AN: Schmoop. Schmoop, schmoop, schmoop.
It is, Hawke thinks, an absolutely preposterous travesty that Fenris has better hair than she. At least when it's clean, she amends to herself, as it is now, the fine white strands sliding smooth as cornsilk over her fingers, flickering gold as gossamer fire here and there as it catches the light from her bedroom hearth. It is not a particularly large fire—too early in the season yet for a true blaze—but just enough to ward away autumn's early chill as she sits cross-legged on the Orlesian rug, leaning against one bedpost, Fenris's bare feet stretched out towards the fire and his head in her lap.
And his unreasonable hair spilling through her hands as she draws them through it in long strokes.
His eyes are almost closed, thin slivers of green flicking across the open book propped against one bent knee. The fingers of one hand splay across the pages to hold them in place, entirely too elegant and slender without his gauntlets for such a mundane task; his other hand has curled around the back of his own neck, his elbow resting comfortably on her knee. Hawke bends over him, runs her fingernails lightly along his scalp. His eyelids flutter and she grins; she does it again in one long line from the nape of his neck to his forehead, the sides of her fingers brushing along the bare tips of his pointed ears to eke out a full shudder, and this time his eyes turn upward to meet her own.
"Something amuses you?" he asks, his voice low and rumbling nicely through the popping logs.
Hawke smoothes the loose white hair away from his forehead, drops a kiss on the three tattooed drops of lyrium bared there. "Don't mind me. Read your book."
He watches her a moment longer, suspicion evident even in his upside-down gaze; then, slowly, he goes back to his book. The corner of Hawke's mouth quirks up as he turns a page—even now, she is too susceptible to the warmth those memories of his reading lessons bring—and as he begins a new chapter Hawke slides her fingertips to the sides of Fenris's neck. He makes no objection, as Hawke expects, and without much direction she begins to draw her fingers up and down the strong lines of his throat, sometimes with her rounded nails, very gently, sometimes with the sides of her fingers. She means it more for the tactile sensation than anything else at first, simply enjoying the pleasure of touching him with neither hesitance nor fear of flight, but as the minutes pass she finds herself more interested in the challenge of eliciting a response—any response.
The lyrium is mostly unaffected by her touch. She knows this, knows too that a harder drag might pull light to the curling lines—but that is not the kind of sensation she intends to bring between them, here, and instead she trespasses their borders only lightly, tracing their edges with the curve of her fingernails.
Then, bold all at once, Hawke draws her thumbs to the backs of Fenris's ears, near the base where they meet his head, and presses.
He stiffens, gaze freezing on the page; Hawke swallows a laugh, presses harder, begins to rub the skin there in slow circles, tiny at first, ever-widening. Fenris does not move, though she can feel the tension thrumming like plucked strings in the lines of his arm, his neck, his shoulders, and when she pulls her thumbs from the back of his ears in one long draw to their very tips, he lets out a shuddering, uneven breath and clenches his eyes shut. The book falls forgotten to one side; the hand behind his neck comes free, fumbles its way around her wrist.
"You," Fenris says roughly, "are driving me to distraction."
"Victory mine," Hawke murmurs, smiling, and when his eyes open again, when his hot, heavy gaze settles on her face, she shakes her head and covers his eyes with both palms.
"What—are you doing?"
"Where's Fenris?" Hawke asks, drawing out the first word light and high. "Where's Fenris?"
He tugs her left hand down, glaring at her with one green eye through the filter of her fingers. "Hawke."
"There he is!" Hawke exclaims, clapping her palms to her cheeks. "Fenris, I found you!"
"If you are truly this desperate for attention—"
"Who, me? Never. I'm just a responsible mother-to-be who's practicing inane games for the sake of her as-yet-unborn child."
"For the sake of your own amusement."
"Well," Hawke says softly, bending to kiss him, "there is that."
After a rather thorough kiss, when she is quite sure she's assuaged any lingering discontentment on Fenris's part, Hawke drops one last peck on his marked forehead and straightens again. Her back aches ever-so-slightly from the pull of cramping muscles; she sends a tiny thread of healing magic up her own spine and sighs, leaning her head back against the carved darkwood bedpost. Fenris keeps hold of her wrist, his thumb stroking along the inside of it where her pulse beats. The fire crackles quietly, faint and irregular and entirely comforting.
"You know," Hawke murmurs, and his eyes flick to hers again—no irritation this time, only attention. "We won't be able to sit like this for much longer."
"Like this?" Fenris repeats, uncomprehending at first; then his gaze moves upward in the direction of her swelling stomach. "Ah. No. For some time, at least."
