Alright so this has 3 parts: first a monologue, then some dialogue and descriptive richness that has to do with Fenris and Hawke, then there's an incident on the road you'll most likely enjoy 'cause it has a lot of bullshitting in the face of danger. Enjoy!
I dedicate this to Julie.
I was born after the war, therefore I delve in all, and blend without prejudice. Fereldans are not very open people though, do not doubt that. As a perfectly hidden apostate, I learned to be human more than anything else. I learned, dime a dozen, what it means to be cruel and what it means to be stamped by evil and prejudice nonetheless, and these deeds and horrors that I learned pertained little to anything magic. I've seen humans, elves and dwarves mistreated with the same equal amount of malice. In all my years, I haven't once learned to swallow it though. No, I always stuck my nose where "it doesn't belong" if I had the power to, because I am not one lower my gaze, cough shortly and walk past the theatrical scene of life in all its ugliness pretending it's not my business. That's rather the Kirkwall fashion though, I swear it's almost poetic. I try to lessen these things. That some higher good pertains to what I do now, as a noble-in-disguise Kirkwall citizen and Free Marcher? That I am fairly open to doubt.
As for my native Ferelden, hear it softly when you say my name, Hawke, and breathe it like perfume, because that's as soft as it can get. We are not Anderfelian, cold, harsh and unsurpassable by the slightest of human emotion, but we do remain invulnerable to most conquest over our weaknesses. I suppose it's because we have a rather distinct collective feeling of belonging, of pride related to all the sweat and blood of our ancestors, and in so anything short of scorn against this pride is unacceptable. We strive for our independence like the wild birds protect their eggs and their nest from any incoming vulture. It's utter dedication to stand our ground and protect our kin.
What kin? Well, it's not like I'd met the king or anything, but I'd met the poorer children of Ferelden, the sons of the merchants, orphans and boys from the monasteries and schools, the elves in the villages, some servants, some standalone families living on the edge, at the risk of getting attacked by some drunken lords. I met some of those lords too and I could scarcely bring myself to hold it together and not spit in their face or satirize them at least. It's a good thing I had Father with me at those times. I'd met a lot of different kinds of people, and I had no prejudice, because that is the way it was with our rules of living and conduct if a family of apostates commenced to survive in the free world. You had to mix with the people.
And that my trade tongue, well, Ferelden tongue still but in a genuine accent, my friends find it fascinating… well, I find it a bit amusing. Fascinating in that my mutterings are so colorful, accented as they are, with a stinging sound most curious to it. Amusing to me because I find everything amusing when it's about me. I'm a proud clown I am. But a thriving romantic, a princess, a most beautiful aristocratic maiden or even a queen of the underworld, I'm not. A vagabond good-doer mage disguised as such, maybe I will be, who knows.
But to yield to some soft lustrous pronunciation, that right there is a big no-no. I do not have the soft tune of an Antivan, with blandishments most pretty as I utter them. Antivans really have a distinct fire in their accent, with love for everything and everyone, and it feels as though anything directed at them and anything they direct at the world in turn is a constant source of bliss for them.
Me? Not so much. Fereldens in comparison, do seem like they speak the very language of unemotion. I find that curiously rhapsodic though, in that it is in fact, way better, to my preference at least, to open your ears with more effort in finding the emotion, the melody, the subtle sounds of lively creation in a rather passive tune to one's quiescent, languid or rampant course, words are powerful in every respect, but the art of listening to them, deciphering and swallowing the wholeness of what they create, is a higher art than simply reading and hearing and then going like "Ah, mhm, mhm. Fascinating." Music is just the same, painting is just the same. There's a whole nucleus of immense charge ready to blast upon the world and jolt your insides and make your heart choke in its convulsion of defeat – once the right ear or eye commence to absorb and understand it, of course.
And again, I accuse myself that I mutter too much nonsense.
Forgive me, I have gone a bit soft. Ferelden's Independence Day is soon and I am currently in a gondola in Antiva City pondering on so much that I have lost with the Blight because feelings.
Oh right, I haven't made this clear. I fell asleep again and I was in the Fade again. This is going to be short, but of course I had to ramble first to make you want to scratch your eyes out, because I'm very much a sadist when it comes to these things. And since I said it like that, you can rest assured this short episode is not going to be graphically cruel and heartbreaking in any way. I will also cease with this overly personal way of telling the story and commence to now abuse of my full descriptive power, as in of course third person, because I know that some prefer first and some prefer the other, and I feel very democratic about my annoying everyone. So let us make haste with ending this tale!
Fiume di Speranza (River of Hope), The Fade
He stood thinking of his painful memories. His despair of the three nights had perhaps penetrated too deep.
He couldn't catch them. So be it. They scurried into the nothingness rather like the leaves in the alleyways, the leaves that sometimes tumble down and down the stained green walls from the little gardens whipped in the wind up there on the rooftops.
I don't want to, Fenris's inner voice echoed.
Across the canal, men sang as they drove their long narrow gondolas, voices seeming to ring, to splash up the walls, delicate, sparkling, then dying away.
Someday it will all come clear to you, when you have the strength to use it, came a voice.
They were roaming about the rivers of the city in a long, narrow, black gondola, drinking from only one glass of wine. A mad disorder, an abundance for the sake of itself, a great drench of colors and shapes it seemed to be. The Fade was breathing tormented, striving to balance itself, all with the havoc propelling out and stubbornly trying to conquer the world. Fenris was shaking it. But the waters were still, the wind blew nonchalantly through Hawke's bloody red hair, long threads of it dancing in the air as she drank the wine, and equally content did it seem to touch and unsettle the shorter ivory richness that made his own hair. And the stars, they lay quiet still, pulsating with their light in the grandest of tranquility across the midnight sky. It was like the wine, too sweet and light.
It was full night. The breeze was sweet. A few lanterns had been lighted under the long streets.
Hawke took another sip while resting her hand against her head, with her elbow on the edge of the boat and a leg on top of the other. She pressed her lips and licked the wine away, then extended the hand with the glass towards him. Fenris was standing on the other seat in front of her, however ironically, occupying less space than her in his stiffened, resigned posture. She was conquering her side with no shame, whereas he rested his elbows on his knees, staring in blank. She didn't grimace at his deliberate ignorance, rather she just returned the glass to her lips and drank away.
The black gondola was coursing through the greenish waters, all with its two inhabitants that seemed to be invulnerable to the all the sounds and images of the sumptuous scarlet or gold cloaks hurrying along the quays. No, down in their boat of stillness, and moving them as they stood, they traveled in graceful darting silence among the facades and the light of the lanters; each huge house as magnificent as the cathedral in the distance, with its narrow pointed arches, its lotus windows, its covering of gleaming white stone in such radiant contrast with the weight of the black Antivan night.
