When they arrived, the dim torchlight in Hawke's chamber (as they were beginning to think of it) had burnt out and the cavern was pitch black. They had to start a fire with the wood outside and carry it in to relight the torches.

Fenris startled out of a light sleep. He was still sitting with his back to the wall, but now there were several dragonling corpses at his feet, blood on his sword, and an open wound on his leg.

"Andraste's tits, Broody," Varric called, earning a glare from Sebastian. "Didn't I tell you they would come crawling back in the night?"

He had decided to play it casual, as though this were just another visit to Fenris's decrepit mansion. In all honesty, it wasn't really so different. Dust, blood, bodies, stale air: basically the usual. He kicked aside one of the little corpses and sat himself down next to the elf, pulling a skin of water out of his jacket.

"Here, have a drink," he offered.

Fenris took it from him reluctantly, but drained most of the flask in one go. It had been well over a day since he'd had any water to drink.

He had to clear his throat to speak, he was so parched. "Thank you."

"Keep it." The dwarf gestured to Sebastian to join them. "So, I heard you want to climb down into the Bone Pit. I gotta say, Elf, you don't look up for it right now."

Though he said nothing, Fenris knew that this was true. His strength was waning, and he was not that good of a climber to begin with. Perhaps if he slept... but the wretched dragon spawn always came crawling before he could really rest.

Sebastian offered some healing salve for his wounds, and he took it silently.

"We thought we'd keep you company for a little while," Varric continued. "I'm sorry I left the other day. I shouldn't have left you alone."

Fenris coughed to clear his throat again, as he distractedly cleaned the worst of his wounds. "Making sure I don't fling myself off a cliff?"

"Something like that."

"If you wish to help, you could find a way down the crevasse. With some rope, perhaps you could lower me down, to see if I could see her."

"This is madness, Fenris..." Sebastian implored him. "There's been no sign of Hawke, none at all! Surely if she were alive, we would have heard something, seen something? You need to accept that she is dead."

Fenris smirked without looking up from his wound. "Do you not see the irony? You require evidence to believe Hawke is alive? Whatever happened to your faith?"

"There is faith and there is delusion, when the truth is too difficult to bear."

The elf could not help snorting at that. It was a nearly perfect reversal of an argument that he and the Chantry brother had held many times before.

"What if I am right?" he insisted. "Then you would have abandoned her when she needed us most."

Varric broke in. "Nobody's abandoning anybody. We're going to stay here for the night, and see what we see. All right?"

Fenris didn't know whether to be glad for the company or resent the intrusion. They seemed to have no intention of leaving or of helping him to find Hawke. They wanted to talk, which was somewhat of a relief after the oppressive silence of the cavern, and harmless in itself.

Unfortunately, Varric could talk A LOT. And his choice of subject was a painful one.

He told stories about Sadie Hawke. For hours.

Such as the story of the first time he had met her, brawling in the Lowtown market with some poor bastard who had called her a smelly Fereldan dog. "Call me ugly, fine," she snarled at him, "but insult the mabari and I'll pound you into the ground." Which she proceeded to do with great enthusiasm. Varric helped her to evade the city guard when they came running and they were the best of friends ever after.

He talked about her unflagging enthusiasm and her undying loyalty to those few who were lucky enough to call her a friend. How she loved to fight and to drink and to argue, and to argue while fighting or while drinking. He spoke of her protective nature, how she had fallen into and then embraced her role as defender of the defenseless. Her short temper and her stubbornness and how damned hard it was to get her to listen to you once she had made up her mind. Her disregard, at times, for other people's wishes, when she thought she knew better. How she could shrug off her own tragedies and fight like hell for everyone else's, her own way of coping with a broken heart.

All of it, the good and the bad. Varric would never run out of stories about her. He could always come up with more. And they would all, essentially, be true.

Fenris knew exactly what Varric was trying to do. He was trying to trigger some sort of outpouring of grief that would force him to accept Hawke's death, which was somehow supposed to help him.

Instead the warrior tried to take comfort from his stories, in Hawke's strength and resilience and her ability to take losses in stride and keep going.

Hawke is a survivor. She will survive. She always does.