"Mm." Hawke falls silent again and Fenris does too, the both of them lost in their own thoughts, Hawke's fingers refinding for themselves the soft strands of Fenris's hair.
They sit like this for a long time. Then, at last, Fenris stirs, and without looking at her, he says, "Hawke. Do you know…"
"…Yes?"
"The child."
"Yes. We have one. Or will, anyway."
He purses his lips in irritation, and Hawke tugs at his cheeks until the expression eases. He lets out an explosive breath, glares, and says, "Do you know what the child will be?"
"A half-elf, I'd wager."
"Hawke."
She laughs, relenting, and smoothes her fingers along Fenris's cheeks. "No," she tells him more gently. "I've no idea. Probably won't until it's born. Is there…are you hoping for one over the other?"
"Of course not," he says, startled. "Only for health."
"The baby's or mine?"
"Both," Fenris tells her, voice dark and promising, and this time it is he who tugs her down to meet his mouth.
"You know," Hawke says eventually, lips brushing over Fenris's between each word as if that might hide her trepidation, "there's…mm. There's a good chance this child will be…"
She trails off, distracted both by Fenris's kisses and the way his fingers twine through her own, and Fenris laughs against her mouth. "Half-human?"
"No," she sighs, pulling away just enough so that she can meet his eyes, serious now when she does not wish to be. "A mage, Fenris."
His smile dims, then dies. He looks at her, abruptly unreadable; then he sits up and twists to face her in one smooth motion, silhouetted by fire. "Hawke," he says evenly, "why would you say this?"
She spreads her hands, a night-cold chill seeping into the pit of her stomach, Fenris's warmth stripped from her all at once. "It's not impossible. Not even unlikely. I'm a mage and my sister and father were mages, and your sister…" She pulls in a breath, lets it out again. "There's a lot of magic in our bloodlines. Maybe too much."
Fenris watches her without moving, his white hair disarranged by her hands, his green eyes narrow and hard in the dark. He says, "You misunderstand me."
"Do I?"
"You believe I will care less for the child if it has magic."
Hawke lifts one shoulder in a shrug, unable to keep up the pretense of casual indifference. "The thought has crossed my mind, once or twice."
Fenris's eyes slide closed, pinching tight at the corners as if she has hurt him; then with only the rustle of cloth and skin against the Orlesian carpet he has pulled her entirely into his arms, her back to his chest, his knees bent alongside her own beside the low-burning fire. His fingers draw her dark hair over one shoulder and she shivers, shivers again when his mouth presses against the nape of her neck. He murmurs something in Arcanum that she can't understand, then says, "Hawke. I know the child might be a mage. I know there is power and your blood and mine, and I know that such strength is not easily controlled. I know what the child might be."
He pauses, rests his forehead against her hair. She cannot speak. He murmurs, "I might…wish the child had no magic. For its own sake. This world is not gentle with mages."
Hawke huffs a laugh, turning enough that she can take one of his hands in her own. Fenris lets her take it, lets her rest it against her stomach; his other hand joins them, holding Hawke steady, resting palms flat over the place where their child grows. "Hawke," Fenris says, his voice low and calm and wholly certain, "mage or no mage, I would slaughter any living soul that tried to take this child from us."
She swallows hard, twice, utterly unable to dislodge the lump of emotion from her throat, and clutches almost convulsively at his hands. "No good," she gasps, half-laughing through the sudden hot tears. "We fight too many corpses."
He laughs into her neck, again at her noise of protest when he stands and lifts her in his arms. A branch breaks in the hearth and her sigh is lost to the sudden burst of sparks; Fenris lowers her to the bed beneath him and her whisper is lost to the skin of his throat. But Hawke doesn't mind, not really—her hands say enough for her here—and if in the end Fenris's own hands are too tender on her for once, and his mouth covers hers too gently…
Well. She doesn't mind that either.
—
None of her pants fit. None of them, not one single pair of trousers. Hawke knows; Hawke's tried, the dozen pairs she owns scattered haphazardly around her room, she herself standing in the center of the maelstrom in only a loose shirt with her hands on her hips, too near tears to speak.
Damn the world, she decides eventually, and crawls back into bed without a second thought.
(Later, Isabela brings her six pairs of pants with adjustable leather-laced waists. Hawke doesn't ask where they came from, too grateful to color the gift with shades of shabby Darktown crate. She doesn't even comment on the fact that two of them are torn right across the arse, even if Isabela keeps making innuendos about ventilation.)
—
"Anders, I'm not joking."
"Neither am I."
"I pissed myself laughing! It wasn't even that funny!"
Anders throws her a dry look from where he mixes her newest batch of delicious, dust-flavored nutritional potion. "It happens, Hawke. Bring extra smalls with you if you're that concerned about it."