Even the older, sorrier dwellings, not too ornate but nevertheless monstrous in size, were plastered in colors, a rose so deep it seemed to come from crushed petals, a green so thick it seemed to have been mixed from the opaque water itself.
"Don't be afraid," Hawke said finally and almost startled him – ironically – as her voice echoed greatly across the canal. "You look as though you are terrified."
"I am not afraid," Fenris said sharply, raising his eyes at her. Then his head fell. "It's only that I have to lie in my bed and think and remember and dream."
She looked at him, as he shyly looked away again.
"You are dreaming now," Hawke said and chuckled, with her nonchalant arm on the edge of the boat. "And you look a bit unsteady."
"And now I fear nightmares," Fenris growled bitterly, appearing to have ignored her and continue with his miserable speech. He looked around the river in silence and then his eyes fell upon her with a sudden switch to firmness. "You must tell me—what is our destination? What is our fate?"
To comfort him, to distract him maybe, or simply to return his ignoring her, she suddenly took up a brush and quickly astonished him with a picture that ran like a stream out of its quick application.
A man's face, cheeks, lips, eyes, yes, and fastidious white hair in profusion. Good Maker, it was him, he thought… it was not a canvas but a mirror. It was this… that Fenris, the way she pronounced it. She sighed and took over again, to refine the expression, to deepen the eyes and work a sorcery on the tongue so he seemed about to speak. What was this rampant magic that made an elven man appear out of nothing, most natural, at a casual angle, with eyes more alight and evergreen than the waters beneath, with the knitted dark eyebrows and streaks of unkempt straight and white hair over his sharp ear? It seemed both blasphemous and beautiful, this fluid, abandoned fleshly figure. Something about it was hidden, like a secret ingredient, and all stranger to him until he saw it right in front of him.
Hawke spelled the letters out in red as she wrote them: Fenrir. Then she threw the brush down. She cried, "That is not the name that describes this man."
He lowered his gaze for a moment, then looked up at her. "You are correct, that is not I. I am Fenris," he said flatly with an air of stubborness, articulating every word.
"Fenrir is the great wolf that was bound by the gods and shackled so he would not bring destruction with his rapid growth," she said calmly. "That is where your master got the name and changed a letter to make it sound like a little subtle tribute to mockery. It is not elven."
He raised an eyebrow, a little interest shimmered in his green eyes. "Ferelden?"
"Ancient, ancient names… from times before it was ever called such," Hawke said calmly. "The name which my Father bestowed upon me also belonged to those times of old."
He looked down, as though he'd remembered something. With a faint air of shyness, he raised his head up and asked, "What does Hildegaard do to Fenrir?"
Hawke remained empty-eyed and reached with the glass towards him. He finally accepted and took a sip, not a second leaving his eyes off of her. She looked up at the sky, "Nothing."
Disappointment had struck his face. "What did they do then?" he asked.
She shook her head and closed her eyes. "Our names are not some testaments of fate." She inhaled deeply. "But…," she sighed, "if you really want to know-"
"I do," Fenris articulated deeply.
She took her leg off the edge of the boat and rested her elbows on her knees. She looked at him sturdily and said, "Fenrir was the most powerful being in the universe, and therefore the gods bound him. But no shackles were strong enough to tie him down. The gods wanted to know exactly how powerful he was, so they made three fetters. The first two were very strong, but the wolf tore them apart without effort."
"And the third one?" he asked, rising up from his humpback posture.
She curled her lips and gestured, "They last made a silken fetter, and the wolf said, 'It looks to me that with this ribbon as though I will gain no fame from it if I do tear apart, such a slender band, if it is made with art and trickery, then even if it does look thin, this band is not going on my legs.'"
Silken and soft, and all the more untraceable and unevident to the stubborn fool who bound himself in misery perhaps.
"Did it bind him?" Fenris asked quickly.
She smiled and beckoned for him not to be so hasty. The she resumed, "The gods wagered that he would quickly tear apart a silken strip, noting that Fenrir had already broke great iron binds," she gestured calmly, "and added that if Fenrir wasn't able to break that band then Fenrir is nothing for the gods to fear and as a result, he would be freed."
Fenris nodded calmly for her to continue.
She inhaled again and resumed with a risen arm, "To that Fenrir said 'If you bind me so that I am unable to release myself, then you will be standing by in such a way that I should have to wait a long time before I got any help from you. I am reluctant to have this band put on me. But rather than that you question my courage, let someone put his hand in my mouth as a pledge that this is done in good faith.'" She rolled her eyes and grinned, "Of course no god had the balls to do it."
Fenris broke into laughter at her quick switch from courteous to gutter language. The subtle traceries of her accent made it so that none appeared more melodic than the other. They all bore the sound of sweetness and strength, and utter couldn't-care-less sturdiness. She resumed, "The god of war finally stepped in and put his hand between the wolf's jaws. When Fenrir kicked, the band caught tightly, and the more Fenrir struggled, the stronger the band grew. At this, everyone laughed," she said, then pressed her lips and rested her arm over the edge of the gondola. "Except the god of war himself, who there lost his right hand."
"And he was fully bound?" Fenris asked.
She nodded. "They bound him tighter with a fetter and a stone slab and Fenrir reacted violently. He tried to bite the gods. They thrust a certain sword into his mouth, the hilt of the sword on Fenrir's lower gums and the point in his upper gums." She gestured again. "Fenrir howled horribly and saliva ran from his mouth, and this saliva formed the river Van." She smiled suddenly. "It is the ancient word for 'hope'."
"Did he ever get out?" he asked, ignoring to question why a beast, even a beast that seemed to be much wiser than the gods, would bear a river of hope.
Hawke looked up at the night sky, and so did he. "He was to lie there until the end of days. His two sons were to one day swallow the sun, and after the moon," she said serenely and gestured to the sky, "And then the stars would all disappear. Fenrir would break away from his bindings and hold the sky and the earth in his jaws."
Fenris lowered his gaze from the sky, back to Hawke. "Why didn't they just kill him?"
"Because…" she said and shook her head as though she thought them to be idiots, "they said that the gods respected their holy places so greatly that they did not want to," she gestured quotation marks, "defile them with the blood of the wolf even though the prophecies all foretold that he will be the death of their ruler."
Fenris chuckled suddenly. "Such excuses, that they would die like fools for it."
"I think that was just a pretentious big fat lie. They couldn't kill him, not even when he was in his worst state and in his darkest hour. He was simply too strong and too wise to be destroyed." Then she looked up at the sky again. "The end of the world was bound to happen either way. It did not matter."
