Promises: Chapter Thirty

Disclaimer: Dragon Age and all assorted characters/places/etc belong to Bioware, not me.

After spending the entire day at the inn, with Fenris the only one of the two venturing outside their room and then just for food, they were both eager to step outside and get some sunlight the next day. Hawke insisted on returning to the market yet again, saying that they would need supplies for the journey. Fenris didn't argue with her because the mageling was right. They couldn't stay in Wycombe forever, with her at risk at being discovered by templars while slave hunters would inevitably come after him. When they left, they needed to have their packs filled with supplies because neither of them knew when they would next get the chance to buy food again.

Fenris stayed behind Hawke as the mageling expertly navigated her way about the market. She still moved a touch slower than usual to his eye, but she was mostly recovered. Almost without thinking, his gaze lingered on the sway of her hips as she walked. Hawke was a tempting beyond words, and Fenris feared that the more he had her, the more he would crave her.

Hawke started her rounds by purchasing dried meat and fresh bread for their packs. Confidence rang in her voice as she expertly negotiated the price down. The effect of the mageling's smile was devastating, and Fenris was pretty sure she knew it from the way she wielded it effectively. The effect only redoubled when they hit the vegetable stalls for Hawke was ecstatic over the sight of so much produce freshly harvested from the fields.

"Turnips!" the mageling exclaimed and bounded over to a nearby stall. She eagerly began digging through them, picking out the best of the lot while chatting with the stall's owner about all the things one could make with turnips. Hawke's enthusiasm was contagious. While Fenris wasn't particularly fond of her cooking, a faint smile crossed his lips as he watched Hawke prattle on and on.

He trailed after Hawke, his hands full with her purchases, as she picked her way through the different produce offerings. It was a difficult position for him. Staying behind Hawke meant that he had little to occupy his thoughts aside from the way her hips swayed while she walked in an almost hypnotizing manner. He noticed not a few men also staring, however, and that was something he did not appreciate. Fenris stepped closer to Hawke, feeling the need to keep his mageling in reach.

Hawke looked up at him over her shoulder. "Oh good," she said. She shoved a full basket into his hands to add to the rest. Then her brow furrowed. "Are you getting tired? I'm almost done here, I swear."

He shook his head. "It is fine," he replied. "Though I do wonder how we'll manage to eat all of this before it goes bad."

She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh I'm not worried about that. I'm sure we'll work up an appetite."

His eyebrows shot up. He hadn't expected such innuendo from Hawke, but then the mageling was full of surprises. "I see. You have some ideas how that might happen no doubt."

Hawke cocked her head to one side and gave him a puzzled look. "Ideas?" Suddenly her face turned bright red and she shook her head furiously no. "I…I didn't mean it like that!" she cried. "It's just that…we'll be out on the road again…I meant that with all the walking we'll be doing, we will naturally be starving by the time dinner rolls around."

That was more like his mageling. A fiercely blushing Hawke was one that was charming and adorable indeed. He found that the opportunity to tease her was too tempting to pass up. "There are other forms of exercise we could indulge in," he told her.

Though her face was still aflame, Hawke wasn't one to back down. "Something tells me that you're thinking of one particular form of exercise." The way she tossed her head at him made him hard, made him want to drop everything he was carrying so he could clasp her to him and never let her go.

A sudden wave of possessiveness washed over Fenris as he realized that he could do exactly that. Hawke was his, in a way, and had been for a very long time. For better or worse, she had tied her fate to his. She was bound to him even as he was bound to her. It was almost not fair to the mageling who clearly deserved the best of men rather than him, but she had made her choice and he would not let another take her from him.

"Let's head back to the inn now," he told her gruffly.

Hawke being Hawke couldn't just agree to that. "Why?" she asked. "I thought you weren't tired."

"Because," he said, his voice dropping a register, "I can't very well kiss you the way I want to kiss you in the middle of the market with my hands full of turnips."

"Oh!" Hawke's face was flushed again, only this time embarrassment was not the sole cause. No, Fenris could tell very well that his mageling was excited at his suggestion from the way she easily acquiesced to returning back to their inn. She stuck close to his side, so close that if his hands were not full, he could wrap an arm around her waist and keep her pressed to him as they walked. He briefly considered switching everything he carried to one hand but decided against it because they would have to stop for him to do so.

When they arrived, she turned towards the staircase to head towards their room but he stopped her. "Let's go to the dining room first, Hawke," he said, his green eyes locking with her blue. "We should order something because I am certain we will work up quite an appetite."

