AN: A little bit of language and...uh. Heavy petting? Do people still say that? And I completely forgot to mention it last chapter, but Merrill's Maferath joke is entirely Jade's. Sorry, Jadeykins. Thanks for not hunting me down for the oversight.

"Oh, shit. Oh, shit—"

"Move, Hawke!" Isabela snaps, and Hawke flings herself against the back of a boulder as a throwing spear the thickness of her entire arm whistles through the place where she was standing, the heavy hollow thunk it makes as it drives two-thirds its length again into the sand reverberating off the high stone walls that surround them.

Hawke curses again, gasping as she edges a glance around her makeshift shelter. Tal-Vashoth—Tal-Vashoth, on what she'd meant to be a perfectly quiet last patrol! It'd been so calm on the Coast lately she hadn't thought twice about walking her customary route one final time; Anders had hinted she was growing too large to maneuver easily—that she was quite aware of, she'd told him—but he'd also warned her against putting either the baby or herself through undue stress. She's not entirely sure, but she thinks, ducking another enormous spear whirring within a hairsbreadth of her face, that this counts as stress.

"How many left?" she shouts, shoving hair from her eyes, and Sebastian's head pops up from a high fall of rocks.

"Seven!" he calls, nocking an arrow even as he does so; the string twangs, and Hawke hears a wet thud as satisfaction flickers across Sebastian's face. "Six!"

She doesn't want to fight six Tal-Vashoth. She doesn't want to fight any, actually, and when her arm twinges she clamps her free hand around the deep, bleeding gash left by their vanguard's first spear. "Okay," she breathes to herself, gripping her staff like the wood and metal might fly away without her holding it in place. "Okay. Isabela?"

A glass flask shatters prettily on the boulder beside her head, and a moment later Isabela bounds up through a thick grey cloud of smoke. "You called?"

"Ready if you are."

"Sweet thing, I'm always ready."

Wincing, Hawke pushes away from the boulder. When the next wave of spears soars over their heads Hawke throws a quick nod at Isabela and darts—for varying definitions of the word—forward out of the boulder's shadow, skirting the arrow-pierced body of Sebastian's Number Seven until she is nearly upon the handful of spear-throwers clustered at the top of the hill. She doesn't wait for them to react—instead her staff swings forward in a violent flashing arc before her feet, magic blasting from the end of it, and before they can do more than stagger backwards Hawke yanks a wall of bare glittering ice from the sand.

"Now!" she cries, but Isabela is already there, daggers flickering like needles in the noon sun as she pierces the ice here, there, angling for the throats and hearts and foreheads that hang suspended in Hawke's frozen prison. One shatters entirely, a rain of ice and frozen flesh spilling down the sandy hill towards Hawke in a way that would turn her stomach if she weren't already so intimately familiar with nausea. She eases backwards down the hill, one hand beneath her belly as she counts the bodies Isabela leaves behind. Four—five if she counts the shattered one, which she does—five and—where is—

There is an abrupt, scalding breath on the back of her neck.

Hawke turns slowly, already knowing what she'll see. And of course there is the last Tal-Vashoth, towering over her with his strange red-painted chest markings indistinguishable from the blood smeared across them, his horned head bent towards her, a truly impressive throwing spear held heavily in one hand.

"Oh," says Hawke.

He lifts the spear. Hawke's staff comes up automatically as a voice shouts behind her, but she knows as well as Isabela that there is very little to be done here—his massive arm jerks back, fast as lightning—

Fenris, I'm so sorry—

And an armchair-sized block of stone comes barreling out of nowhere to slam into the Tal-Vashoth's side, hurtling him like a drunken anvil into the stone side of the mountain. Hawke scurries back up the hill on her hands and knees, pride entirely forsaken for the sake of remaining unskewered, and as Isabela drags her to her feet she looks down to see Merrill waving up at her cheerfully.

"Sorry, Hawke!" she cries. "I didn't get you, did I?"

"Only in the best way!" Hawke shouts back, and Sebastian's bowstring twangs again, as beautiful as a Chantry bell if she's ever heard one. There's a short, sharp cry beneath the rubble; then, at last, save the crashing waves beneath them, the bluff-side falls silent.

