Authors note: This story is a different continuity from any of my others, and isn't about Sadie Hawke or my other OT3 Marian Hawke. I decided to keep this one sort of a Vague!Hawke at first so readers can fill in the details however they like. Sorry for any confusion that's caused! The difference might be a little more obvious in this chapter, since we hear from her a little more.
Merrill waited the rest of the day to return to the clinic, hoping to avoid Anders. She had a terrible feeling that he would be able to take one look at her and see what she had done, and he would Not Approve. He may not like Fenris very much, but she got the feeling he liked her even less. Anders disapproved of most of her magic anyway on general principle. The whole blood magic thing. He would probably get all Justice-y at her and it would be very unpleasant and she'd rather just avoid that scene altogether.
When Anders closed the clinic for the night he always went out to do his mysterious mage-underground-y things, and that was when Merrill arrived. She poofed through the locked door in a puff of smoke, a trick her demon had taught her, before she stopped talking to it. Before it killed the Keeper.
She didn't use her demon's tricks much anymore.
She found Fenris still resting in the clinic and Hawke still by his side.
Merrill hesitated to interrupt. She could hear Hawke talking to him quietly. It sounded like a conversation, though a bit one-sided. Fenris could not talk yet, his voice continuing to recover from the cut to his throat. But Hawke seemed to be able to read from his expressions what he meant to say.
After everything she had done, Merrill did not want to do anything else to disrupt the two of them. She just wanted to know that all was well, or as well as it could be, and she had not inadvertently made anything worse. This impulse outweighed the wrongness of once again intruding on their privacy.
Merrill cast a minor spell to conceal herself and walked a little bit closer, just close enough to hear what Hawke was saying.
"— quiet since Mother died. Even with Sandal racing around blowing things up — did I tell you he lit the Tevinter statue in the library on fire? I'm sure you're disappointed to hear that!"
Hawke's laugh was like bells ringing, even when it was a little forced, like now.
"But they're leaving soon, you know. To Orlais. Sandal's going to study there. Or more likely he'll baffle them all there as much as he does everyone here and they'll make him a master enchanter, and he'll make Bodhan richer than the Chantry. I hope they'll still talk to me when they're rich and famous."
Fenris moved his hand to pull at her sleeve, and gave her a complicated look. One that Hawke was able to decode without any effort at all, despite that she had no mind-reading abilities that Merrill was aware of.
"I think I can manage without a footman, Fenris. And I'll still have Orana with me. And a big, slobbery dog."
A pause. Merrill had the sense that Hawke was dodging a question that floated in the air between them.
"I won't be lonely. How could I be lonely with all of my crazy friends?" She ran a hand through her long curly hair, in an attempt to look casual. "Isabela is constantly dragging me around to one ridiculous escapade after another, and I've no shortage of drinking buddies. I don't hear much from Carver anymore, but Aveline is always inviting me to one of her dinner parties. She's turning into a proper lady despite herself, our Aveline."
He shook his head, dissatisfied with her answer. On the table next to him there was paper and ink for to communicate with, though he could write only crudely and had so far steadfastly ignored them. He reached for them now.
Merrill could not see it, but he seemed to be drawing a picture, one that must have been a symbol of the Chantry.
"Sebastian?" Hawke said, and blushed. "Of course you would know about that, wouldn't you?"
Then she smiled sadly, and added: "I'll bet he even asked your permission first. Didn't he?"
Fenris shrugged, and then nodded.
"So you're marrying me off to your friends now?"
She said it with good humor, and he smiled back at her faintly.
"He's a good man. He will be a good husband to someone someday. But I can't marry him." Hawke seemed to read every twitch of his eyebrows as a sentence, a volume, knowing exactly what he meant. This one was obviously a question, and she shrugged back at him. "Because I don't love him. I just don't. He's like a brother to me, I can't imagine being with him that way."
He stared at her a moment, and then drew again. He hadn't even finished his sketch (Merrill caught a glimpse of a short figure with a very hairy chest) before Hawke burst out laughing. "Varric's married to Bianca, you know that. Don't be ridiculous."
