Lots of thanks and love to my reviewers, and to those silent people clicking 'favorite.' I love you all and bequeath you cookies and beer (maybe not together, though).
So after this chapter, I just have the end of the game and possibly a brief epilogue. I'm so sad this story can't go on forever, so I started a new one, "Fearlessness" for a different Hawke and a different romance. Apparently I have some major obsession issues with this couple...
Warnings: smut, a bit of language, death and blood and violence
Hawke spends two weeks avoiding Fenris, still angry that he decided to yell at her and claim her for his own while she was too hungover to muster a coherent argument. He made a deliberate choice to be a bastard, she decides, yelling at her while she was like that. Her other friends laugh at the story, and Aveline and Varric team up to attempt convincing her that his massive priggishness is proof of his devotion to her. Irritated, she leaves the Hanged Man shortly after he arrives, but she can't help admitting that some of their points might have been valid.
At Varric's prying insistence, she drags Fenris off to Sundermount to deal with the mad elves there in search of an assassin. All she can recall are Isabela words about moving on, and so she flirts conspicuously when the handsome Antivan assassin approaches them. He gives her a cocksure grin and she offers him her best grimace of acceptance, more thrilled at the prospect of killing a bunch of Crows than at the idea of trying to be with anyone other than Fenris.
"I shall be leaving," Zevran announces, his smirk fixating on her. "Unless you wish to... get to know each other better."
Before the idea can take shape in her head, Fenris sneers, "That depends... how much do you trust that luck of yours?" His glower falls on her a second later and she avoids those strange stares of his, the ones that combine adoration and viciousness and fury. If only she could hate that possessiveness, instead of feeling the brutal burn of heat and longing it causes.
"I see," the blonde assassin smirks. "In that case, I bid you farewell." Without further ado, he offers a brief bow and darts off at an impressive speed into the mountains.
After a moment, Fenris stalks over to her and grabs her arm in vicious fingers, gripping tight enough to bruise. He drags her close enough to hiss against her mouth, though it is not a kiss, not a tender touch. "You are mine," he snarls, and just as suddenly as he stepped toward her, he shoves her back. Hawke watches him go with a frown, her heart pounding in her chest at his display.
Both of her companions stare at his retreating back and then look back to her with raised brows and smirks. Then Varric winks at her and hauls Merrill away by the elbow, saying something about needing to hear some more of the famous elf-lore to spice up his stories.
It comes as no surprise when she returns to her home to find him waiting for her in the bedroom. She walks all of three steps in before his hand tangles in her hair, armor-clad fingers digging into her scalp. Against every better instinct, her head tips backward. Hawke wants nothing more than to grip the lean muscle cording his hips and beg forgiveness. She wants him to kiss her, and he does, with fierce teeth and tongue. Her head falls further back as his clawed fingertips hold her jawbone in place, forcing her to acknowledge his kiss with vicious lips, her tongue demanding his attention and assertion. But she knows that she will never own him, that he will return whenever fate or circumstance forces him to.
He does not wait to take her upstairs, his cold gauntlets first pressing her to the wall. He grips her smallclothes and tears them down her legs an instant later, his mouth still on hers as he shoves his length into her. It drags a moan and shiver from her, but she refuses to give in to those shudders of pleasure that encompass her. He thrusts until his forehead drops against hers and her name is a hiss against his lips.
"Fenris," she murmurs, and as if it is some sort of cue, he slingshots her against the writing desk without pulling apart. Perhaps movement, or else stress, hardens him again. This time his mouth consumes her throat and shoulders and closes over her breasts as she falls back against the wall and submits to his desires. His hand pushes her shoulder against the wall as the other fingers tear through the skirt of her armor and her pale skin alike, pulling her hips closer. For half a second, her hands open around his hair and then he dips down, bending into his knees and pushing up so that her back snaps into a perfect arch. His lips and tongue consume her breasts and throat as she gasps his name again and again. She shivers over the hardness pressing into her and closes her eyes for a second when he lifts her off the table and carries her up to her room.
Cold fingertips pull her legs closer around his hips and leather armor shucks aside along the course of the staircase. Their mouths mold together and he flings her to her bed, still hard and demanding, pressing into her as she screams for him still more. This demand hurts, but his mouth remains ruthless over hers, leaving only to tear her breasts and jugular veins raw with red streaks of teeth. His tongue circles her nipple and he forces her hips into an arch.
