After Rain
part two

-.-

He is wearing boots.

Hawke points at his feet. "You're wearing boots."

"So it would seem," Fenris says, curling his toes inside the soft black leather. They are warm and do not pinch—Hawke had been quite adamant about that at the tailor's—and he cannot articulate how eager he is to be done with them all the same.

Hawke sees the flat look on his face and grins. "You still don't like them, do you?"

"They are not—intolerable," he hedges—they had been a gift, after all—but Hawke rolls her eyes and leans up to kiss his cheek.

"Don't worry about it," she says, resting her hands on his close-cut black coat and thumbing the collar of the starched white shirt he wears underneath it. "Get through this hour, and I promise I'll never force you into those foot-prisons again."

"That is a costly vow to make, Hawke," Fenris says, lips twitching as Orana helps Hawke into her cloak.

She sticks a red silk glove between her teeth while she tugs the other one into place. "I'll take that risk," she says around the glove, wincing as Orana tucks a loose strand of dark hair back into place with a gold pin. "All right," she adds as she pulls the other glove on and spreads her hands wide, "presentable?"

Fenris crosses his arms, making a show of studied inspection. Hawke had gone with Isabela's serendipitous choice from the shop after all—the gown is simply cut, the full skirt gathered at one hip and a red so deep as to be black. The back is high and intricately embroidered, the neck wide but modest. The darkness of the fabric makes a sharp contrast with the paleness of her throat, its severity offset only by the beaten gold band around her neck, as wide as his palm and glinting with cool beads of light. He knows she wears it in both defiance and disguise; he knows too that not all her scars can be so easily hidden.

He also knows that he cannot remember Hawke ever looking as lovely as she does tonight. "Yes," he says, and when he offers her his hand, she takes it.

The gala is less than a five-minute walk away, far too close to hire a curricle, and Orana waves them both a cheerful farewell from the doorway as they turn into the cool breezes of the evening. Kirkwall is peaceful tonight, the streets quiet save the distant calls of the guard at the changing of the watch. He is not even troubled by the lack of his sword—he and Hawke are weapons enough in themselves, enough to deter the more reckless thieves that haunt Hightown at night even in their trumped-up finery, and when Hawke tucks her gloved hand into the crook of his elbow, Fenris feels the closest he has come to peace in weeks.

"So," Hawke says without preamble, "here's the plan. We go in, we eat, we mingle—well, I mingle, I guess—and then as soon as it's polite I become overwhelmed with fatigue. Then you glare at anyone who protests, I make my goodbyes, and we get out of there like the Black Divine himself is after us."

"Succinct. And effective."

"No objections?"

"The sooner I am free of these boots, the better." Hawke laughs, her hand tightening on his arm, and Fenris permits himself a smile. Regardless of her machinations, he has no illusions that this evening will be anything but a torment. "Do you know the family well?"

"The de Faurés? Not really. Mother knew Girard before she ran away with my father, and we had dinner with them a few times before—well, before." Her voice catches only a moment before she presses on determinedly. "Anyway, Girard is nice enough if a bit oblivious. His wife is friendly but an incorrigible gossip—she said the worst things about Mother when we first moved into the estate but of course didn't believe a word of it, so sorry to hear about Malcolm. There's a daughter, too, named—oh, something. I can't remember. Redeemable, but squashed under her mother's thumb like a grape."

Fenris snorts. "How vivid."

"They're vivid people, I guess." She hesitates a moment, then says, "Fenris…"

"I know, Hawke." He does, too. Fenris's earliest memories are of blue-blooded magisters and all their attendant prejudices; he is more than familiar with the biting, backhanded compliments bestowed by those both in power and lusting after it. It had been bad enough as a slave in Minrathous—being a favored slave had been immeasurably worse. He had once been praised for his service at fetes far grander than this; he has stood with equanimity before the Archon himself. The thought of these mincing, prancing nobles looking down their noses at him in comparison, even as rich as they are, is laughable. He is free; he is with Hawke; Hawke loves him.

That is so much more than enough.

They make the last turn into the eastern square that houses a number of Kirkwall's elite. There are several expensive-looking lanterns strung around the courtyard of the de Fauré estate in a welcome as restrained as it is opulent, and beside him Hawke gives a quiet, despairing sigh. "I shall weather the storm," she mutters, one hand coming up to touch the gold pins in her hair nervously. "I shall endure. Damn it."

"Are you ready?"

"No. Let's go."

"Onward, Champion," Fenris says, and for an instant, in the pale and shining light of the de Faurés' lanterns, the thick gold collar around Hawke's neck flickers like fire.

-.-

The room erupts when they enter, the great hall filling to the rafters with warm and half-sincere greetings for the Champion, returned at long last to their glittering society like a particularly exotic pet. Fenris keeps close to her side out of both habit and conscious intent—he has been too long a mage's bodyguard to quash his instinctive wariness of large crowds, but more than that is the simple truth that even if she does not need it here, in this perfumed and silken gallery, he wants to protect her.

He thinks, somehow, he has earned that choice.

Eventually, the hosts break through the throng of bejeweled well-wishers. He sees Girard first, a genial, absentminded-looking man with silver hair and a beard; the wife comes next, familiar and somehow unwelcome, and it is not until her pale, blonde daughter in purple satin approaches at her elbow that Fenris places her at last as the woman from the Hightown market with the fur stole and cutting tongue.

"Oh," says the girl, startled, and covers her mouth when Girard glances at her.

