Characters/Pairing: F!Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 1800
Prompt: from marigoldfaucet: "Fenris and F!Mage Hawke. The Princess Bride. (How could I possibly not ask this, after reading your amazing Austen AU?)"
Original Notes: So I'm going to have to make an errata post or something for how much extra stuff I had to figure out to get this to work. That said, ahhh, this was so much fun. It's probably going to be the last thing I'm able to write for a while, since my first board exam is coming up in March (aiiiieee), so I wanted to go out with something I truly enjoyed writing.

—

"Rest, Champion," he says, and thrusts her none-too-gently towards the flat boulder capping the hill.

Hawke barely catches herself to sit without falling, magebane and exhaustion still running ice-thick in her veins. "Such generosity," she snaps, shoving her hair from her eyes. "What else should I expect from the captain of The Siren's Call?"

If he is affected by her revelation he does not show it, neither flinching nor shifting his weight; his eyes hold hers as steady as steel behind the black mask tied over his eyes and head, knotted at the nape of his neck. The only mark of feeling is the faintest tightening of his lips, the stretch of the silver brands that course over his chin and down the center of his throat to vanish into the narrow, deep collar of his loose-fitting black shirt. "I have made no secret of it."

"Then I will not keep the secret that the moment I can, I will kill you."

He—smirks. And sheaths his sword on his back, the long, finely-crafted hilt spearing upward over his shoulder. "Fine threats from a woman with no strength."

"Magebane only lasts so long. You will have to slit my throat to stop me."

Easily, with a curious slant: "Should I be gratified to inspire such hatred?"

"Most people," Hawke says, so far beyond fury that she floats above it, a white and roaring sea, "would wish to kill the man who murdered someone precious to them."

"Precious."

"Yes…" Hawke breathes, her gaze sliding away from the man in black and into history, into the warmer memories of long, quiet afternoons of a small farmhouse at the edge of the woods, of fields washed green and gold by the seasons' turning—and a man with greener eyes, and a rarer smile, and strong hands so hard around the hilt of a spade, of a sword, unexpectedly gentling as they touched her own…

She closes her eyes, opens them again, hard as flint. "You killed the man I love."

"You are promised to another even now."

"I do not love Gascard. He knows this. He helped my mother, once, before her illness took her."

His lip curls. "So you give yourself to the first man with a kind hand. An enduring faithfulness indeed."

"You think I care for the mockery of a murderer? You killed two people with one stroke on that ship. My heart was torn from my chest the day he died."

"Such things happen when one braves the dangers of the open sea."

"He did not go by choice," Hawke snaps. The man in black looks at her without speaking; abruptly, she rises to her feet, her hands fisted, her anger so hot beneath her skin she can barely think. "He was a slave, once. His master came for him and took him, despite our every effort, despite all the preparations we had made to fight him. I nearly died. When I woke in the healer's house in the city he was gone, and the man I loved was gone with him. I looked for him…"

"Not well enough to find him, it seems."

"The moment I could stand I went after them both. I tracked them east and then north, to the coast, where his master had booked passage on a ship, but I came too late and the ship had already gone. I raced by horse to meet them—but before I was halfway to Minrathous word came to me, that the Call had attacked the ship, that she had sunk with all her cargo. All hands were lost."

She had forgotten the cut of this sorrow. Her voice trails away, into nothing; the man in black shifts his weight, stepping closer, circling her where she stands by the flat boulder. Almost—gently: "I remember this ship. I will tell you, if you wish."

She closes her eyes. "Tell me."

"We ran upon them three years ago. There was a man with grey hair and a beard, and another accompanying him—your friend, I suppose. The Call bears little love for those who beg."

"He would not have begged."

A quick, slight movement of one black-gloved hand, not quite a flinch. "His master did. Your friend did not. He stood, though he bled from many wounds, and told me that he could not die there. That he had to live."

Hawke turns her head, shuddering; the man in black stops by her shoulder, his masked face a smear of shadow at the edge of her vision, as present and implacable as the iron-grey sky. "He talked of you," he continues, his voice low. There is something— "Or someone that may have been you. I had my dagger at his throat, but he looked me in the eye and said, with absolute certainty, 'There is a woman who loves me.'"

She swallows roughly, grief high and hard in her throat. "Even for that. And even for that, you could find no mercy."