Hawke bends, her knees splaying wide as she grips them around her increased bulk, and blows out a short breath as she does her best to ignore the indignant little elbow trying to work its way through her kidney. Isabela claps her on the back. "You know, you don't move too badly for someone swinging a sandbag around their gut."

"That is exactly what it feels like," Hawke mutters, putting both hands to the small of her back as she straightens and sending a flare of cool healing magic to her wounded arm. "Flames, that was close."

"You've had closer calls," Isabela points out as they begin to make their way down to Merrill and Sebastian.

Hawke shakes her head. "Not like this. Not with the risk this high."

"People always get so squeamish around infants. Give me a bottle of rum and a tiller and I'll show you how I handle my baby."

"I'd love to," Hawke says, windmilling her arms as she slides the last few feet to the bottom of the hill. Sebastian steadies her and she grips his arm gratefully; then she looks over her shoulder and says, "By the way, you can officiate marriages, right? Legally?"

"Of course! I love presiding. Of course, they're usually at sea and with desperate, sweaty men, but—" Isabela stops midword, hand still outstretched to the outcropped stone at her shoulder; slowly, her fingers close around it as her eyes lift to Hawke's. "Why?"

"No reason," Hawke says, linking arms with Merrill as she turns back to the city, and it is only Sebastian's broad back that keeps Isabela from tackling her to the ground.

—

"I hear nothing," Fenris says at last, pulling away from her bare stomach.

"To be honest," Hawke admits, "I was kind of hoping you'd just get kicked in the ear."

—

"You know," says Hawke into the silence, her words muffled on account of her face being mashed into the table between the little trays of cheeses, "if you'd told me a month ago I'd have preferred being out on the coast fighting Tal-Vashoth, I'd have called you a liar."

"Mistress," Orana says reprovingly, emptying one etched-silver tray of cheese slices onto the other, like it matters.

"A nice liar! A very sweet bearer of false witness."

"You don't have to see them all."

Hawke levers her forehead away from the ridiculously impractical tiny round table, leaning back in her armchair as she pinches the bridge of her nose. "I wouldn't," she tells the ceiling of her rarely-used sitting room, "if there weren't one genuinely caring woman for every eight gossip-mongering biddies."

"Then think of those instead. Lady Elegant brought you that wonderful collection of poultices to help after the birth."

"And Lady Rolin brought a hand-woven—hand-woven!—tapestry of her daughter in labor. I don't know if it's meant to be inspiration or deterrent."

Orana winces. "Perhaps something can be made of it?"

"Yes. A shawl. And when I wear it I will turn into a shrieking harpy to warn Fenris that I am not in the mood for his canny humor."

"Not precisely what I had in mind," Orana says primly, "but whatever the mistress wishes."

"Don't be tolerant."

"As you wish."

"Orana," Hawke says, and bursts into helpless laughter. Orana smiles again and pats her shoulder, and just as Hawke thinks they might have flattered Fortune enough to earn a quiet afternoon, the bell at the front door sounds an energetic little jingle of catastrophe.

"Mistress," Orana begins carefully, but Hawke is already waving her on.

"I know, I know. Go let her in."

Orana goes, and Hawke sets to the unwelcome and unwieldy task of extracting herself from the plush armchair. It takes two heaves and a hefty shove—barely avoiding an upset of the precious cheeses—but by the time Orana returns with the newest noblewoman in tow she is upright, one hand beneath her ludicrous stomach, demure as she knows how to be in a man's shirt and loose-waisted trousers and no shoes set against her guest's fine yellow-and-red silk. "Lady Busson. I'm so glad to see you."

"No, you're not," Lady Busson says, the white hair loosely piled atop her head still barely reaching Hawke's shoulder. Without waiting for an invitation, she settles into the armchair on the other side of the daintily-carved round table. "You're tired and you should go lie down. But I came by anyway."

"Well, that's…kind of you," Hawke says uncertainly, sinking back into the chair with much less effort than she'd had to muster to leave it. Until now her conversations with Lady Busson had been limited to a few pointed interactions at public galas; her first impression had been of a short, round, elderly woman with no tolerance for nonsense and a sharp—if honest—tongue, and so far she has seen little to reverse that opinion.

"It isn't kind at all. It's blatant curiosity, and now that you're home from the wars for a little while I'm taking the opportunity to indulge it."

