IMPORTANT: IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS DON'T READ THIS DESCRIPTION, but I have to make it clear for those courageous ones that want to be a little rebellious. Soon you will read something sad. I took liberty of imagining the story previous the Fenris: A Short Story by David Gaider, which explains why the hunter's reason was now personal and how he got the wound and all. Of course, the author has all the rights.

Yep, I'm drunk again... go figure.

But let's make a pact - I'll exasperate you now with my drunken rant and my narration of just one stupid memory from on the road, because there's this impending, incredible, absolutely legendary episode where EVERYONE goes drunk as a nug and colossally ridiculous - on Varric's birthday. Now THAT is going to be a LONG night. Which is when we get to Kirkwall. So bear that in mind, that I will not interfere there (you'll finally see how I look like for the others drunk so prepare to fall from your chairs laughing at me while I smile involuntary at your pain just as well) and you can bitch and curse at me now because I can surely take it! I am quite sturdy. Wait, no, that's Fenris. What I am is stubborn.

Don't love me? Well, I'm filled with love for you either way. You remember I'm like super-good and stuff, right? Yeah, I didn't believe me either.

When I was a small girl, I had a terrible dream. I dreamed that my father, my mother, my sister and my brother, one by one, died. Every frame of the dream held one of their bodies as a horrific effigy, like a ghost, and they haunted me in my head and my eyes burned. They were quick still, and mute, with big, closed eyes, and pale cheeks, and so horrified was I that I could make no more of a sound that they could.

That dream, in a way, came true; which is just as mortifying.

Rather credulous at heart, I thought that they would live forever. Not I, of course, I mean just them. I resolved, rather like an over the hill hit in the head romantic, to forever hold their portrait in my heart, until my last breath. Father with his overly arrogant, paradoxically just as modest attitude and humorous take on life and all things dire, Mother exuding the vault of heaven itself with her love and patience, Bethany with her incredibly playful, soft and feminine air of "I own your ass and you don't even know it" and Carver with his very lively and boyish urgency to do - to do everything and anything. And the rest of the world can go fuck itself. You may not have a good opinion about him, but you don't really know him as I do. He can be rather charming. When he wants to. It's a Hawke thing. Don't read too much into it.

I always thought I would die young. Now it seems that... I really don't know how to die. I haven't survived as well as I should, but that's the thing - people like me, like Fenris, like Zevran, like Armand, like Anders, even Varric... they know they'll survive. I'm not talking vanity blown out of proportions or some smug sense of indestructibility... it's an unconscious feeling, a dormant reality, a whisper in the shadows or maybe just some kind of separate feeling breathing in and out in some alternate dimension of our being that simply thrives, throbs, creeks, scratches... and lies just as still and quiet to our ears.

And it keeps us here.

It's not something easy to live with. To exist with... well that's damned easy. It's very damned easy to live for yourself and breathe only for yourself, and the rest of the world just doesn't matter.

I'm not one of those people. But hell, life goes on, right? It's just as easy to immerse and lose yourself in pointless philosophies and brooding contemplations.

By anyone's standards, I am a remarkably ... stupid mage, most powerful with a sword, add magic to it and all hell breaks lose. But I know I'm still good and I can be even better, and even the angels and spirits will attest to my powers, if you can get them to speak to you. Be cautious on that point. I'm drunk and I go haywires with joking about myself in somewhat shadowy tones. Even I don't know exactly when I'm serious and when I am not.

I have, however, nothing whatsoever to do with the Covens of Libertarian Mages, or some other bullshit group of Enchanters, or some vein-on-the-forehead-boiling hidden apostate groups for that matter... bands of romantic mages from the Circle in Ferelden all the way to pretentious, radiant, phlegmatic Spire of Val Royeux, which have regaled you already with so many chronicles and tales. I know nothing of those heroes or martyrs or villains that history tells about, or some of the macabre facts of some mages masquerading as fiction. I know nothing of their enticing -paradise and hell- in the swamplands, mountainsides, deserts and flatlands of Thedas.

All I know is that I have spent my years of my magical existence in clever, observant roaming and study, never provoking the slightest danger from my own kind, and never arousing their knowledge or suspicions.

You probably find me flexible, daring, and now and then a shock. But what can I do but draw upon the fullest descriptive power I can command, right? Wrong. It's somewhat the same reason why I have no steady, conscious interest to narrate this unless I'm all happy smiles and rainbows... riding the rainbow once, going down on the gutter for eternity, as the Fereldan saying goes. It would be better if I do it all the time, for you'd get to know me much better and much easier... But hah, no. I'm not spoiling my own fun. Father was a wise man in teaching me this lesson. Don't spoil all the fun when you're dealing with clever, much intelligent people that can figure things out on their own and probably even much better than you do yourself - they'll teach you in turn things about yourself that you haven't yet deciphered in your schizophrenic little mind. Me and me and me agree.