At last Varric seemed to be coming to the end of his considerable storytelling gifts. He coughed dryly, searching the pockets of his coat. "If only I'd brought more flasks. Hell, I should have brought liquor. Maybe I'll send you back for some ale, Sebastian."

"From the Hanged Man? I would never stoop so low."

"Too much iniquity for you, choirboy? I didn't think the Chantry preached against alcohol."

"It doesn't. But the ale at the Hanged Man is terrible, Varric. I don't know how you drink the stuff."

They went on like this for some time after Fenris stopped listening. He was trying to hear past them, for any sounds that might come out of the Bone Pit.

"Broody, look."

Fenris drifted back to attention. Sebastian was getting up and walking away, and Varric was talking to him. "What?"

"How long would you wait for her? Before you give up? Another day? A week?"

He just shook his head. There was no answer for that.

"Sooner or later you have to come back home."

"Why?"

The dwarf stopped. "Why what?"

"Why return?" he asked bluntly.

Varric answered evasively. "To sleep in your own bed. Or… your own pile of dusty linens as the case may be."

But that wasn't the real question, and he knew it. The real question was, why return to Kirkwall? And more importantly, why return to a Kirkwall without Hawke in it? Was there any reason to go back? And Varric didn't know that, not really. He'd lived in Kirkwall for many years before he met Hawke, but Fenris had only known the city because she had shown it to him. For him, Hawke wasKirkwall, in an essential way. There was no part of it that was not somehow hers.

"I don't know, Elf. It might be that you'd be better off somewhere else. Hell, we all might be better off elsewhere. The place is hardly a paradise. It may just fall to pieces under all our feet any day now. But it's better than this cave, I can tell you that much. You can't stay here forever."

"I will not leave without Hawke."

"You gotta snap out of this. Do you think Sadie would have wanted you to do this? What would she say if she was here right now?"

Fenris knew exactly what she would say.

She would have shouted at him. She would put her hands on her hips and glare at him in exasperation, with that funny little twitch to her lips that meant she wasn't entirely serious about it. She would be exasperated, all right, but she always understood. She knew him so well.

She would say, go home, dummy! Get some sleep. Eat something. Get your strength back up. THEN go do whatever the hell you want, like you always do anyway. Maker's breath, what help are you to anyone like this?

Then, when he completely ignored her absolutely practical advice, she would heave a long-suffering sigh and join him (because she never listened to her own practical advice anyway). She would have sat here with him until the stupid self-destructive thing he was doing was affecting her too and he would see that and give in, because he would never treat her as badly as he treated himself. She would have stayed the entire night and day and night and sung stupid tavern songs to distract him and invented some sort of guessing game to amuse them and refused to leave him alone until he walked back to Kirkwall at her side.

And all of that was never going to happen again.

It was no use to imagine her here if she were dead. If Hawke was alive, she needed him here, and if she was dead, it didn't matter. Nothing would matter.

It was no use to imagine her here because it filled him with such desperate longing for her presence that it was unbearable, it was a physical force crushing him into the stone. He could not think on it further. If Hawke were dead, there would be no end to that pain. The only real cure for it would be the abyss.

If believing he would see Hawke again was truly denial, then he must cling to denial to survive.

Fenris stopped answering their questions then; he stopped talking to them at all. He didn't care if they thought him mad. If they insisted on staying to watch him, all the better. That way when Hawke reappeared they would be here to help.

Varric tried a few more times to engage the elf, but met only stony silence. Finally he shook his head and walked away, joining Sebastian nearer the mouth of the cave.

Tense and wary, Fenris huddled there gripping his sword, less for the possibility of an attack than in case someone should try to drag him away. He may have dozed a little in the hours that followed. At some point Merrill arrived, and he was suddenly aware of the three of them discussing him quietly.

"It is a vigil," Merrill was saying. "Among the Dalish, it happens when someone dies suddenly. The loved one will stay at the place where their ashes fall and refuse to leave."

"Does it end… well?" Varric asked.

"Um. Sometimes. Other times they just sit there until they die."

"... Fuck."

There was more talk, and then Sebastian came over.

"Fenris, I need to return to the Chantry now."

There was nothing to say to that, so he didn't reply.

"Is there anything I can do?" Sebastian hesitated. "Would you like me to pray?"

For the first time, Fenris looked up to him, and Sebastian could see how drawn his features had grown since only that morning. He looked to have aged a decade in that time.