"Welcome, Champion," says the mother, her eyes crinkling with humor as she clasps both Hawke's hands in hers. "I am so pleased you could come, dear girl. Girard and I have so been looking forward to seeing you again—we missed you, you know, when you went away like that without a word of warning—but anyway, here you are! Do make yourself comfortable, child—you remember my daughter, Jule?"

"Of course," Hawke says warmly, extending her hand to Jule, who takes it with furiously flushing cheeks. "How've you been?"

Her eyes dart to Fenris before she answers. "I've been—well. Thank you."

"I'm glad. And Girard, Léonie—this is Fenris," Hawke adds, placing one hand on Fenris's arm just above the band of scarlet ribbon. "I don't believe you've met."

Her mother's gaze flicks sharply to her husband, but to his credit Girard seems perfectly at ease with a foreign elf in his home. "Welcome, welcome," he says. "Any friend of Leandra's girl is a friend of mine."

"How do you do," says Jule, and her blush deepens. Fenris inclines his head without a smile, neither acknowledging nor disavowing their brief meeting, and her eyes drop to the floor.

Girard doesn't seem to notice his daughter's discomfort as he waves vaguely at the lavish hall behind him. "Well, come in, see the place in all its finery. There's food around here somewhere, and brandy—or wine, if that's more your taste? There were trays all over the place just a moment ago. Just wave someone down if you get peckish—bloody hired help, never around when you want them."

"Thank you," Fenris says gravely, and after a few more moments of empty chitchat, he and Hawke both move to the next circle of eager admirers. It doesn't take long before he loses patience with the de Faurés' honored and idiotic guests; the third time a soft-headed noble asks about Hawke's conquests among Tevinter's magisters, unsubtle in both his insinuations and implicit questions, Fenris gives up altogether and abandons the burden of conversation to Hawke. The long train of gentry becomes little more than a whirl of bright silks and satins, studded here and there with gold and diamonds and glass-caught light; servants with silver trays pass by in the dark grey livery of de Fauré, shadows to their glimmering counterparts and just as ignored. Even the decorations are expensive, hand-painted screens and candelabra scattered all over the room with polished mirrors set behind them to reflect the light, filling the room to the ceiling with a warm golden glow that both softens the hard-edged smiles and deepens them.

His name catches his ear over the music of the string quintet half-hidden in one corner, and, and Fenris turns back to Hawke's current conversation just in time to hear one of the women begin cooing over a painfully romanticized account of their escape from Minrathous. Her companion, a tall, dark man with black hair and a silver doublet, bends closer to Hawke than strictly proper. "Truly, your suffering has been unimaginable," he says, his voice deep and his eyes almost uncomfortably earnest. "No jewel like you should have been profaned by such a foreigner."

Hawke laughs. "Profaned is such a strong word. It really was closer to 'ordered around for a while and then he died.' You make it sound so—I don't know. Sordid."

One of the women sighs in unhidden longing, the feathers in her hair bobbing with the movement. "How awful," she says with relish. "Carried away on a magister's ship in chains, forced to serve in his household until you can make your daring escape—it's like a novel!"

Fenris makes a private note to curtail Varric's literary production until further notice. "Really," Hawke says, raising her hands in placation, "you're making it sound much more exciting than it really was."

"Did you wear servant's clothing?" one girl asks, her eyes wide, and then another asks, "Where did you sleep?" and Fenris feels the sudden urge to throttle the lot of them.

Hawke purses her lips, clearly annoyed, but nods to the first question and answers the second, "In a small room with a barred window. Danarius was very accommodating, I suppose, in a spartan, vicious sort of way."

The dark man moves, then, catching one of Hawke's hands in his own and pressing his lips to her gloved knuckles. "If I had known, nothing could have kept me from your rescue," he says, low and passionate, and Fenris barely represses a snort.

Hawke tugs her fingers free with a smile and lets them drop to Fenris's wrist between them, hidden by the folds of dark red organza. "That's very generous, Ser Jorin," she says, "but I'm afraid you would have found Minrathous a bit—barbaric for your tastes."

"I am not frightened by the uncivilized," he says, straightening, and his eyes slide to Fenris in a manner that can be nothing less than an open challenge.

One of the women gasps, lifting a green-gloved hand to cover her mouth; another man in navy silk shifts uncomfortably at the dark man's side. For a long, considering moment, Fenris does nothing. He ought to be offended, he thinks, ought to wish nothing more than to strike the insolent smile from his handsome face—but instead he feels nothing but the sudden and ridiculous urge to laugh. This pompous little man-child, as terrifying as a teakettle in his silver doublet, clutching his crystal wineglass with soft white fingers—rescue Hawke? He has a sudden, brilliant image of the boy galloping up to the front doors of Danarius's estate, coiffed hair impeccable as he brandishes a flimsy, button-tipped rapier and shouts for the magister to come out and duel. Fenris blinks, barely suppressing his sudden smile—and then in his head, Danarius respectfully waits for the boy to finish his speech before incinerating that silver doublet and the smile turns into a full-blown laugh that Fenris almost, almost disguises as a cough.

"Excuse me," he says politely, coughing into his closed fist again as if to salvage the illusion. Beside him, Hawke stares studiously at the ceiling, deliberately ignoring Jorin's incensed, embarrassed glare as if she has suddenly been struck deaf. His friend in the navy silk looks first at him and then at Jorin, and when another laugh lodges in his throat Fenris knows the situation is hopeless. "Excuse me," he says again, dipping a half-bow at the company in general, and then he turns and heads for the elaborate sideboard on the far side of the room as quickly as possible. Behind him he hears a whispered, "I think he was laughing at you, Jorin," and a more viciously hissed "Shut up!" and by the time he reaches the opposite wall he is grinning widely enough to elicit more than one side-eyed glance.

