Some Lovers
A 100 prompts challenge on Fenris/LadyHawke by Marianne Bennet
008: Shackles
I think I'm going to vomit, said the look on Saemus Dumar's face but his noble betrothed was smiling widely enough for the both of them. Hawke clapped with the rest of the crowd but was careful to hide her smirk behind a smile. It had been almost a year and a half since she had first met the viscount's son and it seemed that Saemus was still just as blind to his power of political implication as he had been then.
"Poor boy," she said in an aside to Sebastian Vael who happened to be standing beside her in the crowd. "His father would have done better to let him wait."
"He does look less than pleased," Sebastian said diplomatically but with a grin.
"'Less than pleased?' He'll be chained to noble society for the rest of his soon to be miserable life and he knows it," replied Hawke, laughing. "No more long walks along the Wounded Coast with the qunari."
"Do you know the viscount's son then?"
"Not well," she replied, continuing to clap as the couple began to walk down the stairs. "I was… involved with a mess of a rescue a year or so back."
Sebastian raised his eyebrows. "You are a… formidable woman, Mistress Hawke," he said admiringly. "But you must know that there is no respite from duty. We are who we are born to be."
"I… have difficulty believing that sometimes."
"It is good that you try," he said in response with another approving smile. "It is the Maker's will after all that had brought you to wherever you are now."
Something caught in Hawke's throat. She forced herself to smile back at Sebastian, said, "If you'll excuse me," and, gathering her skirts in one hand, quickly disappeared from the keep's main hall. She needed to be alone, to find a quiet place where she could gather her thoughts uninterrupted.
She turned her attention to the courtyard, the space between the keep and the steps that led downward toward the greater Hightown pavilions. The night was warm for autumn and summer's humidity had ebbed away weeks before. And if someone wanted to give her trouble… well, an apostate in a dress and slightly higher than average heels was still an apostate capable of defending herself. She perched herself on the edge of a secluded bench and took a deep breath.
Magic is meant to serve man and not rule over him. Those words had taken precedence over all other Chantry teachings in Hawke's life. Even her father had quoted them angrily at her when she had accidentally set the cottage's roof ablaze. They had defined every aspect of her life, to the point where she would have given up all magic altogether to avoid having to hear that sentence one more time. But what Sebastian had said… that it was the Maker's will that had visited this sometime curse, sometime blessing on her and taken away her father, sister, and home in turn, that was enough to keep her from ever going to the Chantry again.
"Hawke," Fenris's footsteps stalled until he was standing in front of her. "What are you doing?"
One hand idly tangled in her hair, she looked up at him with one eyebrow raised and said, "I'm sitting."
"You are as inscrutable as a qunari," was his equally dry reply. He took a step back and took in her entire appearance. "You're… wearing a dress. You look…"
"I think I look like an Antivan orange," she cut him off, keeping her tone light, "but, yes, I was at Saemus Dumar's engagement party."
"That explains much," Fenris replied, his voice surprisingly grave. "May I join you?" She nodded. He sat down beside her. "Might I ask why you left?"
"Someone… said something I didn't like."
"You're not made of glass."
"I know," said Hawke irritably in return. She paused, gathered her thoughts. "Do you think the Maker helped you escape Danarius?"
Fenris tensed at the question. "Why?"
"I was just wondering," she shrugged. "Someone told me that everything that happens to us is divine providence."
"I don't believe that," he answered, his voice very hard. "I freed myself. I made my own providence." Then, after a moment's pause: "If there is a Maker, he can't like me very much. He can't like many elves. Otherwise, why would he have allowed Tevinter to continue to exist as it has?"
"It is said sometimes that the less the Maker does, the greater his power."
"I don't believe that either," said Fenris grimly. "Do you?"
Hawke stared at her hands in her lap, one palm laid atop the other. "I don't know what to believe. If the Maker has any power over what I am," she allowed the smallest of flames to flicker in the cradle of her open palm, "why did he give me this?"
"Why did he let this happen to me?" He stretched out his arm so that the markings on his hands were level with the flame. The white lines seemed to glow with a different light. "They are my prison and yet they allowed me to make myself free. One prison for another."
"It isn't so different with magic," said Hawke slowly, the firelight reflected in her gray eyes. "It could give me anything and yet it seems to keep me from everything I want."
The corner of Fenris's mouth twitched upward in a sardonic smile. "Neither of us wears shackles –not anymore –but we're far from free."
She shrugged and her hand closed on the flame, extinguishing it. "That's hardly anything new. Maker knows there are shackles everywhere," she said bitterly, "and, if you're not wearing them, they're all over the floor, just waiting for you to trip."
"Just waiting for you to screw up," he agreed. His green eyes glanced downward, at her orange silk covered knee, at the smoke trailing up from between clenched fingers. "You…" he hesitated, his eyes drawn back to her face. "You don't look like an orange."
"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "That might be the nicest thing you've ever said to me, Fenris."
"Be honored. It's probably the nicest thing I have ever said to any mage."
Hawke laughed a little at that when she saw that Fenris was smiling. "I should probably go back," she said, getting up and gathering her skirts in one hand. "They're probably dancing by now and I promised Sebastian…"
He got up too. She thought she saw something flicker across his features as he took the smallest step back, already distancing himself from her. "You probably should."
She started up the stairs but, halfway to the door, she looked back. "Thank you," she said, a little awkward. "Thank you for listening."
Fenris nodded, leaning his torso forward in the slightest of courtly bows. "You…" She raised an eyebrow, inviting him to continue. "You really don't look like an orange. You look like… fire. And light."
"Well," said Hawke with a smile, pleased despite herself, "let's hope that no one in there gets burned." And then she went back inside, returning to a world that she knew he could not follow her into. Maybe there she could feel less vulnerable.
…
A/N: My new favorite XD. Please leave a review if you enjoyed it!