Fenris watched through dazed eyes as she drank more of the wine in a glass that seemed self-replenishing. The sky darkened behind her, but bright, warm street lanterns on the quays filled up the outside night. Only the floor of the gondola itself was veiled in dreary shadow.
Her cool confidence chilled him. It chilled him that she had so fearlessly touched him, body and soul, and she was telling this story without much care that he would misunderstand and interpret as he wished. To be fair, it chilled him to think that nothing in his dreadful bestial nature repelled her in the first place.
"So Fenrir brought the end of the world as he broke free from his bonds?" Fenris asked, furrowing his brows.
Hawke shook her head suavely with her eyes closed. When she opened them, she smiled, "He was part of it, but he did not cause it. The greed of the world, of the gods and men alike, the cruelty and havoc they caused, they all brought the end of the world. In so, the world restored itself to peace."
"Without an end, there can be no peace," Fenris said quickly, though he had not resolved from where he had heard those words.
"There was also a mighty serpent," Hawke said and winked at him nonchalantly as though to pertain to the viper he had once named her, "it was cursed to tangle around the world and forever eat its tail until he would swallow himself whole. And that way –"
" – was the day the world ended," Fenris finished contemplatively.
"The ruler of the gods battled the wolf and he was swallowed by it, and another powerful one battled the serpent and died to it too. The other gods, good and evil, fought other creatures and died just as well." She gestured philosophically, her eyes alight with tranquility. "Beneath the sky, people fled their homes, and the sun became black while the earth sank into the sea, the stars vanished, steam rose and the flames touched the heavens."
Fenris's didn't answer, instead watched her think on it as she beheld the vault of the night sky. She then started to recite.
Brothers will fight
and kill each other,
sisters' children
will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,
whoredom rife
—an axe age, a sword age
—shields are riven—
a wind age, a wolf age—
before the world goes headlong.
No man will have
mercy on another.
It sates itself on the life-blood
of fated men,
paints red the powers' homes
with crimson gore.
Black become the sun's beams
in the summers that follow,
weathers all treacherous.
Then Hawke finished the poem very firmly, with half-lidded eyes, "Do you still seek to know? And what?"
Fenris looked down and pondered on it. For a moment he thought this might have meant that the wolf in question was but an impending necessary force that instead of bringing disaster, it brought upon the world hope. Then he finally got the courage to ask, "What about the river of hope?"
Hawke smiled warmly. "After the flames came, all the world was submersed into the water. Into Fernir's river of hope."
"So he saved the world," Fenris said calmly.
"Afterward, the world resurfaced anew and fertile," Hawke said and gestured. "And there was peace like never before. All surviving gods and men had learned from their blunder."
You take a breath and look around, and start anew, her past words came back into Fenris's ears.
With a more serene face than ever, Fenris then asked slowly, "What did Hildegaard do?"
She laughed all of a sudden and put a hand in her red hair, "What does it matter?"
Fenris smiled quickly. "Isn't she important to the tale?"
Hawke shook her head and opened her mouth halfway. "None of them are important."
"I would still like to know," Fenris pressed calmly. He entangled his fingers and looked at her as though he said he was not going to leave it be. She understood it and smiled.
"She had the power to revive the dead in battlefields and used it to maintain the ones who would do good in the world, if time hadn't taken theirs so quickly," Hawke said, then looked down. "Valkyries were the 'choosers of the slain'. They chose the ones who died in battle. Hildr or," she rolled her eyes, "Hildegaard, played a bit with technicalities and in a way, rebelled against the ruler of the gods, the one who made her. She rose higher than her own predicament. She found a loophole, if you will," she gestured and smiled widely. "She… resolved to be more than what she was created for, what her nature dictated her to be." She winked to Fenris and shot him a silver grin. "She resolved to be a guardian angel."
Now her first use of magic when she saved him in the mansion, all the other times thereafter, and especially the Deep Roads incident, not to mention her massive healing in the Antivan catacombs that brought her to absolute crazy afterwards, they bore a certain fragrance of all that was poetic. She protected Fenris from the start, and used the 'borrowed time' to bring out from him all that was good that he had been a stranger to before he had met her. Then he remembered a discussion they had on his roof, where Fenris once said he was but a shadow of a man, and she would bring that shadow in the world for everyone to see. The light that she was, held hands with the shadow and followed each other wherever they went, like inseparable friends wed to one another by nature itself. But apart from lousy metaphors, Hawke was indeed, like he thought all those years ago, something else. She was a symbol of rising up each time you fall, and breaking free from predicaments bestowed upon by others. And even with all her flaws that annoyed him at first, what was most important was this: She didn't let him twist into the wind.
And the great wolf… that wolf was not him. Fenrir was not him. And the little wolf made the name Fenris was not him either. Perhaps though, in a way, the gods saw him as the ultimate beast that would bring upon them unholy destruction, but secretively, the universe dictated the wise wolf to be a bringer of good once out of those shackles. Fenrir was not a dismal failure. They bound him to buy more time, but his growth and his years were but preparation to gather his strength, rather than weaken him. He was wise not to convert his strength into weakness in all those years. After all, being the strongest creature of them all, he was the only one who could destroy himself. He could have destroyed himself if he so wished. He could have succumbed to his own lethality against himself.
The only thing that was surely him though, resounded from the way she spoke his name. There was no mythological or fatalistic meaning conveyed to it. He was not some bizarre wreckage that somehow fascinated her. She was not either, as it turned out. The name though, there was a warm sound that made it. There was only a melody, a whisper, a force of something good, that gave his name the sound it deserved. Recognition, acceptance, hope and strength. Nothing of that sound set a tone to despair.
Would it not for that distinct tune of that name he heard out of the mouths of so few – compared to the poison out of so many – yet enough people which simply believed in him, did he not sometimes feel, somewhere deep down in the caverns and remnants of his soul, that there was the remotest, slimmest wisp of a chance that he was good and he could thrive?
He was not a dismal failure.
Then another wisp of a thought tickled his soul. One to which he was just as much a stranger as the next man was, but not even a battalion of hunters could drown away and kill its evermore powerful luster – That his name had always and for a long time, felt safe in her mouth.
He beckoned suddenly, for her to give him the brush and the picture. Hawke nodded and reached for them, then stretched her arm out to give to him.
He gazed at the portrait for a moment. He saw a man whose green eyes were soulful, the very mirror of patience. He took those who crossed his path indiscriminately except for their nature and the power they held over others. Therefore, he would not judge by age, physical endowments, or blessings bestowed by nature or fate. He had no pride or vanity to lead him to a hierarchy of intended cruelty, but in turn had one simple rule: be good or be dead.