They took breakfast at the inn the next day, one final meal before they hit the road. Fenris had ordered more than their usual and not just because of all of the appetite-inducing activities they had got up to the night before. He knew that after they left, it would be some time before they stayed at an inn again. That meant when meal time came around either he would have to do the cooking or he would have to eat Hawke's cooking. He wasn't sure which option was less palatable to him. While Hawke's food was tasteless at best, cooking wasn't a chore that Fenris enjoyed at least no when they were on the road. He preferred to rest after a long day's worth of travel, rather than slaving over an open fire.

"You haven't been listening to a word I've said, have you?" Hawke's voice was mildly chiding.

"Apologies," Fenris said. "You were saying?"

The mageling issued a long-suffering sigh before answering. "I asked if you were done with that," she told him, pointing at an almost empty platter in front of him.

He anticipated her question and pushed the platter towards her. "It's yours," he replied. The corner of his mouth twitched up. "Ravenous much? Though I suppose it's no surprise seeing how much…exercise you got last night."

Two pink dots appeared on Hawke's cheeks. "You're one to talk. I've never seen anyone put away so much food. And you must have been really lost in your thoughts because I had my fill twenty minutes ago." She pushed the platter to the other side of the table. Hawke then reached into the pack by her side and pulled out a map. She carefully unrolled the map in front of them, but despite her best efforts, the map started to roll back up. Frowning Hawke picked up the remaining plates and placed them on the four corners of the map to hold it down.

"There!" she said, proudly brushing her hands together. "What I had been saying was that we should think about where we're headed next."

Fenris couldn't resist the urge to tease his mageling a little bit. "But I know where we're going," he told her, resisting the grin tugging at his lips.

She gave him a look. "And where would that be?"

"Away from here," he replied, carefully keeping his face blank even as he secretly cheered inside about being able to use the mageling's own words against her.

Hawke wrinkled her nose. "You think you're funny, don't you? Well you better watch it. I might decide that Zev's my favorite elf after all."

Hawke's words had no bite to them. Fenris knew he had no cause to worry at all. "Is that so?" he asked.

The mageling sighed again. "Well no, not really. But then you already knew that." She tapped the map in front of her. "Anyway to get back to my original subject, I think we should just follow the river, at least as far west as Tantervale. After that, we can head to Wildervale and then Kirkwall if necessary."

"You don't mind going to Kirkwall?" Fenris remembered how hesitant his mageling had been about going to the city renowned as a templar stronghold.

"Well it is the only city that I know has someone who has news about my family. Or rather may have news. Mother never seemed to be that close with my uncle, but they still exchanged letters at least once a year."

"If you're so keen on avoiding the place, wouldn't it make sense to stop at Starkhaven?" asked Fenris.

"Oh but we are! Potentially that is. It's on the Minanter too." Hawke pointed out to rather large dot on the map. "If we can, I would rather avoid it. Partly because of templars again but also because I don't think you would appreciate their cuisine."

"Oh?" Fenris' interest was piqued by that comment. Considering he could down Hawke's food easily now, he wondered what could be so bad about Starkhaven food that Hawke thought that they should avoid it.

"Apparently one of their specialties is fish and egg pie, made with not one but three fish, eggs, and cream." Hawke smirked up at him. "Need I go on? There's this dish called haggis too that's—"

Fenris shuddered at her description. That was a drawback to traveling along a river. Inevitably people would turn to it as a source of food. "That's enough. I would rather not see my breakfast again."

"Oh, I'll second that sentiment," Hawke murmured.

He ignored his mageling's remark. "I understand your objections—and even agree that they have merit—but if it's on our way, then we should stop there. It's a major trading hub. Finding someone who has heard about your town much less your family is like searching for a needle in a haystack. It behooves us to be thorough in the ground we cover. We can't simply pass up the largest city in the Free Marches simply because its inhabitants have an atrocious lack of taste."

Hawke laughed merrily. "I guess I can't argue with that," she said. "If you're willing to brave the less than stellar food choices, then I can brave a few templars. Besides I'll have you there with me to watch out for me. You won't let anyone take me away."

"No," he said, "I won't." He had never spoken truer words. Hawke was his mageling, and he would not suffer having her torn from him. Any fool who tried to part them risked being parted from his own life.

While Hawke and Fenris soon fell back into many of their old habits once they were finally back on the road, they picked up some new habits as well. When they stopped for the evening that first night, Hawke was ready to volunteer to cook but Fenris preempted her by asking her to set up camp while he started dinner. Surprisingly Hawke didn't protest but rather eagerly turned her attention to that task after she lit the fire for him.

