Characters/Pairing: Varania, Hawke/Fenris
Rating: G
Word Count: 2100
Notes: This is for servantofclio's challenge on Tumblr, where she provided the first sentence of a fic (composed by probablylostrightnow) to a bunch of different people to see what they'd come up with. I'm a little late, but this was so much fun!
She often wondered how her life would have been different if she'd opened that door.
More often in the earliest days, when she woke to rain or sleet or too-bright sun on her face and hands, given free rein by the holes and broken places of her brother's roof. More often too when she sat silently at his simple table with him twice a day, meat and bread made by other hands and brought to his house, fine silver unfamiliar in her hands and unfamiliar in her brother's skin. Leto had never been so stern.
He took her to the markets on the fourth day after his master died. The merchants knew his face if not his name, and deferred to his judgment, and when he gave her name to them as his sister Varania they nodded and said a pleasure to meet you, friend of the Champion. She laughed the last time, hard even to her ears, and when her brother looked at her she turned away.
A fine thing, to meet a merchant with no coin. A just cruelty.
But on the sixth day her brother came to her room and beckoned, and because no others had orders for her she followed him to a room in his west wing, less dusty than the others and with heavier wear, and watched as he knelt and pulled a strapped square chest from beneath a low bench. She looked to the side when he unlocked it, the rattle of the key too loud in the silence between them, and then she glanced again and he—
"What is this?" she asked stupidly, and the bag shifted in her hands with the weight. She knew the sound of gold at a distance.
"Yours," he said, pushing to his feet. "You said you came with nothing, and Danarius would not have cared to notice."
"But you do."
He lifted his chin. "I would not have you leashed here against your will."
She rolled the bag in her palms. Thick, sturdy canvas, rough against her callused fingertips, every shift marked with the truer ring of heavy gold. More than she had ever held; more, she thought, even than her employer in Qarinus might have made in a year. "And if I walked with this into the street, how long would the refuse here allow me to live?"
"The city is not safe after dark. If you must go out, it would be safer to take someone with you."
There was threat, there, but she could not read it. "Someone like you."
"Or Hawke."
She closed her eyes, turned away. "You are too generous."
"Varania," he said, sharp and hot, and she nearly flinched; instead she straightened her back against her brother's disappointment, the bite of a blow.
None came. She loosed a breath, eyes stinging, and said, "Have you anything else for me?"
He did not answer, not quickly, and she could not bear to see his face. He sighed, dismissal enough, and she fled; when she gained the dubious safety of her room she flung the bag at her feet where the string broke, and gold spilled out before her in fistfuls of heavy light on stone, the sunlight pouring through her broken roof to turn them all to drops of fire.
She left them there, afraid of burning.
—
On the tenth day he brought a man to her door. She knew him from the filthy inn where Danarius had died, recognized the heavy sideburns and the uniform of a guardsman; the familiarity did not check the sudden hard pounding of her heart in her throat or the cold sweat of her palms. There were few reasons strangers came to her in Tevinter, none pleasant, but she had not thought—
"Hallo," the man said, and bowed to her. "Sorry to bother you in the middle of the day, but Fenris asked for my help."
"Your help," she said, doubting. Her fingers clenched together at her waist, unfocused magic pricking at her palms. Her brother looked at her sharply—
Donnic lifted the hammer and nails in one hand, worked brass and iron in the other. His smile was kind. "He said you needed a lock."
She could not fight them both. The window served her instead, glimpses of freedom already trickling from her hands. So much for a leash. She should have known, she thought distantly, the clank of metal drowning out the low conversation at her back. Her brother, Leto—no. Fenris. Her jailor. She should have realized there would be repercussions from her betrayal.
She had not expected them to ache so fiercely.
Less than ten minutes from start to finish. The guardsman stood, still smiling, and she glanced at the newly-fitted handle beside his hip, the new bolt, unthrown, where there had been only broken pieces before. "Sorry to disturb," he said again. His smile faltered when she did not answer it; when she turned her head away he leant forward, just enough to touch the table between them, and withdrew.
Her brother went with him. She heard his voice from the atrium, low apology, a promise of cards, and abruptly she realized—she could hear him—and she turned—
The door stood open, unlocked. And its key left on her table, brilliant brass to match the new fittings. Hers. Not his. Hers.
She closed the door, locked it because she could. Then she went to the window and watched as the guardsman strode down the street in sunlight beneath her, whistling cheerfully, hammer swinging from his hands.
"Thank you," she said, the gratitude unfamiliar, and smoothed her thumb over the key's handle, over and over, until the brass grew warm.
—
On the twelfth day, she went with Fenris to Hawke's mansion, where the Champion served her duck and sage, and her brother filled her wineglass with Nevarran red, and neither they nor the pirate nor the Dalish elf who shared their table spoke once of her betrayal.
On the fifteenth day she walked to the market alone, her brother's coin at her waist, and when the man Jean-Luc who sold cloth fine as any in Minrathous lamented his daughter's new marriage, she offered her skill of her own choice, for fair wages earned by her own hand.