"At least I don't have to worry about needing them here," she grumbles, scowling half-heartedly at the beige brew brimming between Anders's hands. "Hard to find something to laugh about when you're being prodded with little ice-cold bits of metal."
"So this is what gratitude sounds like! I've always wondered."
"Oh, hush," she says, accepting with both hands the bottle Anders brings her, and she looks up to meet his smile. "Thank you, Anders."
"You're welcome. I added an extra pinch of angry resentment in there, just for you."
"You certainly know how to treat a girl." Hawke slides gingerly from the table, twenty weeks' worth of growing child somewhat impinging upon her ability to spring lightly—goat-like, really—from one level to another. She puts one hand on her stomach, trying to ignore the sudden, surprisingly-consuming desire for a fresh loaf of bread. "Was everything all right?"
"As usual. Come back next week around the same time, and I bet I'll have almost exactly the same thing to say." Anders leans back against his worktable, shrugging. "Congratulations. You're healthy as a horse."
"Ferelden doesn't even have horses," Hawke points out, and plucks her staff from the wall where it leans. "But I appreciate the thought."
"Oh—" Anders says, startled, and she glances back over her shoulder to see him staring into nothing, his brow furrowed, his lips working without sound. Hawke waits patiently, takes a small sip from the fresh potion. Grimaces. After several minutes, there's a drag of power like the tide receding, and Anders gives the room a few blind blinks before his eyes come into focus on her face again. "Hawke?"
"Just making sure Justice didn't stay too long," she offers, lifting the glinting vial to him in salute.
"Oh. No. He was expressing his concern about…" He trails off, abruptly consumed with the weak Darktown sunlight filtering through the empty glass bottles at his elbow.
"About…?" Hawke prompts.
With a heavy sigh, Anders looks at her, his feathered shoulders hunched up around his ears. "Justice is concerned that should anything happen to you—Maker forbid, naturally—that the baby's potential magical talents might end up…ignored. Or misused."
"Anders, this baby is not going to be spearheading any mage-right revolutions until it's at least ten years old. Twelve, if its father has any say."
"You asked; I told you. Justice just wants to be sure it'll be taken care of not only regarding its health, but its magic, too. Whether or not it has any."
"Are you saying—" Hawke blinks. "Anders. Are you saying that Justice wants to be the child's magical godfather?"
Anders opens his mouth. Then he closes it again, cocking his head as if listening to a voice she can't hear; at last, he says, rather uncertainly, "Yes?"
"Well," Hawke says after a moment. "All right then."
"He says—thank you? And that this is a just decision. And—congratulations."
"Thanks, Justice," Hawke says, clutching the bottle to her heart, and when Anders waves one hand to shoo her away she turns tail and flees, desperately swallowing back the laughter bubbling up her throat.
She makes it all of three minutes away from the clinic before something jolts beneath her breasts. The gasp that slithers out of her is entirely involuntary, as is the hand flying to press to her rounded stomach; she half-turns, ready to throw back in Anders's face all his fine words about healthy when—it comes again, rougher this time.
"Oh, flames," Hawke breathes, staring down. "Are you—kicking?"
As if in answer, a hard little heel nudges her ribs, then drags itself along the center of her stomach to her navel. Hawke presses a palm to it in answer, too stupefied to do much else. Then realization sinks in and she presses harder, a shocked laugh bursting free to hang lightly in the Darktown street. "Your father is going to kill me. Stop it. Right now. Don't you move another muscle until we get home and I can—"
"Home?" says a new voice, a man's voice, deep, thick with both threat and laughter. "And where would that be?"
Hawke looks up, smile wiped away by the more comfortable impassive mask of battle. An enormous, heavy, bearded man with a pair of daggers in his belt detaches himself from a wall's dim shadow, approaching her with a smile and forearms the size of ham hocks. He stops two, maybe three steps away, and even as Hawke straightens four more long shapes uncoil themselves from the wall, from behind a pillar, from the space between two barrels. "Somewhere you're not," Hawke answers him, voice even, and lets her hands fall to her sides, swinging just enough to touch the steady, cool weight of her staff where it hangs from her shoulders.
"That's a shame," the man says, affecting a pout. "You've gone and hurt my feelings."
"At least you've got more than one. That's a nuance that escapes most of the people who try to rob me."
One of the man's minions lets out a sharp bark of laughter, and the glare he shoots at the woman is poisonous enough to curdle even Anders's potion in Hawke's belt. His head swivels back to her like a boulder grinding over a mountain. "That's a dangerous crime, slander. Maybe you should watch your tongue."