The sideboard, set against the marble staircase up to the second level overlooking the main floor, is laid out with a number of delicacies on polished, tiered silver platters—Fenris sees a generous selection of chocolates from the sweets shop on a dish frothing with white lace—but he forgoes them for the moment, choosing instead to liberate a wineglass from a passing servant's tray. The vintage is excellent, another mark in Girard de Fauré's favor, and Fenris leans back against the banister to watch the gaggle of clucking nobility attempt to soothe the lord Jorin's ruffled feathers. Hawke catches his gaze across the room and rolls her eyes; Fenris smirks and lifts his glass to her in a silent toast, and she cannot quite hide her answering smile as she turns to answer another question from the woman at her elbow.

The room blurs, suddenly, in a swirl of colored silks and cut-glass decanters, and for a moment—the world is lost in the memory of another luxurious hall, full of tittering, hard-eyed women draped in jewels and men in lustrous robes, and Hawke beside him as he holds a carved decanter full of dark wine, frightened and pale and dressed in white—

"Two glasses, please," comes a distracted voice beside him. Fenris pays it no mind at first; it is not until white-gloved fingers snap a summons directly in his line of sight that he realizes the order was meant for him. "Two glasses, elf," the voice says again, and Fenris slowly turns his head to meet the impatient face of a young, redheaded nobleman in a gold suit.

He doesn't know if the boy is a fool or simply preoccupied, but either way he fails to read the inherent warning in Fenris's eyes. "Champagne, two glasses," he repeats, glancing over his shoulder. "Shit—she's walking away. Damn, man, the drinks!"

Fenris stares at him a moment, then very deliberately raises his wineglass to his lips—

—only to have it snatched away at the last moment by the red-headed young man, whose impatience has apparently bled into the irate. "And drinking on the job! I don't know where in flames Girard hired you from, but if I have my way I'm going to see that you'll never find employment in this city again."

The wine slops a bit over the lip of the cut-crystal glass, and Fenris wonders if Hawke would consider it rude to kill another man's guest. Probably, he thinks, sighing, but—perhaps breaking a few fingers would only be a bit of a faux-pas, smoothed over with an apology and a basket of fresh fruit. He'd certainly broken more than fingers in Tevinter, once, but parties thrown by avowed blood mages had always tended a bit towards the sadistic anyway, and he doubts somehow that hosts this side of Nevarra would be quite as understanding as the magisters of a bit of errant bloodshed.

"Why are you looking at me like that? I swear, if you don't go fetch—Jule!"

Fenris hadn't even noticed the de Fauré girl's approach, intent as he is on curbing his urge to break this boy's teeth. "Martin, what are you doing?" she asks breathlessly, arriving in a cloud of purple satin and palpable anxiety. "I'm so sorry, ser," she adds to a still-silent Fenris with a curtsey, "was he bothering you?"

"Jule, what on earth—why are you—"

"Martin, serah," she says to Fenris, her voice as stiff as iron, "is the son of my mother's friend, Iris Fournier. Martin, please allow me to present the companion of the Champion of Kirkwall, Fenris."

"Good evening," Fenris says, and watches in fascination as the blood drains from the boy's face.

"I—ah. That is—please do forgive me, ser, I didn't—ah, realize." He looks left, then down, then realizes he is still holding Fenris's wineglass. "This is, um, yours, I suppose—" he stammers, proffering the gleaming crystal in a suddenly-shaking hand; Fenris plucks it delicately from his fingers and wipes the spilled wine from the rim with his thumb.

"Thank you."

"You're welcome, ser," the boy says, voice trembling, and then without another word, he spins on his heel and flees.

Jule watches him go, then looks up at Fenris with unhidden nervousness and says, "Do forgive him, please. Martin's a bit of an idiot, but he really doesn't mean any harm." Fenris says nothing, and after an awkward glance at her feet she continues. "And—as long as I'm apologizing for people, please let me do so for my mother, too, and Lady Iris. I know you heard them—us—that day, and—"

"They do not mean any harm," Fenris finishes for her, and she nods miserably. Across the room, Hawke is deep in conversation with two women in blue, though a few of her suitors still hover close at her elbow, throwing dark looks in Fenris's direction every time Hawke turns away. "Keep your apologies," he says at last without looking at the blonde girl beside him. "You did not offend me."

She lets out a short, relieved sigh, and leans against the wall beside him. "All right."

She offers neither further excuses nor conversation for several minutes, and Fenris contents himself with the silence and his wine as Hawke slowly winds her way towards him through the guests, the dark-haired Jorin trailing after her like a dog on a leash. It is not that Hawke encourages him—Fenris can see even from here how indifferently she responds to his compliments—but more that he has apparently decided to have her attention whether she wills it or not, and Fenris suspects that nothing short of an outright rejection will deter him from his stubborn course. He briefly entertains the thought of intervening but dismisses it almost as quickly—Hawke is more than capable of handling a besotted fop on her own, and in the end her methods would probably be less damaging to her reputation than his.

Then, without preamble, Jule says, "I think it must have been horrible."

His glass pauses halfway to his mouth. "What?"

She is blushing again, he notices, but her jaw is determined. "Minrathous. The magister. Everyone's making it out to be this wonderful story, but I don't think it was like that at all. Even Mother says it couldn't have possibly been as bad as the rumors make it out to be, but I think—that she's wrong."

