Rivalmance. That was the word Isabela fancied. There's really no other name for it she'd said whilst cleaning the blood from her daggers. I can't tell if you're both in heat or just ready to kill each other. And at the time, it'd been funny. A little annoying, but not too far off the mark. There were a lot of reasons they shouldn't be together. Magic… was one of them.

Fenris was aware of the others, restless with anxiety. If the cryptic library or its deranged owner hadn't been enough, Hawke's sudden stillness was certainly something to consider. And, she had gone still. In fact, she seemed frozen where she knelt.

Leandra sagged in her arms like a patchwork rag doll. Her beauty was a sickening thing now. Absolutely nothing could mitigate the horror of such a death, and it was the worst thing Fenris had ever seen. None of this was right. It was all unbearably, achingly wrong.

"Hawke."

Fenris strained to moderate his voice. To keep it normal. She wasn't moving, however. Hawke just kneeled there, bowed with the weight of the corpse in her arms. It was abhorrent. He wanted to open a hole in the ground and dive in.

Yelling, screaming, crying — those were the things he was waiting for. The only answer was… nothing. As if time had perished in this room as well. Was this cursed place a cavern where nothing lively could flourish? He resisted the urge to fidget as they all waited for her to do something. Anything.

"Hawke."

Not only did she not answer him, but Hawke gave no indication that she'd heard him at all. The others looked to each other, but he ignored their glances. The only thing he could focus on was Hawke, her flawless profile, the beads of blood on her forehead cloying the strands of her hair together. Her ponytail had been ripped free during the battle.

Fenris combed her over with his eyes once, twice, a third time if only to just make sure that she wasn't hiding an injury. The rigidity of her shoulders wasn't natural. Surely they were exhausted from being clenched around her ears for so long.

No visible gashes or wounds was apparent from where he stood, although that didn't keep him from checking a fourth time. It was when he slowed down that he was able to make out a faint movement coming from the side of her face. It was her mouth… her lips were moving. Hawke was… talking? To who? But then he was reacting before it all came together inside his head.

"Veronika."

He'd been unaware of his dominant hand reaching behind his shoulder, where the broadsword was sheathed. Recoiling from the reflexive action and the implications behind it, Fenris ignored the stabs of adrenaline now surging in his bloodstream. The tattoos on his body throbbed in anticipation of another battle, flaring with painful delight.

Any response at all would've be good enough for him. A grunt, a nod… but there was no evidence to suggest that she'd heard him at all, that she could hear him. She only kneeled, only hunched, only whispered to a thing that wasn't there. Meanwhile, her mother's corpse grew cold. No. He would not allow it.

The others' concern wasn't important to him as he propelled forward. Not one shred of their anxiety could match the terror sapping the warmth from his body. It was the easiest thing in the world to ignore their expressions of fear. He only felt the wind on his face, the cold stone of the floor under his feet, anguish at what Hawke was about to do in this moment.

Hawke's elbow was in his hand before he realized he was even next to her. He felt slammed back into his body the moment her eyes snapped open, even if they were to glare at him like he was the most horrible thing in the world. He didn't give her a chance to voice a protest before he was speaking in her ear.

"Control yourself," he murmured so only she could hear him. It served no purpose for the others to know what she was attempting. Even he was surprised at the rage in his voice. Was he really so mad at her?

Yes. Yes he was. Yes he fucking was.

"Or what?" she demanded. She didn't see how his jaw clamped down, only tilting her face an inch in his direction. The angry set of her mouth somehow made him more irate. She would dare to take herself away from him forever? The palm clutching onto her elbow spasmed in defiance.

Fenris inclined his face to hers so closely that his mouth brushed by the shell of her ear.

"Control yourself," he hissed into it. "Or I'll make you."

He took the opportunity to extricate himself when she shuddered. What he didn't ignore was Leandra, dignified even in death. Even in the face of the stupid choices her stupid daughter made. A lance of pain struck deep in his chest. If Hawke wouldn't live for him, shouldn't she carry on for her mother?

Gently, reverently, Fenris slid his hands underneath Hawke's, cradling the patchwork woman. In his peripheral vision he saw the whites of Hawke's eyes as they widened, but she allowed him to take her mother into his arms. An act of trust that softened his heartbreak.

"Varric," he called out. He didn't have to state his request. Varric was there a moment later, draping a thin blanket snatched from one of Quentin's high-backed chairs over the body. When he rose from the ground, his eyes flit to Hawke. She wasn't crying.

Actually, she didn't look sad at all. Or broken, or upset. She looked indignant, and her grey eyes sparkled with something — it took him too long to realize that it was mana, igniting the spaces around her pupils while she raised a hand. The air sizzled with magic.

A long, silvery whip coiled inside her fist. Fenris refused to flinch when Hawke lashed out, slashing fire across the bookcases behind them. The other companions ducked. Countless textbooks on death and necromancy exploded inside the monstrous library.

Charred ink permeated the air; flames licked up and down where she'd scarred the room. Heat seared at his spine but he didn't turn to look. Instead, he observed her scowl. The crow's feet at each eye was narrowed with ire. She was angry with him, would be angry with him for a while, he thought.

Despite this, the secrets of necromancy were gone and their demonic influence along with it. Hawke had wanted him to see this, to show him that she would stay.

It was everything. Fenris felt dizzy with relief. He would not show what that meant to him, but as they departed, he made sure not to jostle Leandra. He held her close and they ascended their way back to Hightown, to Kirkwall and the sun and a future where he and Hawke could exist in the same world. Even if they hated each other sometimes.

He knew Leandra was at peace now, because her daughter was safe from what she almost did. Fury still rolled off Hawke in literal, palpable waves, but she walked beside Fenris, never straying too far. He would visit her in the night, when she felt less like turning him into an abomination. When he didn't feel like shaking her to her damned senses. Rivalmance, indeed.