The rampant greenery in his eyes said however, that he did not enjoy the act of killing.
It also said that he was burdened by a night creature that hovered in the deep shadows. A dusty, peaceful creature who enjoyed his time alone and away from the music of the world just as much as he despised it, for in truth he could never really shut down his ears to that music.
There was an uglier, degraded and utterly blasphemous music he wanted to cancel out.
He thought he heard people whispering in the ancient Tevene tongue. He was not going to allow this! He would not go mad. Enough! The only soul he had ever truly felt like sipping the coffee for to know if it was just alright said, "Live." It was time for action. To get up and get going. He was suddenly all strength and purpose. In contrast, his long nights of mourning and brooding had been equivalent to his ritual initiation; surviving death and agony had been the intoxicant; comprehension had been the transformation.
It was over now, he had escaped that life and he was arguably free, and the meaningless world was tolerable and need not be explained. And never would it be, and how foolish he had ever been to think so. The facts of his new predicament warranted action.
But how did Fenris look to that meaningless tolerable world?
At times he looked shrewd and even hateful. He knew plenty. When others looked at him, his green eyes were unflinching and passive.
Yes, there was this extremely unnerving mask he inadvertently, or perhaps deliberately yet ever unconsciously wore. It sculpted an elf so harsh and cold that he seemed to have forgotten what it ever meant to have a soul or be in pain. Indeed, he always seemed to people as if he had forgotten overnight, if he ever knew it. A quick killer, a pitiless and seemingly thoughtful but eternally secretive thing. He appeared low-voiced, unintentionally vicious, glacial, forbidding, ungiving, a wanderer through the forests of the far north, like a slayer of giant bears and white tigers, an indifferent legend to some untamed tribe and a miserable resentful nobody walking the lonely dark streets of civilized Kirkwall, something more akin to a prehistoric reptile than an elf or a man.
That Fenris, that seemed virtually useless to anyone but himself.
Yet still Fenris, who had most ironically never vanished, who had always been known to those few people he worked with… and who was easy to track and just as easy to abandon.
But then again, forget this horrific effigy of a resigned, abysmal and dejected soul. Forget, forget, forget.
He would always forget, for there was also in him the kind of perceptive creature who enjoyed listening to the whispers of a melody in front of him that was giving forth her piercing and irresistible song with no sought for personal gain and who was also indiscriminate towards the ones she either fancied or despised. The kind of remediable, hopeful music of a fellow lost soul which could very accurately bring the burned remnants of his soul back to life and push him however gently to look into the mirror and behold the other, good and honorable things about him he also stubbornly resolved to forget and remain but a moral failure and a pale ghost that roamed the earth in that darting silence. It made him speak. It made him howl. It made him unlock the door that pushed those burned remnants down and instead propel them out with a tremendous light not very different than her own.
She was there, first and foremost, whenever he needed her, and where no other ever had been before.
At times, perhaps because of this, he felt a huge exhilaration, a freedom from all falsehoods and conventions, all means by which a soul or body can be held hostage. And then the awesome nature of this freedom spread itself out around him when she was there as if his mansion did not exist, as if the darkness knew no walls.
Hawke, ever the maverick and the laughing trickster. Shorter than him, even he knew though he kept silent about it as not to anger her with a remark that would only sound arrogant from him, with huge warm dual-colored eyes, light with green and dark with brown, and thick flashy red hair, only very delicately square of jaw, with a generous beautifully shaped rosy mouth and skin pale by the cold of her mother country. A lady who was not by far a glass of fashion, but evermore the fan of armory and pointy, sturdy, dark items of clothing that only subtly showed the eternal visage of her femininity; the most bold and disregarding dusty vagabond on occasion, a loner, wanderer, a heart-breaker she could have been dime a dozen, and a wiseass with no equal other than himself on most occasions.
Of course, there were many times in which he would find no words to either talk or battle her, because there were times in which time seemed to stop and he would behold in front of him a powerful beauty out of what felt like the deepest and most ancient soul of Ferelden, fierce with the moral fiber of the old Knight class amongst the strange and independent populace of her country.
When one first sees Hawke, she seems too beautiful to hurt anyone.
That made a terrible contradiction in his eyes in the Alienage when he saw her and the immense gore she had made out of the Tevinter soldiers all on her own. She was too ravishing for any man and should be the grandest envy of females. And when she walked, she moved as a wraith throughout the world, utterly divorced from it, as if the places are not real to her, and she, the ghost of a dancer, seeks for some perfect setting she alone can find. That was something Fenris resounded with very greatly with his being himself.
There were only fleeting recollections of that constant aura wrapped around them both, that night of rising into the stars, of seeing the scope of life in its cycles, of accepting perfectly just for a little while that the moon would always be changing, and the sun would set as it always rose.
Perhaps Hawke and Fenris both fancied within, that they were fellow victims of a powerful intellectual morality, an infatuation with the concept of purpose, indifferent to roots, race or fate, two lost ones, and veterans of the same war.
Then there was this dilemma of her powers. Her skills and strength as a warrior certainly rivaled his own and he would never wish to find himself one day having to battle her as she did Armand in that terrible setting. A duel at Satinalia, that was more pretend and dance around for show than anything else and the only thing he had striven to be precise with was not to cut her dress. Anything else was but a friendly dance, indeed. A real battle with all their strength and will, would have been the death of both of them.
And yet she could also kindle objects and men alike into fire with the power of her mind, form rainstorms and vanish in the dark sky, slay whoever and whatever menaced her, and yet she did not wish to and strove as much as she could to have no part in that world. More than that, she seemed so harmless, forever feminine though indifferent to gender, a wan and plaintive woman whom he wanted to close in his arms.
She was ever quick of wit and tongue and eager for reasonable solutions, possessed of infinite patience – beneath the mask of utter impulsivity –, a grand speck of unquenchable curiosity and a refusal to give up on the fate of herself, or of her family, or of her friends, or of this world. No knowledge can defeat her; tempered by fire and time, she was too strong for the horrors that pegged at her at every step and the last events in the catacombs forever proved it yet again.
She thought often times that he saw her as a mage brat who knew nothing, and he knew plenty. That she was loaded with easy and whatever kept her so alive and animated and quick to survive and work and butt into the affairs of almost anyone she had a problem with was but a ripe sense of childish freedom as an undefeated warrior who no one would guess was also an apostate. But unbeknownst to her for a long time, he had always suspected her own suffering had been terrible; he did not sought however, perhaps out of an unconscious feeling of empathy, to break the great and feisty carapace of her demeanor to discover some raw bloody tragedy beneath it. After all, patience he had plenty and in her words it would have spoiled all the fun. To know Hawke, there is always time.