"Maybe you should go back to your shadowy lurking and let me pass. That was good. That was working for you."
The man's lips curl like a pair of salmon twisting in the bottom of a net as he takes one step towards her—
—and Hawke bursts into flame.
The fire roars around her, gold tongues licking up her planted feet, flame blazing in great whirling arcs from her shoulders, her hands, her staff when she pulls it free to stand before her, stretching up towards Lowtown's underbelly as if craving to feed from it. The minions fall back together, the towering pyre Hawke has made of herself throwing weird shadows across their fear-pale faces, and even the gigantic leader flinches back, hands raised.
"Listen," he says, his voice smaller, his beard smoking from where her sparks have singed it. "Listen. We don't want trouble. We don't want—I don't want—"
"You don't," Hawke says, low and dangerous, "want what?"
"Nothing! Nothing!"
"Oh, good. Because you have already destroyed the excitement of a rather pivotal moment of this pregnancy—my first pregnancy—" Hawke adds with a rather impressive blast of heat and flame, and the woman who'd laughed earlier throws out a tiny congratulations! before cowering back again, "—thank you—and it seems to me that selecting as your mark not only a moody, pregnant apostate but the thrice-damned Champion of Kirkwall—" she gestures to herself helpfully, "—shows not only an enormous dearth of even the most minimal intelligence but also a stark raving lunacy that would, honestly, make any possible punishment I could dream up nowhere near as utterly cruel as your very continued existence!"
Hawke breaks off, panting. The fire that still surges around her spits a bit, like oil sputtering, and she realizes her boots have begun to crack beneath the heat. Still, she doesn't move, glaring at the leader; his face has gone wholly white in the firelight, and even from here she can see the little gold embers smoldering cheerfully in his beard.
She says, "Now. Get out of my way."
He staggers back, trips on a green-glass bottle, plants one beefy hand on an empty crate that gives way with a cracking sigh. Hawke doesn't even look as he sprawls to the ground with a shout, doesn't deign even to glance at the man's minions as they scurry to his aid. Only once does she look back, pausing at the top of the long stairway leading to Lowtown as the last of the fire dies around her; she has left little charred footprints up each wooden step, the group of thugs still staring up at her from the bottom of them like survivors of some particularly unpredictable storm.
Hawke lifts her chin, throws one last disdainful look in their direction—and the moment she is out of their sight, she slings her staff on her back and runs.
—
"Why do women do this to themselves?"
Her voice is soft, echoing in the enormous empty darkness of Fenris's main hall; above her, in one of the open squares set into the ceiling, a half-dozen stars utterly ignore her question. Hawke sighs, adjusting herself more comfortably where she lies on the flat wooden bench at the base of Fenris's grand staircase, and lifts her other leg to join the first where it is propped above her on the wall. "I mean, really," she continues, blinking up at the stars, "we don't sleep—or if we do, the kicking wakes us up. We don't get to eat anything we want. We get really odd dreams. Body parts grow and swell that definitely shouldn't, that I can't even see half the time—" she glares at her crossed ankles, "—and then on top of everything we get the right honorable distinction of pushing out a thing that exists only to shit and cry."
The stars twinkle obligingly—and silently—and Hawke throws an arm over her eyes.
Eventually, the silence is broken by a distant rustle. Hawke lifts her arm, looking upward, and hears Fenris's voice murmur something; then a match strikes crisply and the burning yellow glow of a candle spreads across the ceiling above her, and Fenris calls with more urgency, "Hawke?"
"Down here," she calls without moving, and a moment later, his hair tousled with sleep and eyes lined with worry, Fenris bends over the railing above her.
He stares, sighs, scrubs a hand over his face. "What—are you doing?"
"I had to go to the privy," she tells him comfortably. "I was on my way back but my back was aching, and this seemed as flat a place as any. And then my ankles hurt."
A corner of his mouth turns up unwillingly, and with another sigh he pushes away from the railing and starts down the stairs. "I should have expected this."
"Wait. See if there's any loaves of bread left over from dinner. I'm starving."
"For bread?" Fenris says, voice dry, though he disappears briefly into an adjoining room without complaint and emerges a moment later with a fat round loaf of sweetbread in one hand.
"Give," Hawke says, stretching out her arms like an infant, and Fenris tears off a small chunk from one corner for himself before depositing it in her hands.
"Lean forward," he advises her, and holding the bread in his teeth, he uses both hands to lever her shoulders upwards; then he seats himself on the bench and lowers her again so that her head rests on his thigh. "Better?"