Fenris didn't pay much attention to Hawke as she went about setting up their camp for the evening. The meat had just been rehydrated to his liking when he heard Hawke say softly behind him, "Do you need any help? I'm done with setting everything up."

Hawke's voice had a nervous tone to it as though something was wrong. Fenris whirled around and looked at his mageling critically. She was shuffling around her feet, and there was a pinched, anxious look to her face. He had no idea what she was worried about, and so he scanned the camp for clues as to what troubled her.

His eyes widened upon catching sight of their bedrolls. Fenris normally slept near Hawke. That way he could keep better watch over his mageling. However his mageling had lined them up side by side so they formed one giant bedroll for the two of them to share. He immediately grasped why Hawke did it—after all they had been sharing a bed over the last couple days—but he hadn't expected his mageling to take such initiative.

"Well? Can I help with anything?" Hawke prodded him, her eyes downcast.

While he didn't particularly need any help, Fenris was clever enough to realize that if he refused Hawke's offer, she might think that he was upset about what she had done even though that was far from the truth. Though he hadn't thought much about it, Fenris found that he rather liked keeping his mageling even closer at hand. So to ease her doubts, the elf relented and asked Hawke to help him with the vegetables.

In addition to their new sleeping arrangement, cooking together with Hawke also became a new routine they shared. Hawke liked to pepper him with questions from start to finish. At first that was annoying, but then Fenris realized that Hawke was learning to improve her cooking based on his answers. It got easier to deal with her questions once he knew that she was actually taking his advice. As time went on, he began enjoying cooking with Hawke. The fact that preparing meals went faster when there were two sets of hands available was just an added benefit.

"It looks like that stew is done now," Fenris told Hawke one evening as he watched her mind the pot. He had agreed to let her take the lead and prepare one of her signature dishes, turnip stew.

"You think so?" Hawke tilted her head and poked at one of the turnips. "The turnips are still too hard," she claimed. "They should be softer, like mush."

Fenris closed his eyes and silently counted to ten. Sometimes cooking with Hawke really tried his patience. "The turnips don't have to be that soft, Hawke," he said. "That's why we have teeth—to chew."

The mageling's eyes were unfocused as she considered the truth of his words. Then Hawke's mouth opened, and she let out a small gasp. "Oh! That's true. But if we didn't, then that would be different." She clasped her hands together. "So that's why old Barlin always insisted on cooking everything until it was so soft that it fell apart. He didn't have all that many any teeth and so he couldn't eat it otherwise."

"Old Barlin?" Fenris questioned.

"Oh, Barlin runs the inn at Lothering. He pretends like he's a crotchety old man, but he was always willing to share what he knew about cooking." She bit her lip. "One of the things he told me was that in a stew everything should be the same consistency and color, which means mushy and gray." Hawke smiled up at him as she put out the fire with a chilly blast. "But I'm willing to try things your way. I just have to remember you like things undercooked for future reference."

It was on the tip of Fenris' tongue to reply that he simply preferred food not to be overcooked, but he held that comment back. Instead he noted, "You truly enjoy cooking, don't you, Hawke?"

The mageling nodded her head. "Yes. It's a nice change of pace to do something that's creative and useful rather than destructive. My talents tend to lean to towards that."

"Indeed," Fenris agreed. "Though that's not a bad thing when we're facing down slavers and bandits."

"No, it's not. But those skills aren't really much use when you're living on a farm." A shadow crossed Hawke's face. "I loved it though. I think it sometimes drove my brother Carver mad, the hard work and the slow pace of life, but I loved being able to enjoy each day."

Fenris cleared his throat. He didn't know exactly what to say to that, and so he focused on getting them to finish preparing dinner. Later that evening, however, he noticed that Hawke cuddled closer to him than usual. It wasn't much comfort, but he pressed a kiss against the top of her head as his arms went around her.

While Fenris enjoyed both sleeping with Hawke and cooking with Hawke, there were some changes that weren't so easy to deal with. One of them was his memories. He was beginning to get flashes of his past more and more often and almost always after he had slept with Hawke. It was unnerving to remember something only to forget it minutes later, but over time, there were some that stayed. Simple, hazy things, such as a woman's face and a warm summer day, but it was more than he had before. Fenris wasn't certain if he would ever recover the bulk of his memories, and that was a painful thought. However, as he had decided back in Wycombe, whatever grief he felt at those moments were easily surpassed by the joy that Hawke brought into his life.

Author's note: Sorry for taking so long to update. Transition chapters aren't easy for me to write to begin with, but RL not cooperating just made things worse. Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long. Anyway my thanks to all of you still reading this and especially those of you kind enough to review. :D