Yes, Hawke, not a bad friend to have, and one for whom he would lay down his life as he had already done a few many times before, one for whose love and companionship he had often times hoped in his most private dark corner of his soul to conserve, and one whom he more often than not found maddening and fascinating and intolerably annoying; one without whom he could exist, but cannot bear to live.
Then he quickly brushed off the name Fenrir with his gauntlet and wrote in white letters, with a curiously more precise calligraphy, Fenris. The first letter he painted in full, rampant lines that seemed to catch wings as the steady color stretched and flew away, but was forever tangled in its homey roots. He gave it back to her with a cold, patient expression.
She looked at it only for a flash of a second, then shot him a great smile, "Rebellious are we?"
To that, Fenris raised the glass of dark wine and returned her smile with a triumphantly wide grin as he leaned behind, "Suffice it to say, I am to enjoy the irony."
Back Into The World Yet Again
When I awoke, it was because the carriage jolted horribly.
"Kaffar," came a growling sound, just when I opened my eyes.
"Kaffar-har-har to you too," I heard Varric's voice up ahead.
I felt the cool fresh air come down around my neck and felt it on my cheek. The noise however, brought me around. What was it that was crushing me so badly? My vision started to clear, and there came a grand realization as the cherry on top of all realizations that day yet again – I had either just fell with my head in Fenris's lap and that's why he cursed, or I had slept there the entire time and that's why he cursed.
When I turned my head above, I knew, I positively knew, I was in fact there in his lap and caught his eyes staring down at me. I smiled crookedly. "I, uhm, well, yeah."
To my utter surprise, Fenris smiled down at me though with faint air of coldness, so I couldn't really make up if he was annoyed or not when he whispered in his low voice, "Venturing into foreign lands a little early this morning, aren't we?" Perhaps he cursed because my head had viciously crushed the chance of him having a family someday, now I wagered.
"What morning? It's dark," I said while rubbing my eyes, as if that was that was the thing of grandest importance in our current setting.
"We are deep into the forest," Fenris said calmly, looking up above.
"Yeah we are," I mumbled quickly and then wanted to hit myself.
His legs vibrated under me as he chuckled shortly. Then again, as if not for the others to hear, he whispered, "I had the strangest dream."
I gulped suddenly and looked above and my eyes went almost painfully in the back of my head as I tried to make up the scenery through the small window. "Not as strange as mine, I wager."
Indeed, the heavy touch of the night was approaching the crack of dawn, but even so the faintest of light was fading fast. The forest was too thick to be safe it seemed, but the more dire matter was that Varric and Isabela were picking their way counting on the instinct of the horses more than their own failing vision. The pale half-moon seemed in love with the clouds. The sky itself was nothing but bits and pieces thanks to the canopy of the foliage above us, never mind the covers of the carriage itself. Alas, we shouldn't complain. At least we had the safety of cover.
Fenris whispered back very quietly, "We were riding a gondola back in the city that was driving itself and we were drinking from the one glass of wine that seemed to be self-replenishing."
I widened my eyes as well as my mouth, remaining speechless. While stuttering horribly, I finally asked, "That's it?"
He furrowed his brows as if to catch the memory again. "I don't quite remember much." He raised a courageous little eyebrow and looked back down on me. "What did you dream about?"
I swallowed deeply and wished the carriage would jolt again. With the quickness of wit, my tongue let slip, "I was having tea with Senechal Bran and he paid me a compliment."
"Oh?" Fenris said, his expression most amused, yet cold. He looked back forward. "I think your dream won in terms of utter insanity."
"Dreams are like that," I muttred with a hand over my forehead. I looked up at him. "How did I get here?"
"You… fell?" Fenris muttered coldly, without looking down anymore. "I certainly did not put you there."
"Then… why are you not smacking me over the head or something?" I whispered sharply.
Fenris appeared to not have heard me, but then for some reason he started frowning as he looked down at me. "You look awful."
"Why thank you," I muttered rapidly with narrowed eyes.
"You're welcome," Fenris said unemotionally, then he raised an eyebrow, "But in all seriousness, you look weaker than when you went to sleep," he whispered again as if this was not meant for the others to hear, but their sitting was all open for the public eye to see without conveying much importance. "Hawke."
"Mmm, heh- what?" I muttered. I had my eyes closed and could scarcely bring them to open again, now I realized.
"You're fading," I heard Fenris say.
"No, I –uh," I mumbled and yawned heavily, "I am ready to," I yawned again, "take over."
"Yes, and my little toe there is the Queen of Ferelden," I heard Fenris mumble.
I moved my head, but couldn't open my eyes. I yawned again and said in-between, "Ferelden has no queen."
"Well there, you've shed even greater clarity to the point I was trying to make," came again his grumpy voice.
"No-"
I suddenly felt a hand very cool and smooth over my head, petal-soft yet heavy as it stroked my hair it seemed. "Sleep."
"N-"
I couldn't focus my eyes. Darkness suddenly obscured everything, and out of this darkness there rose a shape before me, a figure bending over me, Fenris looking right into my face as his hair fell down on me. "If you prefer," came his deep voice ever firmly, "I could now commence to that smacking over the head you mentioned earlier."
"Mhm," I mumbled, not at all comprehending that I moved on my side and buried my face against his waist.
"I thought so," whispered Fenris flatly as I felt him rise back up. I was utterly imprisoned into darkness, and the numbing of my senses was most annoying. All I did feel quite pronounced, or maybe I'd imagined it or felt it wrong, was a coarse hand touching my cheek gently, almost respectfully. I could hear distantly the sounds of the galloping horses and Varric's storytelling-mode voice engaged, and some lonely tunes of early birds singing. I was safe, at least that much was so.
Finally sleep came. It came totally and completely and sweetly; the net of nerves which had held me suspended and maddened simply dissolved, and I sank down into a dreamless darkness this time. I was conscious of that sweet point where nothing for the moment matters except to sleep, to replenish and to fear yet no dreams, and then nothing.
2 days later, Somewhere close of Ansburg
Honorably enough, there lurked a great turmoil in my soul, which only meant I had to rapidly resolve to push it down and terminate it with alcohol. I drank, well, I drank more than I could count on my fingers, and it didn't seem to care that Antivan brandy was that one little drink that made me utterly pissy and hot-headed rebellious. Remember my angry philosophical rant to Sebastian in which I somehow managed to scream "orgasm" in a speech about religion?