It's a damned compliment to you, right there! Not the schizophrenic part, silly! The clever, more intelligent people part. Well now, look at the irony in there. I had to point it out right when I was in the middle of overexerting my muscles to explain that one should not spoil the fun... ah, whatever. I did the same thing with Varric, with Fenris, with everyone. They figured it me out on their own. You did too, and if not, there is still time. Remember? I don't know how to die.

I have a brain as well as a heart, and there hovers about me an etheric visage of myself, created most definitely by some "Higher Power" and entangled completely within the intangible weave of that etheric visage is what men call a soul (hah, you probably thought I was gonna say some magic crap). Nope, just the one soul. I have such. No amount of blood can drown away its life and leave me but a thriving revenant (it's funny because if I get possessed, being a warrior as well as a mage, I'm not sure if I will be transformed into a Revenant or an Arcane Horror. Someone somewhere that I found extremely annoying once is now echoing in my head with "That remains to be seen." Well, I can't argue with that. Probably the honesty of that statement and my honest confirming of it thereafter is testament to how Fenris has never in truth hated or despised me).

But I accuse myself again of going on and on, and I do, there is no doubt.

This chapter ought to be over.

And so embraced and protected, I write, ready for the moment when the full yet ever obscure moon leaves me for the hideaway of clouds, to light the candles that stand ready... OH BULL. Don't scream at me, I'll quit my bullshitting now.

What I'm gonna do is tell you what happened just after we realized Fenris and I were still holding hands.

It was pretty stupid.

As soon as we looked at our hands, we shot each other awkward glances. My smile could not have been more crooked. I thought he was going to shove my hand away like a dead weasel and just head off in the distance like it was no big deal. No matter how many thoughts you read from his perspective, there was less than almost nothing that he had leaked on the outside. And why not? It was the talent of a fighter stamped by cruelty and death to appear nonchalant and stalwart, almost perfectly resolute. Understand, in my eyes, he was all there in times of danger, and only half there in times of calm and peace. The only time in which I felt he was all there with me was when Fenris first kissed me in my mansion like a week or two ago, and the night before and this morning when we woke up. No matter his tigerish passion and his warm embraces, Fenris was still very private about his feelings, and the only way I knew whatever the nature of those feelings were, was ultimately by his actions. Forget drunken thoughts and feelings, speeches and hot-headed impulsive kisses. One day or another we had to both be sober and willing to speak our minds and settle this - whatever we were doing - like fully grown adults... Yeah, I didn't believe me either. I equally looked forward and dreaded our arrival in Kirkwall because of this. We were walking on a path of no return, either way.

But to get back to the story, after we shot those private glances at each other, just for a moment, Fenris gave me a short, playful little smile, affection shooting out through the cracks of his indomitable gaze. I watched those wonderful traceries of his bone-hard expression, his green eyes going brighter for a moment all alight with warmth in them, and the paleness of his lips catching a subtle rosy nuance, ripe and lovely, as the corners of his mouth stretched into that little smile just for me.

It felt like everything was going into slow motion, when those warm eyes left me to look forward and that smile simply died - it turned into a hideous image, as his eyes flinched and opened wide, stripped of all livelihood and hope, no warmth in them at all, and I felt his heart stiffen into one big, painful, horrific throb. That throb propelled horrifically throughout all the veins in his body and petrified them in ice down to that soft grip of his hand that was holding mine. Then everything rushed into rapid, even more terrifying motion; time felt like it thrust and cleaved its claw into my being and down to my own hand, when, with the quickness of a burning arrow, Fenris let go.

My own quickness of a well-trained warrior dictated that I should snap out of that image and look forward to see what the hell had struck him like some defenseless little ant; I looked forward and the only things I saw were Varric and Isabela going into the carriage while bitching at each other at the end of the bridge. Then somewhere in my peripheral vision, I spotted some grey and black figures going into the historical building by the bridge, the first building one saw when they entered the midst of Antiva City. It was now an inn called La Luna Affondata, so roughly or pretty much literally, The Sunken Moon. A bit of irony there, remembering the Sunk'n Orlesian Inn back home which was quite the opposite of a fancy, cough-causing perfumed and luxurious place, but this was no time to laugh over subtleties. I didn't know if that was what scared him, but I had no real time to analyze and overthink a faint little image I didn't even catch in its wholeness. Another quickness of instinct, that had nothing to do with the warrior in me, made its way out of my mouth.

"Are you alright?" I asked.

Fenris appeared to have not even heard me; so pale and petrified was he, that I could scarce even trace my thoughts. I locked my eyes on him and my voice was a bit shaky.

"Fenris?"