Fenris is silent. Hawke is nearer now, close enough that he can hear the tinge of exasperation underlying her voice. A dark-headed girl beside her asks her about Danarius's magnificent manor, and Fenris can almost see Hawke counting to ten in her head before answering the girl with a smile. The candlelight catches in her black hair like sparks, makes her gown flare scarlet when she breathes—and when she speaks, the wide gold links of her collar blaze bright enough to burn.

"No," Fenris says at last. "It was worse."

"Oh," Jule says softly, and then she says nothing.

With one more swallow, Fenris finishes his wine and replaces the empty glass on the sideboard. Hawke glances at him and gives a short, fervent nod, as eager to be away as he; Fenris straightens and pushes away from the wall, but before he can take even one step, Jorin and his silver doublet have apparently had enough of Hawke's persistent disinterest, and as she passes he clasps her by the wrist hard enough to stop her in her tracks.

"Let go, please," Fenris hears her say, a thin thread of steel creeping into her tone, but Jorin only pulls her closer to his chest.

"Just tell me," he says, his voice low and persuasive and far too warm to be appropriate. "You've been making a joke of it all night, saying you killed that magister, but I know you wouldn't have murdered a man in cold blood. It's not decent, darling, and certainly not for a woman like you—just tell me how he died, won't you? And then we can drop this charade."

Hawke stares openmouthed at Jorin for a second that stretches like out like drawn wire, and then her gaze flicks to an equally-astonished Fenris over his shoulder and something sharp snaps into place. She drops her eyes and bites her lip in a sudden shyness that surprises them both, and when Jorin leans closer she turns her head away with demure timidity. "All right," Fenris hears her say, and he thinks he is the only person in the room who realizes how close Jorin is to disaster. "I'll tell you the truth, but—" she looks up, catching the man's collar in both hands in open desperation, "you have to promise not to think less of me."

"All right, darling—"

"Promise!"

"I promise!"

She tugs at his shoulder, bringing his ear down to her level, and Fenris watches as the look on his face changes from deep satisfaction to blank surprise as she speaks. Her whispers continue too quietly for Fenris to hear, but suddenly his face changes again to shock and a wild-eyed horror that is almost comical in its severity, and before Hawke can even finish Jorin shoves her away with a curse.

"Get away from me," he gasps, loud enough that several guests turn to stare. Somewhere in the background, the music limps into silence. "Get back—don't touch me, bitch—"

There's a sharp inhale from the watching nobles and Jule lets out a wordless, aghast noise of protest beside him, but Fenris only crosses his arms and waits. Hawke meets Jorin's gaze with an opaque, level look of her own, and it is the closest Fenris has seen to her real self since this blasted party began. "Goodness, Ser Jorin," she murmurs, "are you quite all right?"

"You—you—"

"Me, me," she echoes, not quite mocking but with no trace of her earlier gentleness. "So much for your promises."

"If that—if you—if that's the truth, then you're a—you're a monster."

Hawke smiles, a hard, edged thing, and one hand comes up to touch the base of her throat. "The truth is not always decent, darling," she says and Jorin blanches, jerking away from her hand in disgust. She watches him for a moment, quiet and composed as he stumbles back into the stunned crowd, and then Hawke turns to Fenris and for an instant the light streaks over her face like a flame, turning her into something else, something otherworldly and glorious and dangerous like a blade. Fenris finds himself stepping towards her before he is aware he is moving, the throng opening up before him like the silent, worn pages of a prayer-book; when he reaches her she lifts her head so that the gold pins turn to flecks of fire in her hair, and she says, softly, "I'm done, Fenris."

"I know," he says, and in this moment he would have given the lyrium from his skin if it would have eased the strain in her face.

"Wait, I'll—" they both turn at the voice to see Jule hurrying towards them through the hushed crowd, her cheeks flushed but her eyes calm and steady. "If you really must go, please allow me to see you out."

"Of course," says Hawke, dipping into a measure of her half-abandoned graciousness. "Please pardon our interruption."

Jule shakes her head and links her purple-sleeved arm with Hawke's. "Not at all," she says, looking older than her years, and as the three of them make their way to the foyer the music picks up again and the crowd behind them resumes its noise, filling in the gaps in their wake like a river thawing in the spring. "I am so sorry," Jule adds in an undertone. "I didn't realize he was going to be so persistent or so—blatant. Mother thought it was sweet and she didn't believe me when I said you were—"

She clamps her lips shut, blushing even brighter, and Hawke laughs. "Taken?"

Fenris sighs. He is so tired of these nobles, tired of the glistening jewels, tired of the insincere smiles and the expensive music and his boots cut too well to pinch. He wants to go home, with Hawke, and close out the world's insistent clamor until they both feel whole enough again to withstand it, and when the wooden-faced footman opens the front door to let in the cool, curling breeze of the evening it feels like the first real breath he has taken in over an hour.

A servant helps Hawke into her cloak and she turns and smiles at Jule. "Thank you for a…well, a memorable evening."

"My pleasure," she says, equally as wry; then her smile turns to something more nervous and she adds, "Please, if you like—may I visit you sometime? If it's not too much trouble."

"I would be honored," Hawke says gently, and then at last, at last they turn away, leaving behind the chattering gossip and the warm golden glow of the de Fauré manor as they vanish into the still and soundless night.

-.-

It begins to rain halfway back to Hawke's estate, a slow and steady drizzle that seeps down his neck and beads like glass on Hawke's cloak. They neither hurry nor slow for shelter, walking instead at the same easy pace; Hawke lifts her hood over her hair in the only concession either of them makes to the weather, and by the time they reach her front door Fenris's boots are soaked through, water pooling between his toes like the final, tired joke of the evening.