"Thank you for the warning, then," Hawke says evenly, and lifts the little silver platter at her elbow. "Cheese?"

"No, I don't want any cheese. I want to know who the father of that child is."

Hawke stiffens, astonishment and something of affront snapping lightning-sharp up her spine. "Excuse me?"

"Don't be dense, girl. Everyone knows you're expecting; it's all the world's talked about for months. Why do you think so many of them are showing up here unannounced?"

"Not genuine concern for my well-being? I'm wounded."

"Don't be flippant. They're eating their own tongues to figure out who the father is. The rumor's going around that it's that tall, dark elf that's always in and out of here with a face like thunder, but the idiots who trade on this sort of thing can't seem to decide what to believe about it. Half of them want you in some sort of sordid fling with the hired muscle; the other half can't stop swooning about true love." Lady Busson lifts her teacup from its saucer with a fine, knobbed hand and sips delicately from its edge. "I think the whole lot of 'em are fools."

"That certainly excuses your candor," Hawke snaps, too rattled for good taste. If this were Isabela she would understand this directness—but this is an elderly noblewoman she has spoken to maybe three times in her life, and she has been trapped in this room with too many selfish, gossiping, nosy women over the last week. Here, in her own house, Hawke refuses to let one more of them trample over both her pride and Fenris's privacy in the supposed name of neighborly interest. "You've won my heart. All my secrets are yours."

Brown eyes turn to her, sharp and too clear for this woman's age; then she sets her cup on its saucer and the saucer on the table and folds her dark fingers in her lap. "Apologies," she says without preamble. "I forgot you weren't one of the feathery mincing ninnies I've watched grow up here over the last sixty years. They were raised by ninnies, of course, so they have some excuse, but you were raised by your mother and Leandra always had brains." She snorts. "Romantic streak a mile wide, but the girl could think."

"You—knew my mother?"

"Isn't that what I just said? Knew your mother when she was a child; knew your uncle, too, and what a sad copper he's turned out to be, eh?"

"Gamlen isn't that bad," says Hawke, hardly knowing what she means, hardly comprehending how this conversation has so shifted under her feet. "He's got his own daughter, you know."

"Does he? More luck to him. He needs it." Lady Busson leans forward, age-softened elbows coming to rest on her knees. "I didn't mean that about your elf. I haven't paid mind to the tongue-waggers here since I married, but it seems they've taught me a few things without my realizing."

"Fenris is his own man," Hawke mutters, jamming an embroidered pillow behind her back. "He makes his own choices."

Lady Busson sucks in a breath through her teeth. "He's not playing blackguard, is he?"

Hawke blinks, startled. "What? No! Of course not!"

"Good. Had me worried, there. Heard you two were getting married after the baby's born. Didn't want to have to suddenly start distrusting some of my most reliable sources."

"I'm so pleased to know we haven't disappointed you." Hawke rubs her fingers over the base of her skull, struggling to waylay the headache forming there. "You know, most of the other ladies kind enough to visit did at least try for subtlety in their inquiries about my private life."

"Did it work?"

"Oddly enough, it didn't." A corner of Hawke's mouth quirks up unwillingly. "But considering they seemed just as offended by my lover as my manners, I suppose I wasn't inclined to generosity."

"Lady Rolin didn't approve much, did she?"

"Oh, she danced around the subject for ages. Very elegant, very circuitous. And then at last she asked what my mother would think of me running around unwed and pregnant—and by an elf, no less—and I told her that considering my mother had run off to Ferelden with a penniless apostate, I rather thought she'd be touched I took after her."

Lady Busson snorts again and makes a rude gesture in the rough direction of Lady Rolin's manse. "Nitwit. I'd say she means well, but she doesn't. Wish I could've been there when Leandra gave her a piece of her mind after you first took up with that elf."

Hawke blinks, unbalanced. "When I—what?"

Lady Busson looks at her, hard, then leans forward in her chair. Her slippered feet barely touch the ground. "Happened several years ago. Lady Rolin saw you and your elf necking outside your estate. Came over to warn your mother the next day about you running wild now that you'd got a taste of real money. Wasn't there myself, which is a pity, but the way I heard it Leandra took the teacup and the scone right out of her hand and threw her out on the stoop." Lady Busson smiles, something in her eyes rather warm. "Told her she was perfectly happy with how you'd turned out and the choices you were making, and she'd be pleased as punch if Lady Rolin'd keep her beaky nose out of your romances."