Understand, Fenris doesn't have a childish face, even if I sometimes I press that he has an almost angelic one. His eyebrows were strong, dark, high enough over his eyes to allow them entirely too much luster. His elfish forehead would be a little too high if it wasn't so straight, and if he didn't have so much thick and white hair, making as it does a rich, unsurpassable frame for the whole picture. And of course, his body was overmuscular for an elf, he was much taller than the fellows of his race (and I wouldn't admit it but he was a bit, really taller than me when I had no boots; in the Antivan catacombs, when he wore boots, he was a mountain next to me). He was strong, broad-chested, his arms were stamped with well sculptured muscles, giving an impression of manly power. This rather rescued his obdurate-looking jaw and tattooed chin and allowed him to pass for a full-fledged human, at least from a distance. Of course, this well-developed physique he owed to tremendous practice with the heavy battle sword in the last years of his life, which was not something he took open pride with, considering for a good part of his years, it hadn't been at all voluntary.

To see this bull-headed, and just as much calm elf now looking petrified and in a whole other way, cold, was something bewildering. I didn't know what to make of his expression. You could have seen the very same face on a man startled by an insect or an approaching battalion of bloody murderers. My head was full.

When he didn't answer, I asked his name again.

At last, Fenris caught motion again. Well, his eyes did. They flinched and his head turned to look at me with some kind of hate or fire or ... something. It was a very sharp look. I looked in haunted perplexity and appalling sorrow.

Thinking back now, it hadn't occurred to me to think that this was the lingering expression that painted him when he saw whatever he had seen. I didn't think to guess that this look was not really meant for me at all.

At that moment however, I was frightened and Fenris caught the look on my face. As he did, his eyebrows furrowed into some low, ashamed look and he quickly coughed. His face went dark and he turned his head forward again with a lowered gaze. No more traceable were his green eyes, for the richness of his white hair had covered it all. All I saw was the corner of his lips tighten sharply and then, with the fullness of a deep, decisive tone, he said, "The sun is setting. Let us be off."

For some reason, from the way he was walking much more humpback and stiff than usual, I thought that he might not want to take over and drive with me as we first agreed to. Without thinking it, some voice in me said he would do well to stay in the carriage, where no eyes could spot him.

I swallowed inside and almost shouted, "Fenris, I- do you mind if you get inside and let Isabela take your place for now? I have a bone to pick with her."

He frowned at me, as if I'd insulted him.

I tried to smile a bit as I said calmly, "You said you were exhausted, remember?" To that he looked bewildered, as if he had totally forgotten just how exhausted and dead he was from the last few restless days. I kept my stout-hearted, yet rather softer voice and said, "Sleep it off, what do you say?"

He narrowed his eyes and inhaled shortly, then with a small lift to his eyebrows in a fairly attempted fit of nonchalance, he climbed into the carriage and muttered, "As you wish."

My mind resolved that sitting with Varric at the back would also be easier, since he was the last one to annoy or prod him in any way. For a long time, unbeknownst to the others and even to me, Fenris and Varric became more than just some drinking pals that also happened to be working together. They became good friends. But they were men and they didn't talk about it, of that much I was sure. However stupid that seemed even for me, men needed other men to be friends with. Even if I was no ordinary woman, some things in nature simply can't be changed and they dictate that friendships between opposite genders and friendships between the same gender, are always going to be a bit different. At any rate though, Varric had the master's tact of calming and soothing any kind of person, which of course made it much easier to be in his company when you also considered him a friend and you were used to his easygoing, "Teh, please" attitude. That and of course, he had the Diamond Back cards.

Meanwhile, I resolved to teach Isabela exactly how to maneuver the horses, because there would surely come a time when I would be too exhausted to do it and I was not going to let Fenris take over just to become overly annoyed at her teasing jokes and, in his words, "inane prodding". Of course, at the time, I didn't even think about all of this. I just did what my muscle dictated. Or intuition or perception or whatever bullshit women have when they just know stuff.

A few minutes in, I was rambling about the technique as if were the mighty God of Carriages. "So you keep a strong hold like this over your knuckles and whenever the horsies feel like sliding away the main road you just –"

"I know what you're doing," Isabela cut me with all the cat-like, quiet and perceptive voice that screamed accusation.

"Well then, by all means take over," I said with a smile.

"I'm not talking about the horsies and you know it," Isabela cut me again with a wink.

With a contained lift to my eyebrows, I cleared my throat and resumed to watch the road. "You really wanna interrogate me now and cause drama, when I can throw you off the edge into the evergreen forests with only a lift to this harness, Ship-Captain of the Raindrops?"

Isabela chuckled softly and raised a playful eyebrow as she said, "Well now, Knight-Captain Bullshit On the Long Road, I can't wait to scream out of my lungs what you know I will scream if you do attempt to throw me. Now that's gonna be dramatic, don't you think?"