Orana and Bodahn are not there to greet them, Hawke having given them the rest of the evening off, and Hawke tugs her sodden cloak off without ceremony, tossing it over a wicker bench in the foyer as Fenris finally toes off his thrice-cursed boots. They leave them there in a damp pile along with her embroidered slippers and Fenris's black coat, and the quiet dripping of rainwater on stone is the only sound in the house as they make their way up the stairs. When she tucks her hand into the crook of his elbow, he can feel her fingers trembling.

The sound of her bedroom door clicking shut behind them is like a thunderclap in the silence. Hawke pulls away from him to scrub both hands over her face. "Well," she says to no one in particular, "that was fun. I can't remember the last time I burned so many bridges."

Fenris kneels to stoke the banked fire into life again, then sits back on his heels. "It could have gone more poorly."

"Oh?" She yanks off her gloves and flings them at the bed. "Do tell."

He says the first thing that comes to mind. "Danarius could have attended." Hawke stares at him over one shoulder in disbelief and he shrugs, rolling up his white shirtsleeves to his elbows. "Or the roof could have collapsed, or the cook might have discovered a nest of dragonlings in the back kitchens, or—"

"All right, all right!" Hawke says, laughing as if she is surprised to be, and then she bends at the waist and cups his face in both hands. "You are wonderful," she murmurs, dropping a swift kiss on his lips. "Thank you for going with me."

She starts to pull away but Fenris stops her, sliding one hand into the knot of hair at her neck to tug her back down to his mouth. He has been without her too long, watched her pull her porcelain mask over her suffering and said nothing, seen her endure the indulgent flirting of pampered, perfumed courtiers all evening and he knows he is a selfish man but right now, here, in her room, he wants nothing more than her skin under his hands and her mouth on his own. Hawke sighs into his mouth and relaxes against him, her hands shifting to rest on his shoulders, and when he pushes to his feet she moves with him, angling her head into his hand until they both have to break away to breathe.

Hawke rests her forehead on his, her eyes still closed, and strokes one thumb up the side of his neck. "Fenris…"

"Hmm?"

"I'm glad there weren't any dragonlings at the party."

He lets out a breath of a laugh and she grins before she pushes back and opens her eyes. "You are easily pleased, Hawke."

"Low standards mean you're never disappointed," she retorts, and this time he lets her go as she steps away towards the full-length mirror between the crackling fire and her desk. Fenris follows her over as her hands go to her hair, pulling out one of the long golden pins and dropping it to the desk beside her; the next time she reaches Fenris catches her pale fingers in his tanned ones and as he draws out the next gold pin himself, she drops her hands to tug at her necklace instead. Her black hair pours through his hands like water, snagging on his calluses as it falls free and heavy from Orana's careful knot, and it is not until he has pulled the last pin free that he realizes Hawke has fallen still. Her eyes are half-lidded in contentment as she watches his face in the mirror; when he draws his fingers through her hair from root to tip in a long motion she shudders, and he cannot repress his smile.

"Shut up," she grumbles, resuming her efforts to remove her necklace; he gathers her hair over one bare shoulder helpfully, and in another moment he hears the faint click of the catch releasing and the wide gold band drops away. "Finally," she sighs, rubbing her neck, and Fenris sees for the first time since Isabela's ship the thick and shining scar that encircles her throat.

The sight alone is enough to stop his breath in his chest, but Hawke only places the necklace on the desk in a gleaming gold heap and leans back into Fenris. "Something wrong?" she asks.

"No," he says after a moment; she kisses the underside of his jaw where rainwater has dripped from his still-damp hair, one hand reaching for his hip behind her, and Fenris abandons his hesitation to reach for the tiny buttons that stroke down the back of her gown. It doesn't take long between his eager fingers and the gentle curve of her spine, and soon the fastenings are free to the waist to leave two dozen delicate fabric loops laddering up the pale skin of her back. Fenris slips a hand under the fabric at her neck, his heart jumping in his chest, but as he begins to slide the dress away from her shoulders Hawke shivers in a tense, anxious motion that stops him cold.

"Wait," she says, "I—wait."

"Did I hurt you?"

She shakes her head without meeting his eyes in the mirror. "No, no—it's not that, it's…never mind. I'm being stupid."

Fenris straightens, unsure of how he has misstepped but certain it is somehow his fault. "Should I go?" he asks, his voice low and toneless, and begins to pull away.

"No!" Hawke reaches for him over her shoulder, startled, but when she grabs his wrist his thumb slides over the scar on her neck and she flinches, hard, and drops her eyes.

Fenris stills in place. A idea is rising in him like a winter tide, slow and icy and inevitable, and when Hawke still does not lift her head he raises his hand and strokes, very deliberately, along the scarred skin over her throat.

"Shit," Hawke says, and starts to cry.

"Hawke," Fenris starts, then trails off into helpless silence. He has not seen her tears since Minrathous, since the first night she remembered both him and herself; he has become so accustomed to her determined strength that he has forgotten it is little more than a close-fitting mask. She is not truly sobbing, not even crying very hard, but the tears are thick enough to close her throat and stop her voice, and one hand flutters helplessly in the air as if in silent explanation.

"Do they hurt?" he asks, and passes his thumb over the back of her neck again.