I was at the back of the carriage with Fenris again, while Varric was in the front with Isabela but with his back turned to the road, and he was telling the story of how he bullshitted both the Coterie and the Orlesians into giving him the brandy meant for the Viscount from the Antivan Prince at Kirkwall's Independence Day.
"And Olimpy-dingly-ding didn't even flinch! Not one hiss, shudder, nothing, even if they were pretentiously insulting us! The bastard kept shooting them his charming smile and they bought our bullshit in the end, can you believe it?" Varric shouted happily.
"Hhh-onestleh, I dooh," I mumbled incoherently, laughing to no end. I was smoking my legendary cigarillo inside, which made Fenris want to strangle me, and which I suspect he magically did, through his thoughts, because I was coughing like a mad rat.
"Then I drank my sorrows away with him, since Grumpy McCouldntCareLess here didn't wanna join in our most offensive vagabond setting," Varric said meanly while pointing at Fenris.
"I did not join because I was already tired of drunken maidens stumbling upon my feet," Fenris said in annoyance, crossing his arms.
"Pfh-well, you seem to have regained your strength, Sir," Varric chuckled at pointed at me, who was smoking in nonchalance and sipping my brandy without even much listening.
"We are sitting down," Fenris articulated unemotionally.
"And I am not a maiden," I said confidently, raising my bottle towards them.
"No?" Varric asked sweetly. "I didn't spot any red chest hair in your cleavage the other day, Madam."
"Miss, please," I corrected in amusement. "And not red chest hair."
"Strange," Varric cupped his chin. "It says it is not a maiden, yet it demands of me to address it as Miss."
"Varr-hec," I mumbled and with my eyes closed, swaying with my head. "You chhoud call me Bob h-and I wouldn't care lesser."
"Could you care morer?" Varric asked with a raised eyebrow, mocking me.
"The morest I care right now," I gestured and almost hit Fenris over the face if he hadn't dodged my hand entirely, "Is to get backinmaownbed."
"Whoever gave her the third bottle is a pitiful little idiot," Fenris muttered grumpily.
I narrowed my eyes and swayed, and pretended to have Zevran's accent as I gestured, "Now why do you sting?"
"That is the alcohol burning what is left of your smoked throat," Fenris said calmly, snatching the bottle away from me before I realized a few too many seconds later.
"Now why did you do that?" I asked in outrage, but completely forgot the next second, so I repeated drunkenly, "Now why did you do that?"
"Let her drink, Broody, she deserves a good old ride under the hippity-hoppity moon after all she's been through," Varric protested sweetly.
Fenris was scowling at both of us, from what I could see, and remember. "I will give it back to you if you can tell me who is ruling your country at the moment."
"Some bastard no doubt, most of them are," I mumbled ineloquently.
"And the name of that regal bastard is?" Fenris asked grumpily.
"Al-, Ah…" I muttered, all too shrinking from the fearsome waiting eyebrow that was arching towards Heaven on Fernris. "A-"
"Seven more letters to go," Varric chuckled lively.
"-loe ver-," I shouted.
"Those are only six," Fenris muttered sharply with half-lidded eyes.
"Well who sh-ought you th-dat, I wonder?" I protested arrogantly in my drunkenness. "
"Some drunk back in Kirkwall, most of them are," Fenris said grumpily and took a good sip of my damn brandy.
I pressed my lips in annoyance and could scarce remember the line I prepared to give him. Forgetting so quickly everything, and with all colors and sounds and motion amalgamating into what one could only call a flush of utter oatmeal, I caught my head into my hands. "St-ahp schpinning," I cried.
"Schmooth," Varric mused and threw a little bottle of brandy in my lap.
Instinct still not forgotten, I caught it right before Fenris could snatch it ruthlessly away from me, but as I did I scratched his hand and he growled shortly, because the nails caught his markings.
"I-" I stuttered, keeping the bottle between my knees, devil that I still am.
Fenris shot me an angry glance and muttered, "Let me guess." He raised a nonchalant little eyebrow. "You're shorry?" he asked mockingly and drank from the first stolen bottle.
"Deeply," I said flatly, and clawed away my own bottle open.
"Forgive me if I don't believe you in this state," Fenris said coldly, "and thus cannot take you seriously."
"I forgive you," I nodded calmly with my eyes closed. I hit my head on the board. I didn't seem to notice. I stretched my hand out. "Thus I request that you give me my bottle back."
He stood there with his arms crossed and drinking away without caring. "I reject your request and hereby give you humble notice that you're spilling."
"Wha? I- oh." A quarter of my bottle watered away the floor, keeping up the health of the garden that made our tension. "Shit."
"Shit, indeed," Fenris said nonchalantly, almost about to chuckle at my struggle to brush the wetness that made a good half of my pants in questionable places.
Then came the stupidest idea the utter vacuity that was my mind had ever ever ever tickled the sanctum of unreason. "Hey I have an idea."
"Hey I have an idea," I repeated, without knowing I repeated.
"Is it the same idea?" Varric asked in amusement.
"I haven't even said it!" I shouted childishly.
"Say it again in your head, like thirty more times, then resolve if you still think it's a bright idea," Fenris said a bit sharply. He was annoyed with me of course, I had to understand, but at that moment all I knew was that I would do whatever I wanted to do and no other fucks were given that day.
"I have not the strength to repeat it that many times, my dear man," I said almost one-eyed.
"You mean you have not the reason," Fenris corrected me.
"I most certainly do!" I shouted and the brandy came up and out of my bottle and onto the ceiling. "Would it not for my raisin, I would have probably set your ass on fire a good half hour ago!"
"Raisin?" Fenris chuckled. "Did I hear correctly?"
I swayed my head, I tried to remember. "Raisin, reason," I gestured in annoyance. "Potato, poh -tah -toh."
"They are not the same thing," Fenris articulated sharply.
I threw my arms up in the air. I could barely catch them back.
"Do you want to hear my idea or not!" I exclaimed in revolt most profound.
"As long as you can blink both eyes at the same time," Fenris said disapprovingly, eyeing me like a dead-set commander, indeed dead-set to be a pain in my ass.
"I stand corrected," I said in protest, almost about to hiss at him. "I should have fireballed your ass a good few hours ago."
"Not within the premises, Hawke," Varric protested calmly, shooting me worried glances.
"Most certainly not!" I said courteously.
"How true," Fenris said to Varric. "Her reason is indeed as she said, not far off from the size of a raisin."
"Do we have a problem, Fenrir?" I asked, without even realizing in my ineloquence what I muttered.
His eyebrows furrowed urgently. "What did you call me?" Fenris asked in alarm, eyes widened.
