Some Lovers
A 100 prompts challenge on Fenris/LadyHawke by Marianne Bennet
015: Bittersweet
Lightening lit up the sky above Hightown, flickering through the gaps in the curtains. In her estate's kitchen, Hawke stabbed her favorite knife into a pomegranate, listened for the thunder, and thought of a certain broody elf.
She wondered if he had made it back to Kirkwall before the storm hit. It couldn't be pleasant out there along the Wounded Coast. That was where she had guessed he had gone; she couldn't be sure. For all Hawke knew, Fenris might have run out of those slavers' caverns with the intention of running all the way back to Tevinter in pursuit of his supposed sister. The knife slipped in her hand, cutting into her flesh; one red liquid mixed with another in her palm. She was struck with the realization that she didn't really know Fenris; that she couldn't predict what he would do next.
She reached for a drying cloth with the intention of cleaning up the cut on her hand but stopped and turned around when she saw his reflection in the rain-painted window, the towel floating down to the floor, forgotten: "Fenris."
His shocking white hair was plastered to his forehead; he looked as though he might be shivering, water dripping from the edges of his leather tunic. Hawke was struck with the urge to wrap him in a blanket and seat him in front of the fire. She pushed the thought aside as he said by way of explanation, "I have been thinking about what happened with Hadriana –you're bleeding."
"It's only pomegranate juice," she replied, the shock of seeing him temporarily numbing the pain in her hand. She held up crimson-stained palms to show him. "And… a little blood."
"With my hands, it's always blood," he observed with a quick, bitter smile.
Hawke shrugged. "Must be an occupational hazard," she replied, her tone carelessly biting. "You do make a habit of tearing people's hearts out, even when you promise that you won't."
He tensed at the passive aggressive notes in her voice. "You don't understand. When I was still a slave, Hadriana had a sick fascination with me. It was a great pleasure if hers to cause me great misery. Seeing her again after all of these years... I couldn't let all of that go. Perhaps I wanted to, but I couldn't."
"Sweet Maker, Fenris," she slammed her uninjured palm on the kitchen table, causing both knife and fruit to rattle against the wood. "Just admit that you wanted to kill her and be done with it," Hawke snapped. "It's been six years now since you got away; six bloody years. It's not about freedom now, or it shouldn't be anyway. It's about revenge and you know it."
"It is about freedom," he snarled back at her. "It's about not living with a wolf at my back."
"Everyone had wolves at their backs!"
"Few as persistent as these. I suppose you wouldn't understand–"
"Understand what?" Her voice grew louder in an effort to make herself heard over the rumbling of thunder. "I may be a mage but I am no magister. I am an apostate, Fenris; more than that, I am a somewhat notorious apostate living in Kirkwall. I live in a city top full of bloody wolves and you come to me and…"
Her gray eyes held his for a moment of loaded silence and then her gaze skirted away from his. "I don't know why I bother," Hawke said abruptly to the pots hanging on the wall. "You're right: this is about freedom."
"What do you mean?" His eyes narrowed, sensing that her agreement was a front for another argument.
"It's obvious to me that you're far from free." They locked gazes again; her expression was defiant. "You may not wear chains anymore but, for all your talk, you might as well put them back on. That's all you seem to see in yourself after all."
Someone had to say it to him; from her discussions with her friends, someone else was going to say it to Fenris soon. Better he try to tear out her heart than Aveline's or Varric's. At least Hawke could freeze him to the ground before he tried. But he didn't leap at her; his tattoos didn't glow. He stared at her with furious incredulity and then snarled at her from across the room, "You know nothing of being a slave."
He crossed the room in three angry strides, advancing on her until Hawke found her back pressed against the windowpane, the feeling of cold glass through her thin robe making her shiver. "I acknowledge that I should not have made you the focus of my anger back at the caves but do not press me now. You can't understand; it's like a sickness, this hate, and I can't get rid of it. And they put it there! And for all that you say that you are so different–"
"You don't want me to be different," Hawke interjected. "That's the truth of it. You wouldn't know what to do if you decided I was."
That was when his markings lit up like the lightening outside. For a moment, Hawke wondered if she would be dead in his arms within the minute as he shoved her hard against the window. And then before she could think –of her mother upstairs, of her brother in the Gallows, of her father and sister with the Maker already –Hawke realized that Fenris had not killed her. He was kissing her instead and she found that she did not mind at all.
"I'm no slave," he snarled at her, his green eyes inches from hers.
"I'm no magister," she snapped back at him and kissed him as savagely as he had kissed her.
She felt his hands begin to grab at her clothes and that was when she broke the string of kisses. "Wait," she said, breathless. He complied, looking back at her with dilated pupils and a hazy expression. "Not here. Not like this. I don't want this to be angry."
"As you wish," he said, stepping back. Did he look disappointed? Hawke thought he did.
"Tomorrow," she promised him. "Tomorrow, once we deal with that templar and his investigation."
"I shall see you then," Fenris agreed, his tone inexplicably grave, and Hawke watched him leave the kitchen and presumably go out into the night.
Her hand was beginning to throb. She stared down at the blood mixed with juice and wondered at how easily pain could be disguised with sweetness, desire, whatever the occasion called for and yet, once the high melted away, everything could still hurt.