On the twentieth day she asked her brother to repair the roofs and was not surprised when he agreed readily, without hesitation, without asking her once her reasons. She did not know them herself. But if she were to stay—
—
On the thirty-first day she woke to the smell of bread and honey, and when she made her sleep-stiff way down her brother's stairs she found the Champion in her brother's kitchen, clad only in a heavy nightshirt, cursing quietly and fiercely at a pan of hot buns on the stone table, still steaming, their tops scorched black. She paused in the doorway, surprised, and as she watched the city's savior thrust both hands into a dish of cool water by the sink, still cursing with every breath, she felt herself begin to smile.
"Bloody flames and pyre," Hawke groused to no one, and brought her wet fingertips to her mouth with a noisy whimper. "Bloody buns. Fifteen minutes, she said, not a minute more—well, Orana, that was thirteen and a bit and they still burned and now they're bloody black, and my fingers are on fire, and I swear by the song of the Bride that if they say one word I'm going to take the whole lot and throw them right in their—Varania!"
She laughed again, the sound stifled by her fingers, and Hawke looked properly abashed for a full moment before shoving her hair from her eyes. "Good morning," she said, rueful, and looked again to her tray of burnt buns. "I hope I didn't wake you."
"No. I used to wake earlier than this." She drew nearer without permission, touched the nearest one. "How did you burn the top?"
Hawke coughed into her hand, glanced at the ceiling. "Orana said…look, there was something about a glaze, and she said it would be better warm, and I am, perhaps, not the most patient person you've ever met."
"You set them on fire? With magic?"
"Only a little!"
She shook her head, amazed. "In my brother's home."
"Well. Yours too, technically."
That was—too close, and without answering Varania began to pick the blackest bits from the row of buns nearest. "Is there sugar here?"
"It depends on what Orana's been able to sneak in, I suppose." But a moment later Hawke unearthed a small blue-glazed pot from behind the worn sink with the prize inside, and at Varania's direction she sifted it until it was finer and sweeter, and once the honey had been drizzled into its new-made bowls of bread she sprinkled it carefully atop each one.
"There," Varania said, suddenly unsure, but Hawke was smiling.
"They certainly look better, anyway. How did you know to do that?"
Common knowledge, in the master's kitchens. No slave could not remake burnt bread into something new. "I learned it in Minrathous."
"Well, it's brilliant." Hawke peeled the nearest to her from the tray, stuck at the edges with gleaming honey, and closed her eyes at the first bite. "And delicious. And—I just remembered. Merrill said she'd be happy to start your lessons tomorrow, if you like. She has a spare staff that she thinks will work very well with what you've already learned."
"I would. Thank you."
"It's my pleasure. I'll pass it along."
A noise at the doorway. They both turned, Hawke with bun still to her mouth, and her brother leaned one shoulder against the frame, his eyes heavy-lidded still with sleep, his hair tousled. He wore no shirt, and the markings shone brighter in the morning than she remembered. "What is this?" he asked, the last word swallowed in a yawn.
"Breakfast," Hawke said, entirely too cheerful for the hour, and crossed near enough to him that his arm could slide around her waist, that she could hold a torn piece of bread to his mouth without reaching. He ate it from her hands, the lyrium on his throat glinting as he swallowed, and scrubbed the heel of his palm across his eyes. "Good," he said, and yawned again.
"Thank your sister. She saved them from consignment to the fire."
He opened his eyes, met hers. "Thank you, Varania. They will keep well."
She knew they would be. Still—pleased despite herself at his praise, and annoyed for the same reason, and as Hawke and her brother made their way to the chairs set at the table Varania busied herself with the kettle, avoiding them both for the more welcome familiarity of boiling tea. She poured three cups and brought them to the table.
Hawke sat across from Fenris. An open seat at her right, or his left: a small, startling thing.
She sat beside her brother, her heart inexplicably sore, and ate with them both, quietly.
—
On the first day, her brother brought her to his home. It was worn and weathered and rank with neglect even in the dimming daylight, and when he brought her to the room that he had chosen for her it held a damp hearth and no candles, the bedcovers dusty and untended, the roof unpatched. She could count the stars from her pillow.
"My apologies," he said, and she could not read his face in twilight. "This will be cleaned tomorrow."
More than cleaning needed. She nodded, swallowed hard, and stepped forward; when she gathered her courage to look again, her brother was gone.
She woke in the hour after midnight from a dream of Danarius's hand on her shoulder. In a moment she was up, dressed; in another she had fled silently through her brother's house to the open atrium and the door that guarded its entrance, pale stars above to mark her flight from everything that this place held, memory and lack of it and Leto who was not Leto, this stranger with her mother's eyes and no kindness in his voice. Nothing for her here, nothing, nothing—
She stopped. Her hand was still outstretched; an inch farther and she would reach the door, its broken latch held in place with wire and weight. She did not know Kirkwall; she did not care. The taste of cold night air bit through the door's cracks, teasing her with freedom. Where—she could not—she couldn't—
His gaze, then, like the graze of a sword-tip over the back of her neck. An inch. Only an inch. She did not move.
"Please," he said. His voice was very rough; she did not think it was only sleep. "It would mean a great deal to me if…"
Silence. Too softly, she said, "If what?"
"If you would stay."
Only an inch. She crossed it, to remind herself that she could, and put fingers to the cold, dented brass that barred her way. Then she turned, drawing herself up, lifting her chin until she could meet her brother's eyes in the dark, her mother's eyes, the face that was Leto's and not Leto's in this home that was his and not his.
"I will stay," she said, and she did.
—