She rips through his hair with desperate hands and his mouth clings to her as he presses again and again into her. No matter how many times they shudders and gasp each other's names, he hardens and pushes back inside. Her back slams against the headboard and his thumb trails down as his index finger drags the moisture around to pinch her tender bud. His tongue trails across a nipple as her thigh twists him to his back. Her hips arch against his as he closes his mouth around the tip of her breast, his tongue a deliberate reminder of all he can do to her.
They consume each other, leaving bruises and blood, tangling throughout the night with vicious determination. They don't sleep. In the morning, when their throats ache from screaming and their bodies are too spent to do more than lie against each other, still intimately joined, a small tap on the door brings them back to the world once more.
"Mistress Hawke?" calls Orana's delicate voice, "Will, um, will messere Fenris be staying for breakfast?"
"No," Fenris barks in answer. He has an arm around her shoulders, keeping her pressed over the left side of his chest. His rough palm shoves pieces of her hair away from her cheek and his mouth finds hers in spite of the awkward angle. "I have business to attend to," he murmurs against her mouth. A moment later he pulls away from her, swinging his legs over the bed and searching for his clothing. She watches him with dull eyes for a moment, pulling the sheets around herself as he hops through the window. His fleeing feet patter across the rooftop.
Hawke manages to wait a month before she goes to his house, ostensibly to ask his help hunting down some apostates. Of course she intends to set them free, but that's beside the point. If worse comes to worse, he'll be very useful in whatever battle ensues. If nothing else, she'll get to take out some of her confusion and anger on him in the most aggressive passive-aggressive manner she can come up with.
She walks in on silent feet and hears voices coming up the stairs. Hawke hesitates in the doorway as she sees Fenris arguing with Aveline about a trap. "Can't you be sure?" he demands, slamming a hand against the desk.
"I've had my men check her out. It doesn't look like anything," Aveline answers in a curt tone. "If you'll excuse me, it looks like someone else is here to endure your charms." She shoots Hawke a glance and shoulders out in her plate metal, shaking her head and pressing a hand to her temple as if she feels a headache coming on.
"What was that about?" Hawke asks, leaning against the doorway to avoid stepping inside.
Fenris stares at her and she sees that desperation in his gaze that she's grown to love and fear. "My sister. I followed up on what Hadriana said and I found her..." he paces, restless, and halts to give her an abrupt, pleading look. "I paid for her passage here and... and she's at the Hanged Man. She'll be there all this week and... I have to know if..." he trails off, looking away before she can absorb the brief, frightened flash of hope in his eyes.
"Have you contacted Varric?" she asks immediately. The dwarf practically owns the place at this point, with the patronage his stories and her presence bring to the dingy Lowtown tavern. He knows almost every shady patron and regular, points Hawke to any contact she needs with a subtle shift of his chin, and commands the attention of any staff or drunk there with a single smirk. If anything is happening there, Varric will know every detail.
"Of course I have," he shouts, lunging around the table and halting just in front of her, his hands lifting as if to grab her and closing helplessly. He lowers his eyes. "And he is negotiating trade deals in Amaranthine."
"Then we'll get Merrill and Anders to meet us over there," she decides with a nod. She wants to fold her arms but he's too close, so she settles on flexing her fists at her sides. He scowls at her, mouth opening to protest, and she gives him an answering glare that's pure, vicious steel. "If it is a trap and Denarius is there, we'll be better off to have a few mages with us."
His jaw tightens and green eyes narrow for a second. "Fine," he growls, turning on his heel and marching over to where his greatsword leans against the fireplace.
Fenris recognizes her- the red hair and large, sad eyes he remembers from the time before his markings. Her shoulders have acquired a weary hunch and she has aged too much, small lines forming around her mouth and on her forehead. When his sister lifts her head and gazes at him with a combination of horror and sorrow, his heart races.
"Leto?" she says, staring at his markings. "It... it is you." Her voice trails off and she shuts her weary eyes, hanging her head again.
A hand closes around the wrist of his gauntlet, leather-clad fingers firm. "It's a trap," Hawke mutters, and he glimpses the vicious lines of her profile as sharp eyes take in the scene. She pulls him a step away from the table just as the horrible laugh that's haunted his dreams for these past years echoes from atop the stairs.
Denarius stands there and smirks at Hawke. "Thank you for retrieving my stolen property," he says in his smoothest voice. His gnarled hands, scarred with years of blood magic and aged far more than the magister, dig into the sleeves of his heavy velvet robe. "I believe a reward is in order."