"My mother," Hawke starts, but she is unable to hold Lady Busson's gaze and looks down instead at her hands twisted in her lap. Her heart is hot and floating and aching all at once. "She did not use the word 'beaky.'"

"Eh, probably not. Had the right idea, though. Not their business anyway."

She laughs despite herself. "Oh, and it's yours?"

"Of course not," Lady Busson says, surprised. "I told you it was curiosity."

Hawke props her elbow on the cushioned armrest, drops her chin into the palm of her hand. "At least you're frank about it. It's when they pretend I'm not throwing oil on the sputtering flames of their rumors I start to get cross. But I won't lie, Lady Busson; the pointed questions are a little off-putting at first."

"Of course," Lady Busson says, waving a hand in dismissal. "I wouldn't want to talk to me either. I'm very rude. But let me give you this before you go upstairs and rest. I can see even from here you're tiring out."

"Please, you really don't need to—"

"You'll take it and you'll like it," Lady Busson tells her severely, and pulls from a little leather satchel at her feet a thick, well-worn book. The cover has been dyed deep blue, heavy silver filigree winding up each side and down the binding, and as her dark brown hands shift on the cover Hawke can see that the loop-work title is Orlesian.

"I'm sorry," she says, taking the book despite herself. It is heavy and the corners have been worn from years of reading, and for a moment she can almost see Lady Busson as she was, younger, some quiet grandchild on her ample lap. "I don't read Orlesian very well."

"It's a translation," Lady Busson says crisply, and as Hawke flips through the book she can see that not only has the book indeed been written in the trade tongue, but lovely, colored print-block pictures have been set across each chapter's title page. "It's a book of fairy tales. Orlesian stories from the older generations, before we started giving all our children happy endings to make them soft."

Hawke touches an image of a tall, sad woman standing at the bottom of a deep earthen shaft. "This is beautiful. I have a book from Ferelden that's similar but I've never even heard of some of these—Lady Busson, I can't take this from your family."

"Twaddle. Your mother's mother gave that book to me as a child when my parents brought me here. Meant to give it to your mother when you lot came back to the city, but I never made the time. Then she was gone. Now it's time it went back to your family."

"I—" Hawke starts, but she can think of absolutely nothing to say, even when Lady Busson pushes up from her chair.

"Anyway, it's yours now. Get your elf to do the characters; he's got the voice for 'em."

"Of course," Hawke says numbly, then lets out a sudden laugh. "Ridiculous. I can't imagine him doing that."

Lady Busson smiles at her, their eyes almost level like this. "I think you'd be surprised what fatherhood can do to a man. Don't get up. I know my way to the door."

"I know that, but—Orana—"

"Have a nice nap," Lady Busson says, and then without looking back she disappears into the hallway, and a moment later Hawke hears the front door shut sharply behind her.

Orana comes bustling in a few seconds later, pausing at the empty chair. "She's gone, Mistress?"

"Like a hurricane," Hawke says, shaking her head, staring down at the thick book still perched on the edge of her knees. "What do you think?" she asks her stomach softly, touching the worn edges of the cover as Orana begins to straighten the arrayed infant gifts on the other side of the sitting room. "Can you get your father to talk in silly voices for your own amusement?"

As if in response, the child's foot nudges against her ribs, and Hawke smiles.

Anything's possible, she supposes.

—

Hawke can't remember the last time she heard Bodahn so excited. "Messere!" he shouts again, and she thinks it's a good thing she was halfway down the stairs from the library already, because this sounds rather urgent. She pulls the heavy scarlet blanket she'd been wrapped in closer around her shoulders and increases her waddling speed as best she can; at eight months her ability to hurry has drastically diminished, but she does her best as she gains the study floor and makes her way towards the foyer.

"Bodahn?" she calls. "I'm in here—I'm coming—what's wrong?"

The study door flies open.

Her eyes are trained low, expecting a dwarf; instead she sees tall metal boots, strong thighs and heavy armor, a blue tabard held in place by a sturdy leather belt. Her gaze lifts, slowly, drunkenly, across a broad chest (broader than she remembers), broader shoulders (the size of a barn, like he's always been), blue eyes so like hers in a face made leaner by hard living and harder grief—and the most ridiculous, idiotic little scruff of a scraggly beard clinging to the skin beneath his lower lip.