She shakes her head and opens her mouth, but she has to swallows twice before she can speak. ""They're so…they're so ugly." She laughs, a thick, tortured sound, and Fenris feels his gut clench. "I didn't think I'd care, honestly, Fenris. Just scars, right? We all have them. And then I saw them the first day we were back when Isabela was here and she asked about them and—and all I could think of was the way his face looked when he smiled at me. Maker, they were hideous. I was—" Hawke cuts herself off, blinking up at the ceiling. "I can't even look at them."

Fenris cannot speak. Hawke is scarred and she is weeping and he has never, never imagined how deeply she has hidden this pain, never even considered that she could have tamped down her sorrow so far behind her mask that even he could not see it. He has been so caught up in his own unhappiness that he has left her to suffer on her own, to grieve on her own as if he is the only one who carries the impotent shame of Minrathous close to his heart. His fingers dig into her shoulder in a spasm of bitter frustration—and then the words leap from his tongue like burning coals and he says, hoarsely, "Then look at me."

Her eyes go to his in the mirror, red and confused, and before she can look away, before he can lose his nerve, he drops his mouth to the base of her neck and presses his lips to her throat.

Hawke jerks, surprised but not afraid, and her eyes lock to his in the mirror. Fenris keeps his mouth there, feeling her pulse thud rapid and irregular under her skin, and when her head tips back, just slightly, to give him better access, he takes it for the acquiescence it is and moves further back along the scar towards her spine. It forms a perfect ring around her neck, smooth and shiny and as wide as a copper; Fenris follows it with first his mouth and then his fingers, burning a trail of wet heat warm enough for her to feel even through the deadened skin. He opens his mouth and presses his tongue against her backbone and Hawke gasps, throwing her head back abruptly enough to knock her ear against his temple.

He laughs and she does too, though hers is breathier and choked with tears, and Fenris moves to the other side of her throat. He holds her eyes as long as he can as he draws his lips towards the hollow of her neck, but even when their reflection becomes little more than a white and black blur in the corner of his vision he can still feel the forge-hot burn of her unblinking gaze, marking his skin like a brand as her hand digs harder into his hip. His fingers move smoothly over her jaw and under her ear to pull her hair aside, and then he leans back just enough to slide her banded sleeves down over her shoulders, opening the silk panels of her dress like petals to reveal the knotted, smeared stripes that are all that are left of her once-unmarred back.

The stripes he gave to her.

The muscles slide under her skin as she shifts her weight, uneasy and embarrassed by his intense scrutiny, but Fenris slips an arm around her waist to hold her still and she straightens, squaring her shoulders as if bracing for his revulsion—as if he could possibly be more sickened with her skin than the method of their making. The scars spread from shoulder to hip in broad, uneven lines like the unfocused streak of a brush, thickening and twisting the skin where they cross over each other, where he had split her back to bleeding with Danarius's slender leather whip.

There is nothing he can say to this, no apology he can make that she has not already heard and accepted, so instead he simply drops his head and presses an openmouthed kiss to her back.

"Fenris," she says, her voice thin and thready and trembling, and when he looks up over her shoulder she is blushing. "I can't—I can't see you."

He smiles against her skin and twists them both until she can meet his eyes again in the mirror. His lips pass over the longest weal that lies across her shoulders and she shudders, and then he bends further to the next scar over her shoulder blade and does the same. He loses track of how long she stands there, his mouth on her skin and his fingers splayed across her spine, her breath hitching gently as his teeth brush over a knot at the base of her neck, as his fingers stroke along the lines of a long and curving scar. When it becomes too awkward to bend behind her he drops to his knees without hesitation and slides his palms to the narrow dip of her waist; she shudders again and he sees gooseflesh spread across her back, her shoulders bowing forward as she watches his reflection. One arm is folded up over her chest to hold the front of her dress in place; the other hangs loose in the folds of her wine-dark skirt, forgotten as his head moves lower, as his hair leaves a damp trail over the muscles that shift with her breath.

The last scar follows the line of her back to curl around one hip like a fisher's hook; Fenris dusts a series of short, light kisses across it, dragging out this last caress as long as he can, and when he is finished he wraps both arms around her waist and rests his forehead against her back.

"I would give," he murmurs, "anything to undo this, Hawke."

"Turns out I wouldn't," she says, her eyes steady above her tearstained cheeks, and she smiles as she turns to slide her free hand into his hair. "Because it let me love you."

His heart leaps wildly as it always does, his throat closing in sudden emotion, and he hides a helpless smile of his own in her back. As if he could have done anything else.

"Fenris," says Hawke then, and when he looks up her cheeks are tingeing pink. "There's, um. One more. If you—if you want."

"One more?"

"Scar," she says, and presses her hand over her heart.

Of course there is one more, of course—the first wound, the first scar, the first-struck blow like an iron hammer that cracked him clean in two with despair. Fenris pushes himself to his feet and circles Hawke without lifting his hand, letting it slip over the rippling skin of her back and neck before coming to rest at the embroidered edge of her dress. The rain drums quietly on her windows in a steady, measured rhythm broken only by the snapping pops of the fire, and when Fenris bends and kisses her the low noise she makes is almost lost in their tuneless song.

He pulls back just long enough to see her uneven smile, and then his thumb slides under the fabric covering her chest to peel it away like a shell, like dry blood, like the old and age-worn porcelain of a mask grown far too small to wear another moment. The scar glimmers in the firelight, slender and silver against the warmer glow of her skin; Fenris passes his thumb once over the imperceptible ridge as if he might press it into nothingness, and then he lowers his head and closes his lips over the disfigured skin.