His lips curl into a sneer just as hers do. His blood thrills as she narrows her eyes at the mage and a twinge of fear curls icy fingers around his heart when a brutal, bloodthirsty smile carves over her face. Perhaps she will give him back to his old master. Perhaps his hesitation and cruelty and viciousness have worn her out too much. Perhaps she's grown tired of this game, just as she said. He holds his breath as Hawke speaks, nerves grating as he hangs on every word.
"What a shame," she murmurs, speaking in a slow, deadly tone, "That I won't get to kill you myself." She punctuates her statement with a swift kick to the old man's soft stomach that makes him reel back and slam his staff to the floor.
Guards leap from the tables and close off their exit. He lunges forward with a snarl, his blade slicing toward Denarius, but the magister smirks for a moment before disappearing in a flash of magic light. The sword slams into several other men, knocking them back, and he tears in, hacking them apart with swift, brutal strikes. Their blood covers his face and hair, thick and hot as he whirls to see a magical barrier surround the mage. Shades swarm through the tavern and he glimpses Hawke somersaulting behind a knot of creatures and slashing their exposed backs, confident and vicious.
"I've got him, Fenris!" shouts the Dalish witch. He sees her hand extend toward the magister with blood running down her arms. Her fingers clench into a fist and she twists her hand toward herself in a ripping motion. The barrier around Denarius disappears and as he leaps for the mage he gets the pleasure of glimpsing true fear for a moment. Then his fist plunges through the sagging folds of the other man's neck and his hand closes around the throat and spine and he tears chunks of both out as he drops the corpse.
His sword whips in an outward arc to dispatch the last shades and he sheathes it as the last one erupts into a shower of acrid sparks. His eyes fall on Varania, cowering in the corner where she watched the massacre and did nothing to help. As he glances around, he sees that even Isabela managed to leave her suite half-dressed as ever to help raze the foes. Even the abomination and the blood mage helped, and his sister- his sister set this up.
As he approaches her, she yelps and cries, "Please, you don't understand. The things I've had to do since Mother died... He was going to make me a Magister."
His blood freezes in his veins. "You betrayed me to become one of them?" he hisses. His tattoos alight of their own accord. She deserves to die, she deserves worse than this. To seek such evil, to embrace it and thirst for more is beyond his comprehension. To be so completely power-hungry and evil as to betray her own brother to learn the secrets of blood magic and torture makes him feel sick to share blood with her. Until this moment he has never known true loathing, not from any punishment at Denarius or Hadriana's hands nor any moment of self-hatred as he left Hawke and hurt her.
"Please," Varania begs, turning her face to Hawke now. "Don't let him kill me!" She seems to think Hawke is his new master, to believe him nothing more than property. Their shared blood means nothing to her, only her own survival. It is as if a gray veil descends over the world, a taste and scent of ashes that fills his mouth and nose.
"You deserve to die," Hawke whispers, and in her eyes Fenris glimpses all of her fury and viciousness, all of her hurt over the years from his treatment and the loss of a good, loving family one terrible death at a time. He can see everything in her eyes, can imagine that the entire universe is held within their burning depths. More than any of that, brighter and fiercer than the other sharp emotions, he can see her trust in him and her love, that soft core below the brutality.
Her eyes bring colors back to the world, and as his palm closes over his sister's treacherous heart, it's her name that spills from his lips when he turns. Her real name, not the surname everyone uses. He steps up to her, wrapping a hand around her waist. She grips his fingers, still dripping with Varania's blood, and guides his hand up to her face. The jagged fingers of his gauntlet trace a slashing red line across her nose and cheek as her serious eyes stare into his. Then her fingers twist into the red sash on his wrist and she rips the stained, gritty fabric free with a brisk gesture.
"You are yours," she whispers, her gloved hands weaving through his bloody fingers. "But you are not alone." Her forehead rests against his and he can smell the blood on her face and somehow it mixes with the scent of her sweat and her hair and that infuriating Orlesian perfume to become intoxicating. She hands him the scrap of fabric as he breathes her in, pressing it into his palm and closing his fingers over it.
"Let us leave this place," he murmurs, gripping that mottled red piece of robe he's clung to for so long as he finds his voice. This time when he walks outside, he is not alone.