"Phh h -rys," I drawled. "I called you Fenris. Is that not your name?"
He locked that scowl for a few more seconds, before he leaned back in the seat and drank away. "Correct," he muttered.
"Anyheway, back to my ideahah," I mumbled again happily with half-lidded eyes. "Give me a cigarillo, Tethras."
Varric nodded quickly and searched his jacket for another of those life burning bitches. "Catch, Pantaloons."
I didn't catch it. It would have been a terrible damp waste of a good expensive cigarillo if not for Fenris who surprisingly caught it in time, and then with not enough disgust in the world, threw it in my lap where it landed between my legs.
"Sankyou," I nodded with my eyes.
"So what's this big idea?" Varric asked in entertainment, resting his chin against his fist.
I had already forgotten.
Never mind, I remembered.
"I'm going to make a dragon," I said childishly with a big smile and lit my cigarillo with a little magic. "A big mighteh dragon."
"How big is big?" Varric asked urgently, still smiling though.
I ignored him and sought to channel my magic that I would shoot out of my mouth after I took a long enough drag. But the first drags were always for pleasure. I blew out some circles nonchalantly around the carriage.
"Oh, that trick again," Fenris remembered, arms crossed and drinking much hypocritically.
"What trick?" Varric asked eagerly, his eyebrows lifting and his teeth showing.
"This trick!" I uttered happily.
Then, the last thing I saw, in terrible slow motion even – ironical to the rapidness of drunken vision and perception – was Fenris widening his eyes and terror and about to tackle me as he realized what I wanted to do, and what I had not realized was something I did not want to do. I could almost hear in deep, extreme slowness as he growled Noooo.
Then came out the fire, shooting and blasting like a rifle up above and out of the covers of the carriage, because I had not remembered that there were traces of alcohol of my own doing up above on the ceiling. The firebolt shot out and made a huge hole in the covers, and we all saw it flying away up in the blue sky and exploding just into a flock of terrified little birds. The carriage jolted with the utterly frightened horses and it moved left to right horribly and made Isabela almost fall out by the edge.
"Aluvin valla khal," Fenris growled urgently. "Festis kevett femina."
"What in blazes did you do?!" Isabela screamed.
"Pun intended!" Varric screamed angrily.
"Shit, shit, shit!" I shouted in alarm and rapidly created ice and melted it into water to splash up and above in order to put out the carriage that caught on fire in one too many places.
"I should have smacked you unconscious when I had the chance," Fenris shouted angrily next to me.
"Yeah keep screaming in my ear – that will help me concentrate!" I shouted back in annoyance.
But the worst part was yet to harrow upon us all.
"Uh, guys…" Isabela muttered frightened. "Guys…"
"This is the last time you drink on the road, Hawke," Fenris commanded me ruthlessly. "Kevesh."
"Like I said, keep cursing in my ear, that will CERTAINLY help," I growled back while splashing the water everywhere around the gigantic parched hole.
"GUYS!" Isabela screamed.
"What?!" we all shouted.
We looked forward past her and saw the most ridiculous sight of fate slapping me across the face of my utter impossible stupidity and bad luck.
Two Templars, tanned skin, one blonde, one black-haired with a fuzzy beard, had twisted and turned and stopped at the last gallop of their horses. They came down and approached us urgently.
"Is everything alright here?" the blonde younger Templar asked in an Antivan-sounding accent. Rialto-based, I was sure. Shit.
"Yes, yes, most wonderful," I mumbled and stumbled on my feet, Fenris and Varric catching me both, and as I did only a little more water squirted from my fingers in the harrowing silence that now made this terrible setting.
"Come outside of the vehicle, Miss," the black-haired, older, deeper-voiced Templar said as he was very slowly preparing to reach to his sheath.
Being drunk on Antivan brandy, and being myself, and somehow forgetting everything that dictated my instincts and knowledge, I sat on the back seat again and smiled drunkenly as I beckoned to them warmly, "No, I'm good, you come in!"
They all shot me glances, both parties no doubt screaming murder and accusation.
"I would prefer it if you did, Miss," the black-haired, blue-eyed big Templar pressed.
"What is this regarding?" Fenris intervened politely.
"Yeah," I said cockily and stumbled. "Do we have a problem here?"
"I'm not in the position to confirm that," the manlier Templar stated vaguely.
Well, then up yours, Templar, I thought angrily, grabbed the bottle to take a few sips. Or perhaps I said it out loud and didn't realize.
"Is that alcohol?" the Templar pressed with a scowl. "And on the covers? Is that what caused the explosion?"
I took another sip of nonchalance. "I'm not in the position to confirm that."
"Alright, this is obviously a big misunderstanding," came Varric charmingly. "We were playing with fire, and well, fire played back with us. It happens."
"Indeed it seems that way," the black-haired Templar snarled with control.
"Well, if there's nothing moar," I mumbled and drank again.
"And how did you stop the flames exactly?" the black-haired, more perceptive and accusatory Templar asked with narrowed eyes.
I was going to go all hot-headed stingy again, but Varric cut me in time, "Water of course! Now we can't put out fires with more alcohol, now can we?" he said in a very sweet charismatic tone.
"Unless you have a brain the size of a walnut," I said cockily, although I shouldn't have been the one speaking.
The blonde-haired younger Templar was about to say something, but the black-bearded one came first. "Perhaps this was a," he paused and raised an eyebrow as he sized me up, "misunderstanding."
I raised my pointy finger at him. "Indeed, that was a terrible misunderstanding." Then I added sharply, "Now leave before there's a terrible misunderstanding between my foot and your ass."
That was it, for the black-haired Templar approached again and growled, "I cannot help but take issue with your disgraces."
I turned my head to him nonchalantly, "And I cannot help but take issue with the nasty glances you keep shooting me."
"I cannot help but also notice you have a rather pronounced inconvenience with us," the black-bearded Templar articulated.
"She's an angry drunk, forgive my friend," Varric said charmingly. "She's in good hands."
The black-haired Templar shot Varric a narrow-eyed suspicious glance and remained silent for a second, maybe to blow the horn for his one lonely neuron to finally understand they were being asses. Instead he said, "There is a fugitive female Enchanter from the Circle in Ansburg dubbed apostate that is allegedly also recently deemed a blood mage. We are currently looking after this certain female."
"Allegedly," I articulated mockingly, then snorted and looked at the others. "That is Templar code for we don't know what the hell we're doing, but we're going at it anyway."
"And how may I ask do you know that, Miss?" the black-haired Templar pressed.
"I have a friend in the Guard," I said confidently and shrugged. "I wager it's the same code of fake convictions."
