Characters/Pairing: Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 3,800
Prompt: from gamern7: f!Hawke/Fenris - fever dreams and lullabies
Notes: A re-imagining of the conversation after Feynriel's Night Terror quest. I was never quite satisfied by the dialogue presented in game, and this prompt finally gave me the chance to explore that scene a little more.

—

Magic is a curse. Fenris has known this from the first moment of his waking memory; it is as deep in him as his name, as the cold burn of lyrium, and he knows, he knows, he knows that those who wield it may never be trusted. Never. Not when they walk so thinly-veiled to demon and temptation alike—not when their minds might be turned by a word to the whim of another.

Slave, says Wryme, clawed hands outstretched, open. Here is power to equal the magisters. Here is strength beyond minding. Here is life without fear.

Impossible. No demon could promise—and yet the boy Feynriel's mind is a fantastic place, wild with power, and even he, no mage, can sense the thrumming of an open promise in the air between them. Danarius is strong. This creature is strong, too.

He wants—

A moment of your time, nothing more.

Hawke is still smiling when he turns on her.

—

The next moments come in vivid, silent images, impossible, like the too-bright dreams of illness and high fever. His hand, tense on the hilt, blade half-raised between them; Hawke's smile frozen behind blank shock. The quicksilver flash of lyrium, sharpened with Fade. False air thick in his lungs—false stone beneath his feet.

The moment of resistance before his sword-edge slides between her ribs. Her gasp of pain, her stagger, her false blood blooming wetly and too red where he has struck her. He does not—want—

He needs strength. Wryme's voice—no, his own, a soft song. She demands everything from him and gives nothing. She will keep him weak. She is one of them.

But to kill a mage in the Fade—to kill Hawke—

Then, pale, her eyes shuttered and cold, Hawke lifts her hand against him, and the pyre she makes of herself burns his doubts to ash.

—

(Somewhere, a woman is singing. It's low and simple and wordless and—sad, somehow, and worn thin with the weariness of grief. She sits—somewhere, and her face is turned from him, but he knows her.

A girl leans against her knee, her hair red and braided over one shoulder. Her shoulders are bent. He does not move, but—all at once she turns to him, startled and not afraid, and when she lifts her chin the woman's song falters into silence.

The girl stands, her eyes blazing. She says—)

—

Fenris wakes, choking, a name behind his eyes and a shout tangled in the back of his throat. He can still feel the blistering heat of Hawke's magic on his palms, the tops of his feet; his teeth ache with cold. A woman's voice sounds to his right, aged and accented, and Marethari pushes out the other name, the one he almost knows, and for a moment he can't breathe beneath the crush of rage and sorrow. Then the other memories come, resolving along with the beams of Arianni's roof into pristine focus: Wryme crooning in his ear; his blade, bloodstained beneath his heavy grip; Hawke's lips twisted around a word. His name—

Fenris.

His curse explodes into the air. The low conversation in the other room falls silent, but Fenris is beyond caring; he shoves to his feet from the cheap pallet and curses again, viciously, fists clenched against his own impotence. How many words had bought him? Ten? Twenty? A lullaby of a promise and he'd sold his soul to a demon; a half-minute of his own hypocrisy and Hawke's smile, so familiar, had died—

He stops. Dread lurches cold and heavy in the pit of his stomach and he whirls from the lined face appearing in the doorway to the other pallets, arrayed like graves on the worn wooden floor of Arianni's home. Anders, breathing lightly, eyes closed—Aveline—his own empty place—and—

He cannot tell. There are rumors even in the Imperium of mages slain in dreams, of the empty shells that had awoken instead, and his heart pounds and he cannot breathe and he cannot tell. Hawke's eyes move behind her lids, her breathing steady, and she looks no paler than she should—but for a moment there are two of her, his mind pulling the constant traitor of his memory to the forefront, smearing blood across her ribs where she lies, her arm, her nose, breaking her left hand, bruising the bone of her right ankle.

His throat closes. Fenris covers his eyes with one hand, appalled. He is going to be—sick—

"What has happened?" says Marethari, sudden enough to shake him, and when Fenris looks again the image is gone.

"I," he starts, then tries, "Hawke—" and when that too throttles him he swears again, tightly, and turns on his heel. "It has not gone well." A colossal understatement. Too unguarded, all the same.

Arianni appears in the doorway behind the Keeper, her eyes pinched in worry. "And Feynriel?"

"He lives," Fenris says shortly, and turns to the one narrow, cracked window that looks out to the vhenadahl. For now, he wishes to add, but there are three bodies on the floor behind him and he has no wish to tempt fate, even if his own temptation has ruined—everything. His chest aches.