Hawke's gasp is sharp and sudden and loud in the quiet room. One hand comes up to tangle hard in his hair and Fenris smiles, darting out his tongue until her scar is damp and gleaming in the flickering light, and then Hawke curls her fingers under his jaw and lifts his mouth to hers.

She is hot and trembling and her eyes blaze as she kisses him, and when Fenris wraps his arms around her back the air changes in an instant to something electric, something wilder and untempered by fear or grief. "You," Hawke says into his mouth with a breathless laugh, and then again, "you," and then words fail her and she only shakes her head as if that might convey the wordless impossibility of her emotion. Her hands drop to his waist, tugging at the tails of the white starched shirt he has almost forgotten he is wearing; his own fingers go to her shoulders to push away the sleeves still lingering there, and then in a whirl of white cloth and firelight his shirt is gone and her hands are on his back with the desperation of someone drowning; he cannot stand the deprivation of her touch a moment longer, so he hooks two fingers into the silk of her gown and pulls and at last her dress falls away in a sigh like a stream to pool, red and dark and shining, at her feet.

The flames coil up her naked skin like a lover, burnishing the curves of her body into worked bronze, catching like silvering streams on the edges of her scars and darkening her hair into a spill of ink over her shoulder. Fenris cannot speak. His mind is as blank as a rushing wind, silent and overwhelming, and when Hawke pulls him towards her bed he moves with the hushed reverence of a penitent. She turns him as they reach it and he sits down hard on the edge of the mattress; Hawke bends to kiss him, her fingers dancing down his stomach to the laces of his rain-dampened trousers, and in another moment they have joined the rest of their clothing by the fire and he is as bare as she is.

"You've gotten quiet," Hawke murmurs into his mouth, one hand sliding into the hair at the nape of his neck.

Fenris's mouth quirks into a wry smile as he strokes his fingers up her arms, gently, as if a touch too hard might shatter her into a thousand pieces. He knows her fragility is real, tender and hurting under the glass-thin veneer she has so carefully placed over it; he knows too that under even that there is a root of relentless strength as indomitable as a sky-calling bird in the winging rush of flight, a fierce and oak-hearted courage that no magister in this world could ever hope to tame. "You are beautiful," he says, and loves her.

Hawke smiles like a flash of sunlight, and when Fenris moves back on the bed she follows, pressing his shoulders down into the pillows as she slides one leg over his waist. She kisses him and her hair falls around their faces like a curtain, shutting out the rest of the world and the cruelty in it until there is nothing alive, nothing that matters but the two of them here, together, in the rain-broken silence of Hawke's room. Fenris drags his palms up the rippling ridges of Hawke's back in a long, aching motion, memorizing every knot and pit like a map to guide him home again; Hawke leans further into him until her breasts press against his chest and grins when his breathing falters, then straightens until she is sitting astride his hips with her hands resting on his chest.

"I wasn't the only one," she says, and Fenris lets his fingers fall to her hips.

"The only one?"

"That he tortured."

Fenris closes his eyes to block out the sudden memory of a plush crimson carpet and the blue-white reflection of his tattoos on the ceiling, of his skin alight with phantom pain and overt malice—and then Hawke's weight shifts on his waist and he opens his eyes to see her bending over him to splay her fingers over the knot of lyrium in the center of his chest.

"I heard you screaming," she says quietly, her eyes on her hands as they trace the raised lines of the tattoos over his chest and shoulders. "I didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what I should do, if I should run or stay or try to help you and it went on for so long. And then you came out looking like death itself, and when you collapsed in that cot I thought for sure you'd never wake up again."

"Hawke—" he says, his fingers tightening on her waist, but she shakes her head.

"You slept for a long time," she says, "and I decided that if you ever woke up, I would do whatever I could to take away that pain. Even the memory of the pain," she adds, stroking his cheek, and then Hawke kindles a drop of magic in the lyrium over his heart and Fenris stops breathing.

It feels like fire—it feels like silk, as if he has stepped into the undying flames of Andraste's pyre only to find them smoothed and gentled, warm but unburning as they glide through the lyrium twining over his skin for what feels like an age and longer. He is distantly aware that he is glowing, his tattoos flaring white and pulsing with his swift-thudding heart, that his breath is loud and ragged and hanging in the air between them; he is aware too of Hawke's hands skimming over his chest and his stomach, following the lines of lyrium down to his navel and up again to the slender white bars over his throat, carefully and deliberately stripping him of the last of his coherency.

Hawke's weight shifts again and he realizes his hands are no longer on her waist but clenched into the pillow above his head as if that might grant him a vestige of control; instead it only bares to her new tattoos to trace, new lines to follow with her magic that sears and soothes at once, driving out every last memory of Danarius's touch until all that is left is her own. His back arches of its own accord to stretch closer to her burning fingers and she flattens her palms against his ribs, pushing him back down onto the bed as he gasps desperately for air through the flames flooding in his skin.

His name, his memory—he loses everything in her hands, in the fierce joy of her magic, until at last her teeth close gently around the tip of his ear to still his writhing, until her sparked touch eases and he realizes he is cursing in a long, broken stream of Tevinter obscenities.

"Futuo," he finishes blindly, half-maddened with desire, and then Hawke swallows his voice in an openmouthed kiss that nearly takes the last of his mind with it. Her hands slide into his hair and tangle there to hold him in place beneath her; his own move in haphazard circles over her breasts, her shoulders, her back, telling her with his fingers what his words cannot say as she raises herself to her knees and pauses there, as if taking one last breath before a storm. Fenris digs his heels into the rumpled covers, chest heaving, trying desperately to hold onto what gentleness she has left him, and then Hawke exhales and smiles and sinks slowly between his legs and Fenris cannot bite back his tortured groan.