"Ee-ghad, whatever," I muttered grumpily and shook my head. I kept my eyes on the road, but of course she pressed.

"I know you-"

"Keep your voice down, Madam Butterfly," I cut her sharply.

She cleared her throat as she rolled her eyes and whispered tactfully, "You're not far from the truth by calling me that, y'know. I was fairly close to offing myself when I saw," she raised a saucy eyebrow, "what I saw."

"Such a shame that you didn't go all the way through with it," I said quietly. When she didn't say anything, my thoughts went scattered and I gulped. Keeping my eyes on the road, I whispered, "Now what would that be, exactly, that which you saw?"

"Let's just say I saw enough to win the small bet I made with Fairy Godmother back there, but not enough to win the grand prize," Isabela whispered cockily.

"Oh, how awful," I mocked, rolling my eyes.

"The only question is," Isabela started and shot me a flirtatious grin, "am I going to win the grand prize? Did I already win it?"

I turned my head back on the road. Birds were flying up in the sky. Chipmunks were cutting my path. Stubborn little…

"Well?" she pressed.

"Oh, look a- "

"Quit your bullshit, the chipmunks are okay," Isabela said sharply.

I growled in annoyance and looked at her only with the back of my eye, "Don't hold your breath."

"Well… I'm going broke," Isabela whispered. "So either you do everyone a favor and get it over with, or I'll have to take matters into my own hands."

"Threats?" I asked in surprise. "Really, Cobrateeth, is that how you wanna play me?"

"I always get things done," Isabela said. "I'm effective like that. Never mind the means."

"Oh great, now I'm supposed to believe you'd go as far as holding us under the guillotine and cutting the rope ever so slightly every time we refuse with a loud Mwa-ha-ha, fuck or die, my puppets," I said grumpily.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, but," Isabela whispered, then her eyes sparkled with mischief, "What's a better way to die than during sex, really?"

"That's what you tell to comfort yourself after every bad fuck on your part, isn't it?" I asked with a grin.

"Not on my part," Isabela chuckled. "I can't wait to see who dies first."

"From me or you, when I decide you're at the end of my nerves and happy rainbows of understanding?" I whispered sharply.

"From you or him, either from the impossible tension or during the very act," Isabela mused. "Considering how much he scares me shitless, I'm thinking it's best if you back off now."

"Don't be ridiculous," I said with a smirk. "I never die in defeat."

"That's usually the arrogant thing people say before they die in the dumbest way possible, like killed on the toilet when you take your morning dump," Isabela laughed softly.

"That's how your husband was assassinated, isn't it?" I asked perceptively, grinning at her to no end.

Isabela widened her eyes for a second, then lowered her gaze and smirked, "He told you."

"Oh?" I almost shouted and smiled, "In all seriousness, he didn't," I laughed. "But good to know. I'm usually terrible at guessing."

"Dear Captain Fortunepants…You never guess," Isabela said and rolled her eyes at me with an accusatory air. She pointed at her. "I never guess either." She gestured with her hand, "We think, we ponder, we spot the unspottable, then we connect the dots; so quickly it seems like it's just a lucky guess." She pointed at me now. "What you're terrible at is seeing what's right in front of you. Kind of like a deliberate and reserved blind spot for dummies."

"Oh, Captain… I could say the same thing about you," I said bitterly, and resumed watching the road in silence.

A few hours passed and I was dead-beat. I didn't say anything, but Varric hit me on the shoulder a few too many times for me to ignore him and continue swimming – drowning more likely – in the sea of my knightly overresistance. He told me to quit my crap and go in the back. I said, "Yes, Sir" and quit my crap.

In the back, Fenris was in deep sleep. I fell into the back seat next to him without much care, too exhausted to remove boots or chainmail or daggers or anything else (I changed from that dress of course). I thought I'd fall into a deep sleep, but I lay rigid, full of hatred, and hurt, and swollen broken soul, staring into the dark, my mouth full of death as if I'd eaten it. Only after did I realize, it was not I who was feeling this.

The Fade

I was thrown off into some dark room, far away from the one little candle shimmering in the distance.

Well, I saw now there was a cavernous room, carved high and deep out of the earth, and faced with stone, and that it was full of varied dusty things. There were old chests and even old books in heaps. And two bolted doorways. My heart didn't swallow itself in fear until I saw the chains.

Fenris was in those chains, shackled like a dog against the dark stone wall. His face was covered by the fullness of his white hair, because his head was hanging low and he was coughing, breathing horribly. Then he was silent again, as if nothing was of importance, and this was all just routine screeching his bones and his flesh.