A gasp breaks the air before Arianni can speak again, and all three of them turn in time to see Aveline jerk up from her pallet, her spine bending like a drawn bow. Fenris steps closer, hand outstretched, but her eyes are wide and unseeing and bruised against her whitened cheeks; then all at once they grow damp at the corners, and the stalwart captain buries her face in both hands and curls forward, against her knees, shuddering.

"Damn," she says, low and muffled through her fingers. "Damn. Damn it."

"Aveline," Fenris says too roughly, and she flinches for the briefest instant before allowing her hands to fall away. She drags in a breath, lifts her chin—hard eyes, and red hair, and for a moment he can almost—and then she meets his look and the recognition of that helpless fury stifles the rest. He says, not a question, "You as well."

"Yes." A pause; then, both proud and ashamed: "Wesley."

"And—the others?"

"Anders is still with her."

Of course. The abomination. And here he is, stranded on the Veil's wrong side, three years and more of his place at Hawke's side stripped back like so much birch-bark before his own inability to master himself. How fitting that the only soul left to guard her has already been won by a demon. Fenris grits his teeth. "And the boy?"

"I don't know."

"Then we must wait," Marethari murmurs, and Arianni closes her eyes.

Fenris looks at Hawke, at the still shape of her face, at her chest rising with each breath. Alive. Alive, for now.

(His weight on the hilt of his sword, locked against her staff, overpowering her with sheer strength until fire blooms between her fingers like an unfurling sun.)

He turns away.

—

A sudden sharp breath cuts through the quiet, waiting room, and Hawke wakes. Anders is just behind her, the easy rhythms of their sleeping breaths cut short and shallow; Fenris's own stops high in his throat, tangled in fear. Hawke blinks, slow and dazed, and reaches for something he cannot see—and then her brow furrows and her mouth twists in something almost a smile, and as she pushes to a seated position and glances to Anders, Fenris cannot manage the relief that sweeps through him at her expression.

Not Tranquil. Not Tranquil, not because of him.

And then the relief gives way to fury, because fury is safe now that she is safe, because the rest is too tender and too dangerous yet for him to face head-on.

She knew the risks. She knew his own hatred and disgust for magic and took him to its heart, blithely, and thrust him who has no practice with demons at their feet. She should have known. He should have known.

His fault, and she is just as much to blame.

Hawke stands. She speaks to Arianni of her son and the woman weeps and embraces Hawke as Marethari looks on. Fenris glowers at the back of her head, knowing himself more angry than there is cause for, knowing all the same that this wound between them will not heal without a fight.

Hawke looks at him once as they leave the woman's shack, and then her gaze skitters away to Aveline, to Anders, to safety.

Good, Fenris thinks, and clenches his fists.

This is not over.

—

(He cannot shake the memory of the woman's song. It loops over and over behind his thoughts, unending, a few simple phrases and words he cannot understand. A girl, he thinks, with green eyes and red hair…)

—

Hawke does not come to him for some time. It must be that way and not the other, though he would prefer to finish this fight without lingering. He cannot go to her home where she is master; he who has no power over his own mind would have even less in her dominion. (Not that he is master here. Not that he owns any part of this place save what he has brought to it.)

Still. He wishes she would come—and fears it, and seethes at his own uncertainty. Brooding, he supposes Varric would say, if the dwarf were here, but he has not seen Varric since before this fool's errand to the Fade, and he finds his fury simmering again at the thought that Hawke had not thought to choose the dwarf over him—had not thought to choose anyone who might have been better suited. There is something hidden beneath that, though, something small and proud and terribly ashamed, but he has neither the desire nor the strength to delve into it now. Not yet. Not—not yet.

Not until he knows if he has ended more things than his own illusions.

And then Hawke arrives at last, her shoulders thrown back and her jaw set, and anticipation shudders lazily down his spine. He is already pacing upstairs when her footsteps sounds on the upper level; he glares when she appears in the door and she rolls her eyes, dropping her staff too hard against the wall, crossing her arms over her chest.

"Hawke," he says flatly.

"Fenris," she says in the same manner, and leans against the doorframe. "Shall I yield the opening volley to you? You look much more…hm. Incensed."

"Stop."

"Irked, then. Irritated."

His lip curls. "This is not a game. If you will not be serious, go."

Hawke lets out a short, impatient sigh and pushes away from the door, crossing to where he stands before the hearth with short steps that click on the stone. "Of course it's a game, Fenris," she snaps. "It always is. You stew and simmer and froth and make everything ten times more complicated than it has to be, and then I come over and you shout for a while until we're friends again."

Friends—

You think this slave would choose you over his freedom?

Fenris turns away, into the more familiar refuge of bitterness. "Just go, Hawke."

"Really? That's how you want to leave things?" An exasperated snort. "So much for all their talk of olive branches."

Meddlers. "I did not ask you to come here."

"You are more stubborn than Carver sometimes, I swear by the Maker."