"Do you not have the phylactery to trace this apostate down?" Fenris suddenly intervened in a voice that said he knew plenty of what he was talking about.
The black-haired Templar caught his serious tone and answered him, "It has been recently broken. Now it is fairly a wild goose chase."
"Do I look like a wild goose?" I asked mockingly. I didn't feel it quite yet, but Fenris took a step in front of me. Then did I only realize that water and ice were still squirting out of my hands.
"Forgive my remark, for it is 'stupid' Templar code, but you do sound like wild goose," said the black-bearded unconvinced Templar.
"Oh," I stuttered, a bit freezing, either from the ice or from my fright. "Then by all means resume to your chase."
"I think that is not necessary," pressed the black-haired Templar and went for the sword in his sheath.
It was final. Once a Templar was onto you, his numskull lyrium abilities would trace the magic in your system as soon as they commenced to it. This was final and I had not but one dagger stuffed in my pants now. And my friends were all going to be in trouble if we didn't manage to defend ourselves. No. I would not allow that. My heart was in my mouth, but I was going to step in and let myself over to the Templars. I could get out of their hands later. Even in my drunkenness, I did not lose that one wisp of reason that said this was not my friends' battle to harrow because of my absolute stupidity.
A second too late I took that step, for what cut me was Fenris. "Enough," he growled. He stepped out of the carriage and stood with his back straight like a soldier and took a bow in front of the Templars. What the hell? everyone probably asked, all only stealthily reaching for their weapons in silence.
"I am Knight-Lieutenant, F-" he paused only for a flash, "Finufaranell," he articulated in control and coughed, every one of us trying not to snort, "From the Circle of Ferelden." He pointed at me sharply. "And I have this 'wild goose' in my custody. Therefore I must disappoint you, but you have the wrong goose."
"Forgive me for asking, Knight-Lieutenant," said the wiseass black-haired Templar with narrowed eyes, "But how exactly did an elf in Ferelden come to that rank?"
"I do not forgive your disgrace," Fenris pressed commandingly. "Perhaps the Circle in Ansburg or Rialto or wherever you come from has not yet set the tone for fairness and indiscrimination in our modern times," he said with an edge to his voice and crossed his arms, "but the Circle in Ferelden has, all under the righteous wing of our good king Alistair."
Seeing how the indomitable Fenris pressed so hot-headedly with the sharp, spitting edge of patriotism, the blonde-haired Templar immediately intervened, "No need. This is indeed a terrible misunderstanding." He nodded politely to Fenris. "My fellow Lieutenant and I trust that you will not let her out of your sight and endanger any of our citizens."
Fenris shrugged. "I keep her sedated."
The black-haired wiser Templar narrowed his eyes again, but instead of asking exactly how that worked, he shot a glance to him. "I understand that the Templars in Ferelden are much more," he raised an accusatory eyebrow, "open-minded and free with their way of conduct and apparel, but how does a former Dalish take interest with this kind of duty?"
I didn't for the love of bullshit know what was happening, but Fenris didn't seem to flinch or yield. He kept his tone sharp and flat, "I am not Dalish. But with our more open-minded approach, there have been recent progresses in perfecting our abilities." He crossed his arms again proudly. "All because of the humble generosity of our good king Alistair."
I was going to snort and blast my brains out, my lungs were utterly collapsing, and the muscles in my torso were fiercely pulsating from the incredible bullshit Fenris could pull with such an unconquerable and resolute attitude.
"Oh?" asked the blonde-haired Templar eagerly. "What do they do exactly?"
"I do not have time for this," Fenris pressed fearsomely, his eyes falling halfway to shoot them trembling. "Have your Knight-Commander write a letter to our own in Ferelden if you wish to dabble into our abilities."
"They're lyrium, you dumbskull," said the black-bearded Templar and nudged the other. "They probably solve our little addiction problem."
"See, that wasn't so hard was it," Fenris uttered superiorly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I must hurry," he gestured with pronounced discomfort, "all with my second blasted carriage this filthy mage has ever so nicely ruined yet again."
"Well, what else can you do to me, really?" I pretended to shout angrily. "If you don't get me back in one piece, they're gonna strip you of your rank all with your mighty elven dignity."
"Keep silent, apostate," Fenris fired back sharply, without even turning to look at me. He bowed to the Templars shortly. "Farewell."
"Farewell," the black-haired Templar nodded chivalrously.
I could have kissed him right then and there, but I feared he would have viciously slapped me out of consciousness if I did.
As the Templars hopped back on their horses and drove off while shooting us strange glances yet again, Varric came all over Fenris and patted him on the hip. "Knight-Leutenant Finufaranel." He broke into laughter. "I wouldn't have even begun to think of such a perfect name for a Ferelden elf, or for well, you, in all my years with you, Captain."
I stood corrected. I stood all the hell corrected and the gods could strike me down now and I still couldn't believe that Fenris did this. I didn't believe him in the catacombs when he told the story of our little conversation on the roof of the Hanged Man, but now I was all out of protests and bluff calls. And boy did he bluffed it with remarkable invulnerability and command with those Templars… He was the proud owner of the Amell Estate indeed. And I could scarce bring myself not to jump at his neck.
"I-" I stuttered, all tense and petrified.
"You're welcome," Fenris articulated bitterly. But his words were labored carefully in front of the others for me to understand "Say nothing. You don't have to."
At that I went to him, running, childlike, flinging myself at his neck, kissing his icy cheek a thousand times despite his contained and mock-disdainful smile. And despite the others seeing. It was after all, a natural reaction, I thought to myself.
"Well spank me on the ass and call me Granny," Isabela said and stretched her arms in smiles. "Fenris bullshitting Templars all on his own, without even the slightest help from the dwarven paragon and ship captain of bullshit." She entangled her fingers and inhaled. "I couldn't be prouder of you right now."
"You can be prouder by shutting your mouth," Fenris uttered grumpily, appearing as though he didn't even notice the crazy clown mage that was clutching at his neck and owing him everything from here on to eternity.
"You get a thousand drinks on my tab for this, my friend," Varric nodded charmingly, all silvery grins to contain his utter relief at how close we were to really be in trouble. "And it's my name-day very soon, so you know it's gonna be terrific."
"I'll hold you to that," Fenris said flatly, still not looking at me.
I kissed his cheek again with a loud Muah, pressing it against my lips as hard as I could, despite the loud rolling of his eyes and the distressed grimaces he made. When Isabela came into the carriage all exhausted and ready to sleep and Varric hopped in the front seat, Fenris gave me his first wink in history, as grumpy and unnerving as it was. Or maybe it was a flinch.