not also his own.

—

Fenris sleeps, fearing no dreams.