He cannot stop his flinch at that. Too much real anger there, and anger at him—and frustration surges in his own heart, hot and sudden enough to spark his tamped rage into life again. You fear them still. You fear them—you fear—

Fenris swipes his arm through the memories, whirling on his heel as if that might put the demon's voice at his back, behind him, where his shadow might still the song's echo. Worse, too, that even now he wishes— "This," he snarls, "is your fault."

"Of course it is," Hawke says, though her lip curls. "It was the first thing I did this morning when I got up. I thought to myself, 'what could possibly be better than fighting one of my closest friends to the death in the middle of someone else's Fade-dream?'"

"You knew I had no wish to go. You knew I did not—that I would not be—"

Safe. Careful enough. Strong enough.

The irritation in Hawke's eyes vanishes behind a more dangerous opaqueness. Fenris is not so versed in her expressions to know its meaning, despite the few uncertain flirtations they have shared. He knows her teasing, and he knows her anger, but this—he does not know this, and it unsettles him to realize that the skills he has honed through a decade of service to another master have failed him so completely in this place. Uncertainty is death for a slave; he has watched that truth bear out too often to doubt it now.

They've left their marks on your body and your mind.

"Yes," Hawke says at last, and her voice is as impossible to read as her face. "I thought you'd refuse the offer."

"And Aveline as well."

"Yes."

Too weak to stop the sneer. "Only a fool surrounds herself with traitors."

A quick step forward, almost enough to mask the recoil. "A fool strong enough to best you."

"With aid."

"Which you slaughtered with the first blow."

Aveline had not even had time to draw her sword. "Enough time for you to gain distance."

Hawke turns her head as if he has struck her, though her eyes do not drop away. "You're too fast. I knew you'd be on me in a heartbeat."

"You were quick enough to turn your magic against me."

"I was afraid of dying."

The surface is matter-of-fact, but Fenris can hear the strain of old fear beneath it. Of Tranquility. His own fear is a stone in his throat, thick with the memory of Hawke, asleep, too still; it chokes and angers him at once and he clenches his fists. "And so easily you made me your enemy."

"You sure as the Void weren't acting like my friend!"

"As though bringing the unwilling to the Fade to save that dreamer is friendship!"

"You could have said no!"

Fenris snarls, wordless with fury. It is an unfair accusation and Hawke knows it, knows that despite the distance of years his instincts are not easily given to denying a mage's request. Hawke's request.

He is so weak.

Hawke lifts her chin. "Would you have killed me?"

With my aid, you could be free forever.

Fenris's chest hollows. He says, steadily, "Yes."

There is a long silence. Hawke looses a breath, silent and without movement, and then she turns and takes two quick steps until she reaches his open window, hands planted flat on the sill, her eyes lowered to the street beneath her. The sky is clear today, blue and distant, and for a moment her hands are caught to the wrists in sunlight; then they curl into fists, and her head drops with a soft laugh that holds nothing of amusement. "I thought so," she says, and sighs. "At least I knew you well enough to tell that."

A bitter snort. "Not well enough to expect the betrayal."

"I think," Hawke says slowly, still without looking at him, "that I'd forgotten what the Fade does to normal people. Who aren't mages, I mean."

"A careless thing to forget."

Hawke cuts her eyes at him, sunlight flashing down her cheek. "A careless thing to open your soul to the first one you meet, too."

And yet she's here all the same, no weapon drawn, no fear in her face. Fenris says, "You should not have come here alone."

"Shouldn't trust you, you mean."

Fenris strides across the room, swift and silent and wholly predatory; Hawke holds her ground, gaze level, but at the last moment before his palm flies up to strike the stone wall by her shoulder she flinches and he sees in her face—

Fear.

"You are a fool," Fenris snarls, hating himself, close enough to feel her heat against his chest, close enough that her shift of weight brushes her knee against his own.

Hawke shoves him. Not enough to hurt—but more than sufficient to break his balance under the shock, and he stumbles back a step as she shoves his chest a second time. "Bastard," Hawke snaps, reaching as if to push him again before folding her arms tightly over her chest. "That was so—so cheap, Fenris. A cheap, dirty, underhanded trick, and if you try to use that as some twisted justification as to how our friendship has been ruined forever I swear to Andraste I'll—burn every pair of pants you own to cinders."

Fenris sucks in a breath. "What?"

A sharp, narrow fingers jabs into his breastbone. "Startling me and then being offended that I'm startled is not a reasonable justification for breaking this—" her hands open between them, mute with frustration, "whatever this is. It's petty and stupid and you're far too intelligent to resort to something so childish."

Ha! How transparent can you get?

"Childish," he says, and snorts. "This, from you?"

"I never claimed I wasn't a hypocrite."