"Carver," Hawke says, her eyes watering even as she grins, "what the Void have you done to your face?"

"Good to see you too, sister," he says, smirking broadly, and makes it all of three steps into the room before Hawke spreads her arms wide for an embrace and the blanket drops away from her shoulders.

Carver stops. Looks hard at her stomach. Blinks. Looks again.

"Carver?" comes a new, surprised voice from the doorway, and before Hawke can say a word, Carver swivels on his heel and, with all the easy strength of a farmboy turned sword-wielding soldier, he levels Fenris with one solid punch to the mouth.

—

"What are you even doing here?" Hawke asks later that evening, once explanations have been distributed and Carver has shed his armor and Fenris has declined her healing magic, caught sight of his rapidly-swelling cheek in a glass, and grudgingly decided to accept it. "I thought the Wardens were supposed to be moving south."

"We were." Carver shrugs, shifting sideways on the study's sofa so that there is room for her equally-broad figure beside him. "Then a bad snowstorm hit and cut off the roads, and I asked for a leave since we weren't going anywhere anyway. Although," he adds darkly, gesturing at her stomach, "I wasn't expecting this."

"What, nervous about being an uncle? I hear the first one's the hardest."

"Maker, don't joke about that yet."

Hawke shakes her head, relenting. "Didn't you get any of my letters?"

"None of the important ones, it seems." He glances at her enormous stomach again, then rolls his head back on his shoulders to glare through the walls at her room where Fenris is cleaning up. "I might be a Warden, but I can still take him behind the woodshed if you want."

"I appreciate the thought, but no beatings are required at the moment. Ask me again when I'm in labor, I might give a different answer."

Carver stares at her for a long second, then shudders head to toe. "Another mental image burned into my brain forever. Thank you so much, sister."

"Aren't homecomings the best?" Hawke laughs, adjusting herself against the pillows, and tries to remember the last time she sat like this with her brother: easy, content, no death and little sorrow between them. "I'm glad you're here, anyway. How long will you be staying?"

"Two weeks," he says, then looks suddenly nervous. "If you'll have me."

"Of course," Hawke says, smacking his arm; the baby shifts at that exact moment, a fisted hand pressing just behind her navel, and Hawke swallows down a little gasp at the sensation.

"What's wrong? Are you all right?"

"Yes," she says shortly—and holds out her hand, palm-up. After a brief hesitation Carver puts his hand in hers (another familiarity shocking in its strangeness, she thinks), and she guides it to rest on the swell of her stomach where the child pushes. "Can you feel that?"

"I can feel—" he starts, his brow furrowed in concentration; then he yanks his hand back as comprehension dawns and shakes it out in midair. "That is so—gah!"

She lifts an eyebrow. "Choose your words carefully, dear brother."

He flings his hands out, groping for words. "You have a little—person inside you! Growing inside you! My sister! Isn't that—odd?"

"You and I once fought a giant monster made out of reanimated magical rocks almost ten miles under the surface of the world, and you think this is odd."

"Oh, shut up," Carver grumbles. He swallows, glances at her for permission, and tentatively replaces his palm on her rounded stomach. The baby's fist is still there; at his touch it moves sideways, dragging down towards her waist, and Carver follows the motion with something near wonder in his face.

"Goodness, Carver," Hawke murmurs, watching his fingers move over her house-robe. "Your hands are ridiculous. They're like dinner platters with sausages coming off them."

"Only because Fenris has such dainty little fingers," he retorts, though he doesn't raise his voice as he pulls his hand away at last. "I could snap them like sticks."

"I wouldn't recommend it," comes a dry voice from the doorway, and Hawke looks up to see Fenris entering the study at last, scrubbing at his still-damp hair with a white towel. His cheek is almost entirely healed save the barest traces of a bruise, and Hawke reminds herself to touch it up a little more thoroughly before bed.

"Only because my sister likes you," Carver says flatly, and rolls his eyes as Fenris takes a seat in one of the leather chairs closer to the fire. "Though that isn't always the best endorsement."

"Thanks a lot," Hawke grumbles.

"I learned from the best."

She purses her lips. "And now you're using it on her."