There was a man in front of him, sitting on chair near that one little candle on a table, and he was also silent. He looked at Fenris as if he waited for something, because even if Fenris's hair and arms were bloody, it didn't seem like he was dying or close to fainting from pain. The man simply looked at him, as if to savor the grand of effigy of Fenris's helplessness.

His hair was thick and black, hanging sleekly onto his shoulders, but I couldn't see his face, no, not at all, for the hat he wore overshadowed it, and I caught but a glimpse of very white skin, the line of his jaw and a bit of his neck, for nothing else was visible. Beside the crossbow on the table, he had a broadsword of immense size leaning over it, with an antique scabbard, and casually over one shoulder was a cloak of some wine-dark, almost maroon velvet trimmed in what seemed to my distant eyes to be ornate heraldry symbols on his cloak.

I strained, trying to make them out, this border of signs, and I thought I could see a dragon and serpent worked into his fancy adornments over his armor, but I was really too far away.

"Is this how you want to spend the rest of your precious little seconds before you die?" the man asked him with an edge to his voice. "Shooting me dirty looks when I already know you despise me?"

Fenris remained silent for a few seconds, then he finally raised his gaze to the man. His eyes were empty, his expression was flat, unshakable and his voice was cold.

He breathed a bit hoarsely, then he said, "What do you prefer?"

The man raised from his chair and it almost fell back off, so forcefully and quick did he go up.

"A little remorse for killing an innocent man," he demanded.

I couldn't see clearly, but I could swear I spotted a dark smirk through Fenris's hair.

"Innocent?" he asked. With all the fullness of disgust, Fenris then growled, "Don't make me laugh."

"He was my brother," the man almost shouted, his hands clenching horribly into fists.

Fenris didn't flinch one bit, so unconquerable and tranquil he seemed to be. No worry for death or pain in his forest-green eyes. He locked his gaze onto the man with sharp, utter contempt. "And so I should feel sorry about obvious realities that all the people that come to kill me have siblings, and parents, and even children?" he asked.

He spat strongly.

Then he shook his head and disgust fell through his nostrils, his lips were crooked. "It was your choice to go after a slave," he almost hissed. "How are you better than me, I wonder?"

"You," the man shouted in a hoarse voice, as he approached Fenris and pointed at him in sheer hatred as he continued yelling, "have no one."

"Oh?" Fenris asked in a perfectly calm tone, his green eyes empty. "I'm heartbroken."

"You soon will be," the man hissed and turned around.

Again, I could almost swear I saw a ghost of a disgustful smirk drawing up on Fenris.

"I am going to disappoint you," he said flatly.

The Tevinter hunter, now I realized, turned around and again shouted, which made him look like a complete fool consuming himself twice more than one should, in contrast to Fenris, whose green eyes and deep tone painted the effigy of an utterly fearless, calm and unwavering prisoner.

The man, as I was saying, shouted, "Are you going to spew some thwarted romantic line that the poor little wolf has no heart to be broken in the first place?"

"No," Fenris cut him flatly. His eyes were unfaltering as he stood there crucified in the chains against the wall. He kept his gaze locked onto the soldier. "I have a heart. This I have."

Then his eyes lowered, and he pressed them shut for a second. A second too much that I saw utter pain in them. That distinct, hidden sting in one's soul, so sharp and small that it helplessly dictated the whole of one's being.

When they opened, his voice was again, deep and flat, without much further ado, "What I also have is a brain, so it is fairly certain that I will die of boredom from your foolish prattle before you ever get to break it."

The hunter lost his temper. It was final. He went for his crossbow, but then for a second, he stopped and glanced at the Tevinter broadsword. He broke into anger with his gripping of the sword, and as he caught it in his hands and approached his captive, he put the sword horizontally against his neck. The neck of an undaunted, resolute captive. Indeed, Fenris didn't even flinch.

"Do you remember the words for Maker's Prayer, slave?" the man growled and bumped the sword only slightly against Fenris's neck.

"I must have been asleep from the incense when they thought us that one," Fenris said coldly, unfaltering.

"Say it," the soldier hissed. Only know did I realize they were speaking in Tevene, and somehow I understood it all. "Come now, I will give you a head start. Our Maker, which art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy Name..."

Fenris looked at him as if he was an idiot. His expression was pale and empty in his silence. The creaking noise of the wind going through the window is the answer he gave him.

"PRAY FOR YOUR DELIVERENCE, SLAVE," the hunter shouted in anger. "Do it now before I cut your throat."

I thought for a second, Fenris would simply roll his eyes and hiss at him to go on with it already before he falls asleep from boredom, but in turn, I saw a rapid flash of fear in him as he swallowed inside. He lowered his eyes and articulated hoarsely, "Thy kingdom come."

"Yes," the man said and nodded. "Continue."