Fenris follows Hawke into her house, too blank to leave her side. He still grips that piece of cloth in his hand and she still has that streak of blood over her nose that makes her manservant tut. But she waves the servants away, promising to come down for dinner, and he follows her to the bedroom. Only she has color or life for him, only she seems real. The rest of the city might as well be sketched in waving charcoal lines; the whole of Thedas could crumble and he would not notice so long as she remains near.
"Hawke," he says as they enter her bedroom. His eyes follow her as she sits on the bench in front of her fireplace. "That night..."
"Which one?" she asks, tossing hair out of her eyes as she peels her gloves off her hands. But a flash in her eyes reveals she knows all too well. The first night, the one time they made love instead of bruising and hurting with vicious need. He just stares at her until she sighs and nods in a silent admission of comprehension.
"I was a coward," he continues. "I should have told you then how I felt."
She shifts her weight and crosses her arms. He sees a flash cross through her eyes and then she angles her head, staring into the fire so that he can only see light and shadow playing over the blood mark on her face. "So how do you feel?" she asks, the question harsh and painful.
He draws closer, moving around the bench and leaning forward. His fingers brush over her chin, tilting it up so that he can brush his lips against hers. "I would sooner die than live without you," he says. Their hair mixes together as his forehead rests against hers. "I can only pray you might forgive me someday."
Hawke stands then, her bare hands finding his shoulders and hauling him to stand with her. Brilliant eyes bore into his for a long moment and she says, "Don't let it happen again."
As her mouth molds against his he wants to laugh and cry at the same time. He's relieved and giddy and terrified all at once, re-learning her curves with hands that tremble, gentle and hungry at the same time. His tongue traces hers and he tastes her mouth again and again, his lips tracing her neck and shoulder as he bares the skin. She gasps and arches her back as he pulls her smallclothes away and lifts her thigh around his hips. For a moment, staring into her hazy eyes, he teases her entrance with the tip of his length, but he can't endure his own teasing. They grip each other, mouths seeking one another again as he slides inside of her. He holds her down against the mattress and moves slow, thrilling at her moans and the tension that builds with each thrust.
"Treowuluf*," he gasps in her ear as they seize with each other in perfect unison. He strokes her hair and twists to collapse more to the side, tugging her against his chest and holding her warm flesh against the buzz of his lyrium. The Tevinter endearment has escaped and he does not regret saying it, though he is relieved that she does not know enough Arcanum to recognize it.
"You're a free man, Fenris," she murmurs, her mouth against his shoulder. He tucks his chin over her head, enjoying the feel of her lips moving against his skin while she speaks. "What do you intend to do now that Denarius is dead?"
He runs his hand down her spine, tracing with light fingers that veer to secure her thigh across his hips. "I do not know," he answers, truthfully enough. He feels her muscles tense under his palms and he leans back on the pillow to stare at her face. "But if there is a future to be had, I will walk into it gladly at your side," he adds, his words and gaze serious. He lifts his hand to caress her cheek and watches the fan of her dark lashes over her cheeks as he leans in to kiss her again.
It will never be perfect, he knows as she moves to sit astride his hips, her mouth never breaking free of his. They are vicious people, people who hurt others, people whose lives are flooded with blood. Each of them has killed their younger sister, and each of them has hurt the other again and again out of vindication and viciousness and pain. She feels a dogged determination to help the mages in spite of, or perhaps because of, her sister's death. He will never fully trust a mage, though she counts several among her friends.
But as she gasps his name and clenches around him, he realizes that perfection is for stories and that she is more perfect than any tale could ever be. As they lie tangled, with her on his chest and his fingers slipping through her hair, smoothing the tangles out, he realizes that he never wants to leave her again.
The sound of a bell ringing breaks their spell of silent reverence, cutting through the post-climactic fog. Hawke chuckles and lifts her head from his shoulder to stare at him. "Do you want to stay for dinner?" she asks him. Though she keeps her tone light he can detect a note of anxiety, a tentative tenderness that she fails to conceal.
He smirks at her. "Yes," he says, "I'll stay."
*Treowuluf: from the Old English 'treowlufu,' meaning 'true love.' The Bioware people based Arcanum off of Old English, so I looked it up and made some adjustments to make it sound more... Fenris-y.
Hawke's line "Don't let it happen again" is taken from in-game. It's how aggressive Hawke forgives Fenris at the end of 'Alone,' no joke. It's just a great line, so I had to work it in.