"... Yes. That would be... helpful," the elf told him. Every word seemed to cost him dearly from what remained of his strength.

Sebastian recited from the Transfigurations, which seemed most appropriate. This particular verse had been a great comfort to him, and was frequently used to commemorate the deaths of templars and soldiers.

Many are those who wander in sin,
Despairing that they are lost forever,
But the one who repents, who has faith
Unshaken by the darkness of the world,
And boasts not, nor gloats
Over the misfortunes of the weak, but takes delight
In the Maker's law and creations, she shall know
The peace of the Maker's benediction. The Light shall lead her safely
Through the paths of this world, and into the next.
For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water.
As the moth sees light and goes toward flame,
She should see fire and go towards Light.
The Veil holds no uncertainty for her,
And she will know no fear of death, for the Maker
Shall be her beacon and her shield, her foundation and her sword.

Fenris interrupted him sharply. "Stop. Not that one."

Sebastian stopped, perplexed. "A different canticle? What would you like, then?"

"Just... pray to the Maker for Hawke's life."

"Fenris... I don't think…"

He spoke quietly but firmly. "Please."

Sebastian knew just how despondent the elf must be to ask for his prayers. In the times they had spoken together and talked of the Chantry and of the Maker, Fenris had given him a hazy idea of the Black Throne's teachings, which were his only exposure to the religion of Andraste in the Imperium.

The Maker, according to the teachings in Tevinter, did not hear the prayers of the elves. The most they could hope was for a human to intercede on their behalf.

At the time, Fenris seemed to reject this idea, along with the very idea of prostrating himself before the Chantry or even Andraste herself, when neither had done a thing to help him in his captivity. He could argue quite passionately, and intelligently, against the idea of worshipping an indifferent and silent god.

Yet the warrior was undeniably drawn to The Chant of Light - Sebastian had caught him in its audience more than once. Whatever anger he had for the Maker was a complicated one. Perhaps there was still some idea of unworthiness planted there, however much Fenris resisted it.

Now, Sebastian realized he was hedging his bets on the chance that a human's prayers might be heard where his would not.

Now was not the time to put it straight. If this was how he could give aid and comfort to his friend, he would give it. Sebastian began again, this time with a supplication for aid and support in their hour of need. He recited a long passage from the Canticle of Trials, the one that began:

Maker, though the darkness comes upon me,
I shall embrace the light. I shall weather the storm.
I shall endure.
What you have created, no one can tear asunder.

As he spoke the well-worn verses they took on a new urgency. The princeling had always been a talented Chanter, but he had never recited with such authority and passion. As he turned from the chant proper into a direct supplication to the Maker, he found himself fervent in his pleas, however impossible they were. He called in Andraste's name for their sister Hawke to be returned to them, to fill her with the strength and will to survive so that she could stand beneath the sun once more.

He was asking, in all seriousness, for a miracle.

I wish it were possible. If only Hawke were still alive. Kirkwall needs her. We need her. If there is any chance, Maker, lift her from the abyss.

And silently, he added a prayer for Fenris, who had suffered so much in his life already and who deserved some happiness, or at the very least, some relief.

When he was finished, a silence descended upon the cavern, and even Varric and Merrill were quiet and still.

After a few minutes passed, Fenris thanked him softly.

Sebastian clasped his shoulder and looked at him seriously. He was greatly worried that if he left here now, he would never see the elf again. "Fenris, listen. I consider you a friend." He shook him when the smaller man looked down and away at those words. "I mean it. You have many friends, in fact, who care about you, and are worried about you. I for one enjoy our talks together and fighting by your side. If you did not return to Kirkwall I would grieve for you. Understand? I would be sad for all of my days for the loss of another friend before their time."

Even though it made him uncomfortable, Fenris was touched by this concern, which seemed genuine. He managed to force a weak smile. "Even if I've lost my mind?"

He snorted. "Aye, even then. If this is what you need to do, then we will help you do it. But take care. And come back to us."

"I shall try."

Author's note: the Canticles are taken from the Dragon Age Wiki, which is the bestest.

Trying out a bit of Scottish brogue for Sebastian. If it's annoying, I'll cut it out.

update: haha, no. I undid the accent for the most part. too distracting.