The last thing I saw was a scornful, ferocious face painting onto Fenris. I saw his teeth gritting.

Then for some cruelly inexplicable reason (I couldn't hear myself shouting and I couldn't move, I was like a point in the air) I felt some sort of dark little vortex absorbing me into Fenris's mind. I simply twirled around in a thread of darkness shooting right inside Fenris and then the image changed.

Rapidly, I saw that he was in the same predicament. Fenris was crucified with chains against the wall. His head was lowered and his eyes were closed. I knew at once he hung there fainted.

Then a splash of cold water slapped him awake. He barely opened his eyes, and in a second, he fell on the ground when the chains were undone. The image was so cold and quiet, and he was, just the same, that the point in the air that I was felt like breaking into tears. This was the image of pure mockery and submission.

"Get up," a feminine voice said. The face, I didn't see, but the tone, the sound, that voice – it bore the fullness of poison.

Down on the ground and silent, Fenris tried to get up. Beyond the pool of freezing water he lied almost soulless in, there lingered crusted blood stains, traces of vomit and rotten peas.

He tried, but he scarcely could.

He was bruised and pale beyond that old vest of his, and from what I saw on his bare fingers, they had the horrific traceries of thumbscrews. The muscles on his arm were shaking horrifically as he pressured himself against his hands to get up. I felt his lack of strength, the stiffened muscles in his throat, and his heart barely beating in his chest.

"Today, Wolf Boy," the voice commanded again sharply.

He tried again, he truly did. He put his knees against the ground and I saw in him the old statues of slaves in the Gallows.

"By the Void, you're truly worthless," the woman's voice hissed. "Is that how do such a remarkable job in guarding your Master, White Pup Of The Feeble And The Infirm? By looking worthless and hoping his enemies will break inside at the sight of utter weakness?"

The mockery was unbearable.

His once kind-hearted, strong eyes with all that ripe green in them, they were empty now. Worse than empty. They had the void in them, the sheer ghost of hopelessness and degradation.

I felt his thoughts as he slowly and sickly raised his eyes to look at the figure.

Curse you, his thoughts said. Curse you in Hell.

"Good-for-nothing waste of my time," the voice shouted in exasperation. I saw the back of the figure dressed in a silk robe of pale-violet. She kicked him in the stomach with no shame.

He didn't flinch or growl. He made no sound. He got up on his own.

But from the hollow mouth of darkness beyond the opening there came only a low satin laughter, a mocking laughter, and this it seemed was echoed by others, and I heard a powerful thundering of steps, as though several scorching shadows had commenced at once to harrow Hell upon him.

Thus the image changed, and I saw him thrown on the ground ruthlessly in front of a black velvet pair of shoes and a midnight-violet and green fancy robe. One of those shoes came to Fenris's forehead, moving his head mockingly to show his face. It was empty and beaten.

"It was not enough, was it?" a man's make-believe patient voice said. Then came the hateful fakeness of a heavy sigh.

"I'd have let him rot for a few more days," the woman's voice said with a disgustful tone. Her voice was so sharp and thin it deafened and scratched, and in all honesty it would have aroused a duty into anyone to cut her tongue out and throw it to the wolves, however ironically.

"I decide what becomes of him," came the man's deep voice, cutting the woman short.

"Of course, Master," the woman said suavely. Ah, so by the robe and the way she addressed to the figure, she was an apprentice.

"Undo his vest," the man demanded of her. She did as he commanded. I only saw her hands undoing all the straps at the back of his dark vest, opening it ruthlessly, shoving it off.

"Leave us," the Master's voice commanded abruptly.

"As you wish," the woman's voice said, a bit of pride in it. As if it felt rewarding to be so smooth and respectful to her superior, one who obviously did not have any complaints on how she had handled the slave.

I could scarcely hold this image in my head, if I were not a point in the air. He didn't even need some magical bindings to hold him down. Fenris was in all the power of the word, subdued.

And at the mercy of his master.

I only saw the shoes and that one portion of his ugly robe. They walked around patiently behind him. Fenris was on his knees. His face was cold and indomitable, almost fooling you with the appearance of carelessness for whatever was meant to happen to him. A few seconds afterwards only did I see the corner of his lips curl when the man spoke.

"How did that one fascinating prayer of those worthless infidels who worship the 'Maker' go?" the man asked in a serene voice.

Fenris remained silent. I heard his imbalanced breathing as his eyes kept locked onto the ground, like those old statues.

"Give us this day our daily bread… And forgive us our trespasses," the man said. He chuckled for a moment. "What a remarkable line that is. Truly clear in its intent, and all the more foolish in its nature." He paused, and the pause seemed to last forever. "How can anyone justify such stupidity? Such an insult?"

Fenris didn't answer. The shoes kept walking around behind him.