They hang there a long moment, his stomach clenching with the effort to be still, and then Hawke pushes hard on his chest to lift herself and Fenris groans again. She moves at her own rhythm and her own pace, not teasing but not hurrying—it is not her control over Fenris that she tests, he knows, but her control over herself, resettling in her mind the careful boundaries of pleasure and pain once stripped and blurred by a magister in a marble mansion, and he is more than willing to cede that control to her for as long as she needs it.

Hawke leans forward to rest her elbows on Fenris's chest, easing her weight to her forearms as she kisses him. Her hips still move with that slow and unhinging restraint; he meets her with shallow, helpless movements of his own, knowing he is close and growing closer with every breath, every slide of her hips against his own. His hands go to her arms, feeling the race of her pulse in the pale skin of her wrist, and when her fingers smooth over his cheek with unbearable tenderness it is nearly enough to throw him over the edge. He reins himself back with ragged resolve, determined to hold himself in check until he can give her what she needs, until she can find the strength to draw away the last lingering edges of her fragile mask and bare the woman beneath.

Suddenly her pace quickens, her eyes clenching shut in wild fervor as she relinquishes her control; her hips drive down hard onto his and he grasps them with both hands, pushing himself deeper into her in equal abandon. He says her name and it comes out like a prayer, and as if that were the last impetus she needed, she lets out a tense, savage cry that fills the room like a song and clamps around him, digging her forehead into his neck and clenching her fists in his hair.

The sound of her voice alone is enough for Fenris; he is already so close, and with another hard buck of his hips he is gone himself, his arms tightening around her back to the point of pain, lost in the unbridled rush of sensation that is Hawke.

He doesn't know how long it takes to come back to himself, to push away the warm and cocooning haze to find his legs drawn up behind Hawke, to find Hawke herself slumped over his chest, boneless and pliant as she draws her fingers down his sweating neck and shoulder and up again. Fenris loosens his arms around her, his muscles aching with the sudden release of tension, and spreads one hand over her scarred shoulder in quiet reassurance—for both her and himself.

"The rain's stopping," Hawke murmurs, and Fenris realizes it has indeed slowed, easing into something less drumming under the gentle snap of flames in the hearth. He lies there without moving for several minutes, feeling her chest rise and fall against his as she breathes, and then Hawke nestles her head further under his chin and says, "Will you stay?"

"Yes," he says, and he feels her smile, and when he lets himself drift off at last to sleep, it is with her hand resting on his heart.

-.-

Something is crunching in his ear.

Fenris rolls over, trying to get away from the noise—Hawke's bed is infinitely more comfortable than his fur-laden floor and he could easily sleep for another hour—but it follows him like an irritating tune, persistent and nagging, and even when he drags a pillow over his head it is not enough to drown out the sound of that damnable crunching. Fenris gives up after another moment and returns to his back, pulling the pillow just far enough down his face to glare bleary-eyed at Hawke—

—to find her sitting cross-legged on the bed beside him in her robe, her hand in a white canvas bag full to the brim with honeyed almonds.

"Hi," Hawke says, and pops another almond into her mouth.

"Good morning," Fenris says, and covers his face with the pillow again.

"I assumed these were for me. Or for us. Or is there someone else you're keeping red-ribboned surprises for under my bed?"

"No."

"No, they're not for me, or no, you don't have a tumultuous love affair hidden behind my back?"

He shoves the pillow behind his head again and scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes. "And with whom would I have this—tumultuous affair?"

"Oh, Maker knows. Isabela. Anders. That templar with the sideburns who always makes eyes at you in the Gallows—should I keep going?"

"No," he says shortly. Hawke shrugs and eats another handful of almonds; Fenris hesitates a moment, and then, his ears heating, asks, "Do you like them?"

Hawke smiles, her eyes softening, and leans over to kiss him. "What do you think?"

She tastes like salt and the sweetness of honey, and when she pulls back she grins and pokes an almond between his lips. He rolls his eyes but chews it, unable to muster any true ire, and when Hawke drops another kiss on his nose he cannot stop his smile. She digs her hand back into the bag—and then her face changes abruptly.

"What in the world—"

"Hawke?"

"What is this, Fenris?" she asks, and unfurls her hand to show him a piece of molded, painted chocolate half-wrapped in shining silver foil.

Fenris closes his eyes to block out the sight of the Knight-Commander staring up at them both with an angry chocolate-drop frown. "A gift," he says, "from an…admirer."

"Oh?" Hawke looks down at the chocolate contemplatively. "Perhaps I'm the one with a tumultuous affair."

"I think not," Fenris growls, and Hawke bursts into laughter as he topples her over into the pillows. It doesn't matter, he thinks, if his stolen mansion feels nothing like home; his home is here, with Hawke, regardless of the walls that surround him and the shadows that they cast, and he will not give his callow fears another instant's foothold in either his life or hers.

The morning sunlight falls in fat bars from Hawke's tall windows, spilling like water over the coverlet and the white canvas bag with the crimson ribbon. Dust swirls up in lazy golden circles from the hearth, from the pile of silk organza and black trousers by the mirror, from the scarred and shining footboard; the brilliant, cloudless sky outside is a sunlit testament to the passing of the storm, and at their feet the tiny chocolate Meredith lies forgotten in a gleaming spill of salted, honeyed almonds.

.

.

.

end.