He tore a page off and started again. This drawing Merrill couldn't see at all, but Fenris looked very cross when he drew it.
Hawke made a face. "Anders? No, oh dear, no. He did try, but I just... He did that whole 'I'm too dangerous, you shouldn't be with me' martyr thing, as if that's any way to proposition someone… no. Not him."
Fenris made an obviously perplexed face, and drew an exaggerated question mark that even Merrill could see.
Hawke blushed. She was quiet for much too long, and then she answered softly: "Just you. Only you."
He closed his eyes and drew a shaky breath. Then he reached for the cloth that was tied to his arm.
Merrill had never really known what that was about, the red band. Just that it meant something private to both Hawke and Fenris.
He untied it and reached out to her, trying to slip it into her hand. He looked at her meaningfully.
Give up, that look said.
Hawke's eyes filled with tears. "No," was all she said, shaking her head stubbornly, and refusing to take it from him.
He pressed it at her again. He looked angry now. But Merrill, and only Merrill, knew that he would literally rather die than do this.
Give up. It will never happen. I will never be anything more than this.
"Don't, please," Hawke pleaded in a whisper, and still refused him.
When he dropped it to the floor, she dove after it, crouching on the floor to retrieve it. When she came up the tears were falling silently and he cringed and closed his eyes against the sight of it. He would rather be dead than live through this moment, it hurt so much. It hurt more than anything he had ever felt before.
Hawke sniffed and wiped at her face, trying to collect herself. She ran the cloth around her fingers and held it to her like something precious.
"It's… Not like this. I… don't want you to give this up for me. Understand?" She wiped at her eyes again. "Look, someday you'll wake up and you won't feel anything for me anymore. That's the day you take this off. Okay?"
Now he has a hand over his face. He couldn't look at her. If he looked at her now, he might take it all back.
Hawke stops trying to wipe away her tears, and just talks to him.
"Someday there will be someone else that you can love. I would be so glad… Please believe that I would. I want that for you."
She brought the red cloth up to her lips and kissed it, tenderly.
"I tried moving on, I really did." Hawke smiles around her token, a little embarrassed. "There were all those months that we didn't see each other at all, you remember? After the Arishok? I didn't see you for, maybe more than a year then. It was awful."
He made a broken sound at this, halfway between a sigh and a laugh, or maybe a sob. He remembered it, of course.
"I missed you. So much. I thought of you every day, even when I was angry, even when I tried to forget. Your voice. Your smile. That little wrinkle you get between your eyebrows when you try to understand something that doesn't make sense."
She giggled at that, how his face immediately recreated the same expression.
"That. I love that. I missed that. I missed you. To see you again… it makes me happy. Even though… it just makes me happy, being around you. And this," she held up the red cloth, tangled between her fingers, "it tells me that I mean something to you too. You feel something. It's everything to me. Every time I see it, I thank the Maker. I do."
"I know you can't be with me… the way we were that night. Maybe not ever again. But it's okay. I…" She looked down into her lap, uncertain. "This sounds silly, but I'm glad to have you in my life any way I can. Any part of you. To be able to walk with you and fight with you, to sit with you in the Hanged Man and to talk like this. It feels good. It feels like I'm where I belong. With you."
"What I'm saying is… you don't have to wear this anymore, but, don't take it off because you think it will make me stop loving you. It won't. I don't think anything can."
Fenris had gone very very still.
Hawke bent over him and retied the red cloth around his arm without meeting his gaze. Then she took his hand and bent down to press her lips to it, tenderly. "I'll leave you now," she told him quietly, still holding his hand. "But I'll be back in the morning. Get some rest."
And then she let go of him and walked out of the clinic.
Fenris stared after her, thunderstruck. With one hand, he reached over to Hawke's token on his arm and touched it. Hawke's love. The gift he had carried with him for three long years.
Merrill thought it was the most lovely thing she had ever seen. You can't just give that up, Fenris. It's precious, so precious. I've never had anything like that. If I ever did, I'd never let it go.
He didn't. He closed his eyes and rested, relieved to have the red band back around his arm, where it belonged.