Carver thumps her on the forehead with a finger, grinning. "The letters just aren't the same, are they?"

"They never are," Hawke agrees, and sighs as his arm comes behind her head.

They sit in companionable silence for several minutes before Carver stirs at last. "So, is everything…ready here?"

"As much as it can be," Hawke murmurs, and Fenris nods. "We're…all the baby things are in Mother's old room. The, ah. The cradle, all of that. It—seemed a better thing to do with it than letting it stay a mausoleum."

Eventually, Carver's sudden stiffness begins to relax against her. "I see," he says slowly. "That's…a good thing, I think."

There's a doll in there too, soft and small and smiling, purchased with a portion of the coin Fenris won from her once in a night of Wicked Grace. He had presented it to her awkwardly, embarrassed and determined all at once, though he had seemed to understand the sudden tears and clutching of the doll to her heart had been less from grief and more to his choice being perfect. She says at last, "I thought so."

"And what about the two of you? Ready to be mummy and daddy?"

"Of course not," Hawke says, laughing, even as Fenris says, "Yes."

Her laughter dies away. Hawke looks at Fenris across the room as he pulls the towel free of his hair; one black eyebrow lifts in challenge, the corner of his mouth curving into a faint smirk, and Hawke lets out a sudden, startled breath. "Maybe more ready than I thought," she says softly, and Carver snorts.

"And I have two weeks of this to look forward to. Wonderful."

Hawke rolls her eyes. "If it's going to bother you, go visit someone else. Merrill always loves visitors."

"I'm going to bed," Carver says abruptly, pushing up from the couch with so little warning Hawke nearly topples over into his vacant seat. "Don't, ah. Don't tell Merrill I'm here yet. I'll tell her myself."

"Of course. Good night, brother," Hawke says, almost entirely keeping back her grin, but as Carver's back disappears through the open doorway she can't help but call after him: "And shave that terrible beard!"

—

"I am huge," Hawke says meditatively. "I am a landship. Come to me, elves; I will carry you to the homeland without you even bumping elbows."

"At least two could fit comfortably," Merrill agrees, tying off the last row of the baby blanket she has been knitting. "But it does seem to lack something without the sails."

—

"Here you are."

"Here I am," Hawke mumbles into her arms, not bothering to raise her head. She knows what she looks like, her hair undone and uncombed, clad only in a long loose black shirt, bent over the writing desk in her room with a dozen half-finished letters scattered around her in the afternoon sunlight. And yet, she cannot make herself care in the slightest. "I was being a responsible Champion. Then I got tired."

Fenris's hand settles on the nape of her neck. "You did not have to do this now."

"Had to be done sometime." She heaves a sigh, spreads her knees a little wider to accommodate the weighty girth of her unborn child. "I wish this little idiot would take a hint from that. Prompt, decisive action, that's what we need."

"It's a little early, yet."

"You, serah, do not have to sling this thing around morning, noon, and night." Hawke pushes her face a little further into the crook of her elbow, unable to keep back the prickle of unexpected tears. "Fenris, I am so sick of being pregnant."

The hand on her neck moves lower, Fenris's thumb beginning to dig circles into the muscles between her shoulders. "You have not been sleeping well."

"I'm sure that's not helping."

Fenris's other hand comes up to join the first, his thumbs probing down either side of her spine in long, deep strokes. Methodically, his fingers work all the way to the small of her back; there he lingers, rubbing out the worst of the aches that have plagued her for two months and more. Hawke groans despite herself, shifting her head on her arms so that her spine lies straight; when he is finished at her waist Fenris begins his way up again, his fingers strong and deep and sure and not dainty in the slightest, whatever Carver might think. The circling pressure moves from her shoulders to her neck, teasing out the tension that has been hiding at the base of her skull, and this time when Hawke groans she does not miss the soft chuckle Fenris gives in response.

"I don't even care," Hawke mutters into the desk, her eyes clenched shut. "Laugh all you want. Just don't stop."

"As you wish," Fenris tells her, his voice low and amused, and he doesn't.

Between Fenris's extraordinary fingers and the warmth of the afternoon sun, Hawke loses track of the hour. When she raises her head at last it is as blearily as a child, her vision hazy, every muscle in her back and neck rolling loose with the release of tension. She blinks up at Fenris, lazy and sated; he stands above her with crossed arms and an entirely too-satisfied smile on his face, and she can't even find the energy to begrudge it.