I felt the heat rise in my face. I wanted to look from right to left, up to see that sick son of a bitch and remember his face when I would catch and kill him someday, but not before I'd repeatedly smack his face on the ground in his own blood, vomit and tears. Until he would beg.

All I saw, in turn, all I could behold, was Fenris. And his white cheeks and his dark mouth, which were all too often the color of fresh wounds. I stared at the blanched and colorless expression with which he regarded his predicament and the very ground. Were his eyes full of vengeful, hateful fire, or was it only that every other bit of humanity had been taken from his countenances?

"As we forgive those who trespass against us," the man continued. "How insane. Who even came up with that, I wonder?"

Silence again. The man inhaled and the shoes kept pacing. It the haunting quiet, it felt like every step echoed when it was made, and every one of those deep sounds hit Fenris in the head, shaking him, stinging, beating him. It didn't look like it, but I felt it in his soul. The steps, going and going, it was utter cacophony of pain.

His eyes curled only for a second, and they wished it would be over soon.

"I am inclined to believe that your body is urgently issuing for that… well, once-a-week bread," the man said. He was right. Only now did I notice, the distinct shadows along Fenris's bare torso, which shaped the terrible outlines of his ribs. He was still muscular, but the kind which was once ripe and then degraded by anemia. "But seeing as how you don't want to learn, I cannot afford to give you what you need, can I?"

Silence again. Fenris almost shuddered when he heard his name. "You can speak now, Fenris."

"No, Master, you cannot afford to," Fenris said flatly, empty eyes on the ground.

"And what about the forgiving of our trespasses as we forgive the ones who trespass against us?" the man asked calmly, every step throbbing on the ground.

"You have forgiven me for my humiliating you in front of the Archon at the procession the other day as I forgive you for humiliating me now, Master," Fenris articulated every word rather melodically, as if he was instructed that he should talk clearly every time he was allowed to.

"Very good," the man approved calmly. "You are just as bright as I wagered you would be."

Fenris didn't say anything. The man spoke again, "You can say it, Fenris."

Since he was with his back turned, Fenris pressed his eyes tightly as he said it, "Thank you, Master."

"Then let us proceed," the man said in a very taunting voice.

What I saw next was the worst.

The rapid clack of a spiked whip. But that was not the worst.

The worst was that Fenris's eyes went tightly shut, but never flinched, and never shuddered.

The sound of the next lash sent it right into me. I felt it as if I were him, with all the literary meaning. Only after did I realize, that the man bound him with a blood spell that kept him in place, and that as it also happened, kept his skin alive and sensitive, to repel any sort of numbing effect from his wide reserves of warrior adrenaline. People like us didn't really feel the pain when we were alarmed, but the spell kept it all there, alive and lashing, and lashing…

And then the words of his exquisite tormentor came back, "What happened, Fenris? Did you forget how to count?"

Fenris inhaled very quickly, as if he had cursed himself in his thoughts. Then again I did hear those curses perhaps.

"No, Master," he said. "Forgive me. I shall begin counting as of now."

"Good, Fenris," the man said very suavely. Another clack of the whip came thrashing.

"Three," Fenris uttered with all the strength he still had in his voice.

"Three?" the man asked in outrage. "Do you often start counting with three?"

Curse you, I heard him think. Curse you son of a pig.

"Forgive me, Master," Fenris said. "I shall start again."

The lash came again, this time I felt it again too, but from beginning to end. Fenris didn't flinch, didn't shudder.

"One," he said flatly.

And then another. It propelled out of time as if it were the utter sounds of catastrophe, of every soul that had ever suffered, all here into one being.

"Two," Fenris said again, not even wavering for a harrowing that was every second.

Rather than saying Fenris had no power or willingness of his own, it felt and was so, that all his power and willingness he had reserved with all his dedication, to endure this.

And keep it together.

"Three," Fenris counted calmly, only a bit did his voice seem to stutter in its hoarseness.

I felt all of it, and I could scarce numb it out by some clever channeling technique to trick the Fade that was tricking me. I felt it all and I was going mad. Not because of my pain, but because of his, which he kept all inside, with no whisper, no shudder, no little sound. All Fenris did was swallow it inside and move now and again from the inertia of the whiplashes.

Propelled out of time, on and on it went, and I didn't even realize it had gotten up to the double-digits.

"Forty-four," came Fenris's voice as unperturbed and deeply flat as always.

I could hear the man exasperating. It had not occurred to me, that his master was growing terribly tired of the continuous whiplashing and of Fenris's unyielding, resolute attitude. He considered it rebellious. He considered it an insult, just as much as I felt he enjoyed the hell that was burning worse than Fenris's back, in his soul, as he tried to keep an inflexible expression.