"Yes," Hawke says between swallows, and studies him from the vantage point of her new pillow. His eyes are bloodshot, heavy-lidded with tiredness as he leans his head back against the wall behind the bench; even as she watches he stifles a yawn with the heel of his hand, then rubs his palm against his cheek where faint indentations of his pillow still linger. "You know," Hawke murmurs, "you don't have to sit up with me."
He looks down at her, lifts a pointed eyebrow. "I am where I wish to be, Hawke."
"All right, all right." She lifts the hand that doesn't hold the bread in appeasement, flicking a bit of white hair from the corner of his eye. "Have you thought of a name you like yet?"
"No."
"Me either."
He leans back against the wall and closes his eyes, his voice dipping down again into the roughness of sleep. "There is still time."
"All of three months." She takes another large mouthful of sweetbread. "I like Creighton, for a boy."
Fenris doesn't even flinch. "You do not."
"Nigel."
"He would be beaten by other children."
"We could always go with Anders," Hawke offers, and when Fenris only snorts she reaches up and flicks the underside of his jaw. "I know how important this name is to you. There must be something you like."
His eyes open then, though he does not quite meet her gaze. He says, slowly, "I heard a name. For a girl."
"Tell me."
"Leda."
Hawke closes her eyes, turning the word over in her mind, examining it for soundness, for teasing nicknames, for the way it might sound in her own voice after misbehavior. When she looks up at last Fenris is already watching her, his eyes narrowed in both uncertainty and a faint sheen of embarrassment. She smiles, touches his arm. "I like it."
The tense lines of his jaw give way to something softer, and after a moment he bends to kiss her briefly. "I am glad," he says against her mouth, "Hawke."
"Me too," she murmurs, and settles back on his leg as he leans back against the wall, and for several minutes Hawke permits herself to do absolutely nothing but watch the stars in their little square of clear night-dark sky. Fenris's leg is warm and solid beneath her head, his hand gentle as his thumb strokes aimlessly over her shoulder; his throat moves as he swallows the last of his bread, the lyrium that bars his neck glinting in the faint traces of starlight, and when he closes his eyes at last it is in something that looks very much like peace.
And abruptly, Hawke wants to cry.
She is having a baby. She is having Fenris's child, a terribly fragile little person growing underneath her heart, and Fenris has not run, has not fled—he has stayed here with her, with her child, and will stay for the foreseeable future—and in this moment Hawke wants nothing more and nothing less than a lifetime like this, her head on Fenris's knee, his arm around her shoulders, the two halves of her heart as near each other as she can make them. She blinks back her tears, forces the aching lump in her throat to move again.
Without preamble, she says, "Would you marry me?"
Fenris stiffens from head to toe, staring blankly at the starry sky; then he looks down at her, as utterly bewildered as she has ever seen him. "What?"
"Not now, obviously." Hawke lifts a shoulder in as much a shrug as she can make in this position, tears off another small piece of bread from the diminishing loaf. "Just—you know. Are you willing to? Eventually. Marry me."
"Willing," he repeats softly. He blinks once, twice; then all at once his eyes draw into focus on her face, intent and intense and hot enough her skin begins to warm, and his voice drops into something low and fierce as he says, "Hawke, yes."
"Oh, good," she whispers, and the first tears begin to track down her cheeks.
Fenris wipes them away with his thumb, carefully, and before she can speak again he drags her against him until she is half-sitting sideways in his lap, what is left of the loaf thumping forgotten to the ground as his arms come around her, her legs dangling over his knee. "Hawke," he says again, his mouth brushing over her temple, his voice unsteady with emotion, "I am yours."
She clenches her eyes shut against the tears, lets out a wobbling little laugh. "If I'd known it was that easy, I would have asked you months ago."
"Hawke—I didn't—I had not thought—"
"Don't," Hawke says, and turns her head to kiss him. "I love you. That's…that's enough, isn't it?"
His grip is too tight on her arms. She doesn't care, not with his eyes burning like this into hers, not with the lyrium-light darting like silverfish down his throat, his arms. He curls the fingers of one hand beneath her chin, tips up her face. He says, "Yes."
Some time after that, once Fenris has helped her back to his room and made his affections quite clear, Hawke pillows her head on his naked shoulder and hums. "I bet Isabela would do it."
"Hmm?" Fenris asks, his eyes already closed.
"Officiate the marriage. She's a ship's captain."
Fenris is quiet a long time, long enough that Hawke thinks he's fallen asleep. She is just on the verge of it herself when he rolls towards her with a sigh, his free arm coming up and over her not-inconsiderable stomach. He says, softly, "I would like that."
Hawke smiles, and murmurs, "Merrill suggested the name Maferath. Said it sounded like wind." Fenris snorts, and kisses her shoulder, and soon after that they are both asleep.