"You've done that before," she says without thinking, and it is not until his smile dims that she realizes. Idiot!

But he seems neither angered nor embittered by whatever memory he keeps of this; instead he says only, "By choice, this time," and lifts one shoulder in a shrug.

"Come here," she says, and hooks a finger into his jerkin between clasps until he bends to kiss her. His mouth is—hot, and eager, and despite the comfortable lassitude still spiraling through her limbs Hawke feels something in her spark to a deeper alertness. "Come here," she says again when he draws back, her voice thicker, more inviting, and without releasing his shirt she pushes up from the desk chair and tugs him backwards in the rough direction of the bed.

"You are tired," Fenris tells her, his mouth on the skin beneath her ear, his hands twisting into her black shirt, his weight moving to cage her against the side of the mattress.

"Not that tired," Hawke starts, but the words vanish into a gasp as his teeth close gently over the base of her neck. "Of course, if you're busy—"

Fenris smirks, a hot curling thing that spikes an answering call deep in the pit of her belly, and abruptly Hawke finds herself on her back on the rumpled coverlet, her head almost entirely centered on one of her softer pillows. Fenris pauses only a moment to pull his shirt over his head; then, bare to the waist, he kneels beside her on the bed and drops his mouth to hers.

"See," Hawke says between kisses, her fingers tangling in Fenris's hair, "this is the problem."

He moves his mouth to her throat, his fingers to the top buttons of her shirt. "What is, Hawke?"

"This. One smooth move and you think you're clever; one good—oh, damn—"

She arches back on the bed, Fenris's hand warm and deliberate as it slides beneath her shirt to her breast. Distantly, she thinks it is good she is not so sore as she once was—this would be rather less pleasant, otherwise—but somehow between his efforts and hers they manage to get the rest of her buttons free, manage to extricate her arms from the sudden constriction of her clothing. Fenris does not even falter, the same intensity that drives the rest of his life focused on her here with almost frightening purpose, but Hawke has no such defense against distractions as she looks down the curve of her enormous stomach, and despite Fenris's lips doing all sorts of interesting things to her collarbone, she cannot help but rake one hand through her unbound hair and sigh.

Fenris stills, looks up. "Are you well?"

"Of course," Hawke says, suddenly embarrassed, and when he leans up to kiss her she curls one hand around the back of his neck, keeping his mouth to hers until she is quite certain she has assured him of exactly how all right she is. "I was just wondering if I'll ever see my feet again."

"Ah," Fenris murmurs after a moment; he kisses her once more, then presses his lips to the rise of her cheek, gently, and the afternoon sunlight dances down the lyrium etched into his back as he sits up.

Hawke props herself on one elbow. "Where are you going?"

"To remind you of your feet," Fenris says over his bare shoulder, and plucks her ankle from the bed.

Even so, it is not until his knuckles begin to dig into the arch of her foot that Hawke realizes what he means to do. This does not last so long as earlier, the both of them too eager and impatient to wait; still, Fenris is nothing if not thorough, his fingers digging under the balls of each foot, down the arches, around the base of her heel where the swelling is worst. By the end of it Hawke is panting, sweating; Fenris is little better, his eyes dark and intent as he moves with quick, spare motions to lie alongside her again.

This kiss is nothing like the earlier ones, nothing of gentleness or composure left in either of them. Hawke cannot get him close enough; if he cannot pin her to the bed as she wishes she will have the next best thing, and she drags the tips of her fingernails up his sides, along his shoulders as he slides closer beside her. "You always did have clever fingers," she mutters into his mouth, smiling despite herself.

Fenris draws back, holds her gaze. One hand comes to splay hot over the curve of her naked hip. "Is that a request?" he asks, his voice so deep it rumbles in her chest.

Hawke blinks; then his meaning catches hold and a shiver ripples its way down her spine, raising gooseflesh along her chest and arms. "I'd be happy to return the favor," she says, husky enough that she barely recognizes it.

Fenris brushes his mouth over her ear. "As you wish," he murmurs, smirk obvious even in his voice, and then his hand slides lower, and Hawke throws an arm across her eyes and laughs.

They do not speak again for a long time.