It was just as much a game for his master as it was for him. Taunting the man with passivity. Showing him he would not get surpassed. Indeed there was some willingness left to him, and it inflamed Danarius just as much as it drew him to the elf. It irritated and made him see red.

What the man wanted was to hear the sound of his pain and the sound of his helplessness. What he fiercely desired was to hear Fenris beg him to stop. For that was the only thing that would stamp his humiliation. But what I knew, was that Fenris would not let even one poor groan escape his lips. What I didn't know was why.

When I heard Danarius sigh in annoyance, as contained as he could, I saw and now I was sure, that Fenris smirked powerfully through his hair.

Pride was what possessed them both. Hatred was what kept Fenris perfectly still, while malice was what animated those shoes. A small joy at his exasperation, to the contained sighs of the voice that tormented him with the lash that I felt now, bore the memory of his pain. Hundreds, thousands of whiplashes, and no other future one was less excruciating and gut-wrenching than the last one.

Forty-four minutes of target practice, all hell's breaking loose.

The man's voice came growling.

The shoes came thrashing.

He caught Fenris by the shoulder and brought him up and turned him around. I saw his back – the Lament of Andraste was nothing compared to the horror painted across the canvas of that back. The wounds, straight and vertical, perfectly precise, carefully ignoring every thread of his markings.

"You mean to mock me again, Fenris?" the man shouted at him.

I felt the hatred now more than ever in his soul. His thoughts said he wanted to kill him. His thoughts said he will one day kill him, if it was the last thing he ever did.

Fenris didn't answer, but he breathed. His answer was perfect. His talent to play with technicalities was most refined, indeed, because that was the most marvelous spit into his Master's face as he was the first to lose it – Fenris couldn't answer unless he was given permission to. And beholding now his master's crumbling temper, since he had forgotten now of that little detail he himself appointed with all the might of his authority… it was more powerful than any little triumphant smirk.

I will kill you one day. This, I swear.

Then came the vortex again, twirling me inside and into Fenris again, and the image propelled and shook yet again. It's as if the all the emotion, all the rancor, all the hate and all the drive that dictated Fenris's constant soul, had gathered again into an immensely powerful blast of a deathblow.

I came out of his eyes, and I saw them evergreen, alight with fire. We were back into the moment the hunter held his own sword against Fenris's throat, mocking and demanding of him to tell the prayer.

That evergreen light in his eyes, made his being invulnerable. It was testament to having a heart that would never yield. They had seen too much to be shaken, and his skin felt too much to shudder.

The wind blew inside again, shoving the window open. Instinctively, the hunter turned around to behold the surprising force. In slow motion it seemed to happen, that Fenris got his arm out of the shackles that he previously worked on to slowly outmaneuver. In a flash of a second, he pushed the horizontal sword onto the hunter's throat as he growled all the more ferociously now, "Thy will be done."

Back Into The World

When I opened my eyes, it was because I gasped as my lungs failed in my sleep. I gasped and shuddered and instinctively looked to my right. The first harrowing second of my waking up bore the memory, alive in my soul, just as much as I knew that he woke up at the same time with the same terrible reaction.

As he looked at me, all with the same flat, invulnerable expression, I was about to break into tears.

But I kept myself together. I would never break. He needed a rock as hard or even harder than himself to cling onto before he would crumble, even if I knew he would get up again, with the same cold, unbending face. But that face I wouldn't begin to bear when I knew and I had seen, just how rich and ripe and free, and full with warmth the subtle traceries of his expression could animate it to.

He was not aware that I saw what I saw. I knew that much.

I swore right then and there, that I would never let him go back to a constant cold expression he worked however tiredly to keep for his own protection –from the hunters, from the world, from himself. He would never have to defend himself from me.

More so, I would be there, I would ensure that Fenris got his turn to grab that disgusting son of a pig by the collar of his pretentious ugly robes and watch with my own cold, in fact genuinely cold expression, as Fenris would growl "Count this, you could never get it wrong. You only get as far as One" and then he would break his neck, drop him dead on the ground and viciously spit on him with all the fullness of nonchalance. Burn in hell and have a swell eternity, 'Master'.

Back to the harrowing reality inside the ever-hopping silent carriage, Fenris closed his eyes halfway and rested his head sideways against the wall, and all the more quiet was his breathing in and out than the deafness of the ride.

There were no words, because for one, I couldn't afford to tell him what I saw, and for two, all my strength and will were reserved to my refusal to break right then and there.

A gesture was enough.

I was driven mechanically, to be honest.

I rested my head back again and kept silent as I put my hand over his, none too insistent or abrupt in the touch.

I was enveloped by darkness again, my head, my soul, my heart all too crushed and tired to bear reality more than a few seconds more.

The last thing I saw were his fingers that were resting coldly on the seat, slowly curl and tangle themselves into mine.