"Mercy?" Now he is steel again, sneering, his arms crossing over his chest. "Would it have been mercy to let him live, to find you so steadfast to his memory? Tell me: did you wait for his body to sink into the sea before you gave yourself to your mage-prince, or was he still fresh enough to feed those creatures that live in the deep waters?"

She is on him. It does not matter that he has bested every one of her captors, that he carries his sword like it is of one piece with his heart, that magebane still flickers in her blood—her rage totally consumes it, burning away all weakness in the impossible, unbearable storm of grief and fury surging inside her. Her fingers wrap around his throat; his eyes go wide as she shoves, somehow catching him off-guard, his weight on the wrong foot, his sword useless as she topples him to his back on the boulder behind him. His head slams against the rock; his throat whitens under her crushing grip as she kneels over him, robes snagged on stone; fire reflects in his eyes as she jerks her other hand back, her long sleeve riding high as brilliant white-hot flame begins to drip from every finger—

Lightning-fast, his hand closes in a vise around her wrist. His breath sighs out in a rush, his eyes locked immobile, staring, to the worn red band bound there, where it has been bound for three years.

His head falls back against the stone. His mouth works—and then, words out of memory so faint and distant she cannot grasp them, can barely hear them for the blood beating in her ears:

He breathes, "I am yours."

She stills. She stills, and the fire sputters out with a quiet gasp—

His hair tangles in the knot of his mask when she yanks it free. He winces, a hiss of discomfort between his teeth; then the cloth tears away all at once and he blinks up at her in the open grey light of day, his face bare, green eyes too tight with sorrow.

She can't breathe.

"How," she gasps, fingers coming to his cheek, trembling, to the black hair going bone-white at the temples, to the new pale scars she does not know, to the curve of a jaw she has not touched in three years. His black eyebrows—his ears—his nose. How many times has she touched—how many times has she dreamed of glimpsing again, if only for a moment—her heart pounds so hard it hurts. "How—you—but you died—"

He shifts his weight on the boulder until he can reach for her, his fingers sliding into her hair, just as unsteady as hers and all the bitterer for how long she has missed them. He says—and his voice, how could she have forgotten it, how could she have let time dull her memory so badly, when she'd tried so hard to keep every part of him alive in her mind and her heart because without that she would have nothing, nothing, even his scent faded from the rooms, even his touch gone to dust, even his body taken by the seas…

"Hawke," Fenris says again, so gently it hurts, and she realizes abruptly that she is weeping, has been, his thumbs stroking through the dampness on her cheeks as if they might make a difference. His head comes up, away from the stone, just barely tilting before his brow pinches in uncertainty and he—hesitates—

"Oh, damn you," Hawke whispers, and kisses him. Hard and frantic and again, and again, and again—he comes to meet her every time, his face alight with a grave, overwhelming gladness, clutching at her hair, at her shoulders, pulling her weight full atop him where he lies on the boulder. She spills into him, already laughing through the tears; somehow they twist until Fenris has head and shoulders above her, his hand cupping her head, his mouth sealed hard to hers.

Dead. He was dead, Hawke thinks, closing her eyes against the crush of grief, crushing herself closer to him—and buried by the sea, and mourned as one who is dead is mourned.

The kiss eases. She presses her lips to his twice more, and then to the corner of his mouth, and to his cheek. He bends against her in a spasm of sorrow; he says, "Forgive me, Hawke. I meant to come sooner."

She laughs, stroking through the hair at the nape of his neck. "I have been given back a life I thought was gone from me forever. There is no apology for that."

He lifts his head, a look in his eyes to take her breath away—and high above them, just over the hill-rise that marks the valley's edge, a clear silver trumpet sounds an alarm.

Between one breath and the next his heart vanishes from his eyes, his jaw setting as he stands and pulls her to her feet. "DuPuis will be on us soon. We must make for the Wilds."

"The Wilds? The Witch will be on us in minutes."

"An old legend. I doubt she exists."

"A dangerous doubt," Hawke murmurs, but even such doubts cannot keep her heart from flying when he takes her hand, when the corner of his mouth—his lips, and she had forgotten—turns up in a smile. She laughs—and then she fumbles at her own wrist, pulling the cloth free with her teeth, holding Fenris in place until she can tie again where it belongs. Where she belongs.

He touches the place where the red band knots, just under his thumb, wondering. "You kept it."

"I promised. Until you came home to me again."

Fenris kisses her, true as daybreak. "I am home."

And, for the first time in three years—so is she.