"No," Fenris agrees, and the stark affront on her face startles a laugh from him. It is harder than it should be, and rougher, but it is a laugh nonetheless, and when Hawke's mock pique gives way to a smile something knotted in the air between them begins to loosen. A child calls out in the street below and Hawke looks over her shoulder; Fenris follows her gaze until the child runs out of sight, until Hawke sighs and drops her eyes and faces him again.

"May I—" she says, "can I ask—why you said yes?"

Simple enough. Shame enough, too, to bury what is left of him so deep he cannot claw his way free. You could have power enough to challenge any who would chain you.

Come here, my little wolf.

He takes a breath, looks away from the window. The words are not there, not to answer her in the way she should be answered; instead he clenches his fists and closes his eyes, and when he at last finds the spine of a free man he turns his head just enough that she may understand him, not enough to meet her gaze, to meet the challenge in her face. He says, faltering, "The demon's oath. Would it…have held to it?"

Silence. Long enough for heat to flush his neck, long enough for his back to ache with how stiffly he holds himself. "Maybe," Hawke says at last, her voice level.

"What would have been the cost?" An academic inquiry.

"Your mind. Your body, maybe." He hears her shrug. "You're not a mage, so I'm not sure if you would have…" she pauses, and he can tell she is searching for the right word, "twisted into the sort of abomination you and I know. But a pact with a demon never leaves the mortal soul unchanged. It might have given you power, yes. Maybe even enough to rival the magisters, like it promised. But, Fenris," she adds, and suddenly her hand is on his arm and she is circling him, holding his wrist, holding his eyes, brow creased with something more than concern. "You would not have been the same again, after."

He is not the same now. "An abomination."

"Anders," she agrees, her fingers falling away from his wrist. "Maybe worse. Justice at least began life with noble intentions."

"Noble."

"For certain definitions, I suppose," she says, though the pointed lift of her eyebrow is enough of a reminder of his own hypocrisy to stop him.

Fenris strides into the middle of the room, away from daylight, hands hanging aimlessly at his sides. Without looking back, he says, "You resist them every night."

"I try. Some nights are harder than others."

"What tempts you?"

The moment the words leave his mouth he knows it is a question he has no right to ask, far too intrusive even before he damaged this thing between them. His voice hangs in the air anyway. He does not try to withdraw it.

Eventually, Hawke lets out a low breath behind him, as if recovering from an unexpected blow. She says, "Bethany, mostly. My father."

"Your family."

"Yes."

Flatly: "I have no family."

A girl with green eyes and red hair, and a woman, sitting, humming, a snatch of song that he almost—remembers—

"Not blood, maybe," Hawke says, and the lullaby fades. "There's other things tying people together than that."

"Dreams," Fenris says drily, the last wisps of song vanishing into nothing as he turns to face her. "Nothing real."

"Speak for yourself. My dreams are vivid enough."

"Oh?" Fenris says, curious at the thread of something else in her voice; Hawke glances at him and then away to the window, and the sunlight slides a broad-gold finger down her coloring throat. Perhaps—he is not sure, but perhaps—

What would you want from me?

"Anyway," says Hawke, leaning her weight forward on her hands, "I just came to…make sure we were all right, I guess. Hash things out. Make sure we were on the same page." She looks over her shoulder, winking. "Two peas from the same pod."

"Not for an apology?"

"Aveline gave me one already. Why? Are you offering?"

Hawke at the end of his blade, eyes blank, fingers alight in flame; Hawke asleep on the pallet in Arianni's home, breathing shallowly enough to frighten him; Hawke beside him, in his home, smile on her face, expectance in her eyes.

He says, "Perhaps."

"And the concession at last! How did that feel coming out? Like sand?"

He purses his lips. "Hawke."

She laughs. "Fine. I don't want to be peas with you anyway. Sourpuss."

"Hawke," Fenris says, amused despite himself, joining her at the window despite the weight of his own remaining reservations. "If nothing else, no demon could endure your sense of humor."

"Flatterer." Hawke thumps him gently on his arm, no violence in the motion, no threat. No fear, either, and as his shoulder brushes hers he feels the slow siphoning withdrawal of another voice, only memory, too smooth and sinuous and slick with promises. He does not need Wryme now; he does not fear it, either. The woman's song he wishes for, and for the name of a girl with red hair, but it is in the way he wishes for many things: distantly and without the expectation of fulfillment. He would like to know them. One day. Another day.

A moment of your time, nothing more.

This moment might have been lost, had he triumphed. Had Hawke not been the stronger.

He is glad she was.

"So," Hawke says, grinning as she looks out to the sunlit street before them, as she nudges him with her elbow in the way that only precedes her worst jokes. "Peas, Fenris?"

"Peace, Hawke," Fenris says, and smiles.

At least, for them—it is close enough.

—

end.