Amelle swore. Viciously. Profusely.
The horses weren't rousing. Or they weren't rousing properly, which was more the problem. All four were sprawled on their sides; Falcon was snoring, his lips trembling with every exhale, and as they approached, Cedric let out a long, low groan that would have been downright amusing, if not for their current predicament.
Amelle cast a rejuvenation spell over Falcon, but the only result was a snort and shudder—reminding Amelle powerfully trying to wake Carver for chores on mornings when frost covered the ground and the animals' breath steamed the air. And Falcon, like Carver on those chilly mornings, remained resolutely asleep.
Varric, on the other hand, tried more non-magical means to wake Cedric. He circled the shaggy little horse once, examining him from all angles. He then pulled on the reins, which only dragged Cedric's head less than an inch across the ground, for all Varric pulled. Then, continuing to grumble and swear under his breath, Varic strode around the animal again, coming in close to nudge Cedric's ribs—this yielded an altogether unsatisfactory result in the form of a long, equine sigh, which resulted in louder grumbling from Varric. Finally, the dwarf crouched down and grabbed the saddle horn and shook it with all his might.
Cedric began to snore in counterpoint to Falcon.
"This isn't good," muttered Varric.
"No," Amelle answered, sinking back to sit on the ground. "It isn't."
She flexed her fingers and looked at her hands. The spell the blood mage had cast on her had long faded, but the memory of it lived vibrantly, the sensation that her blood had caught fire and was boiling in her veins, pushing up against her skin, pounding against her eyes, her ears, her throat—and she powerless to do anything but thrash upon the ground, grasping for her mana—a near impossible thing to do when every breath she'd taken had been spent on screams.
Her satchel clinked gently as she shifted upon the ground, and as she reached down to steady it, the bottles within clinked again, musically. Lifting her head, Amelle looked sharply at the bag, eyes going suddenly wide.
She still had the bottles of potion Daylen Amell had given her in Kinloch Hold.
It's not much—a rejuvenation potion I blended. It might help you and your friends—and the horses—a few extra hours of travel time in, wherever it is you're headed.
She released the buckles and pulled open the bag; the wrapped bottles were still nestled safely within. She pulled one of the flasks free and looked at it in the sunlight; the liquid still shone a deep, rich orange. She twisted the cork off and sniffed—it smelled pleasantly of ginger and elfroot, but she couldn't place anything beyond that.
"What've you got there?" Varric asked, stepping carefully over Cedric's stretched-out legs to join Amelle, dropping down next to her.
"A gift from my cousin."
"The healer in Kinloch Hold?"
With a nod, Amelle said, "I've got a few more bottles in the bag. It's a rejuvenation potion."
Varric looked down at the slumbering Falcon, then up again at Amelle. "Seems like now might be a good time to use it."
"My thoughts exactly."
They dosed Falcon first. Amelle wasn't sure how much the animal would need, and had even less of an idea how to get the liquid down his throat without anything resembling a syringe handy. Dosing Falcon was never what Amelle would have called easy; when he was awake, the horse had a knack for sending medications flying back at her, his lips and tongue conspiring to make the job as difficult and messy as possible.
As it turned out, when he was asleep the job wasn't much easier. Falcon's pink tongue slid past his lips and teeth the moment Amelle got his mouth open, and even with Varric's help holding the animal's head, Falcon's tongue flopped out of his mouth, splashing Amelle with rejuvenation potion mixed with half-digested grass.
"Lovely," she muttered, smearing one green-streaked hand across her thigh. "This is supposed to be less difficult when he's asleep. Not more."
Finally, after a great deal of finagling and Amelle agreeing to hold Falcon's mouth open and keeping his tongue inside the open mouth—and only after spilling nearly half the contents of one bottle onto the ground, Falcon, and Amelle herself—she and Varric finally got the horse's head at the right angle and dosed Falcon with the potion before massaging his throat. It took only a moment, but the animal's dark eyes opened and Varric moved out of the way in time for Falcon to lift his head, still blinking sleepily. Amelle pushed to her feet and limped back as her horse struggled to gain his footing. Once upright, he tossed his head and arched his neck as he let out a mighty yawn, his upper and lower jaws moving in opposite directions, that same tongue that had been such an annoyance earlier, now sneaking out past his teeth as his eyes rolled back in his head. He then gave a shake that rippled from his nose all the way back to his tail, looking strangely indignant at the end of it.
"Sorry to wake you, your highness," muttered Amelle, moving on to Cedric who was far easier to dose, and woke slowly and clumsily, but with great determination.
Fenris and Isabela rejoined them as they were dosing Agrippa, whose reaction was more akin to Falcon's. Fenris stepped in and soothed the agitated mare as she got to her feet, nostrils flaring, tail swishing even more indignantly than Falcon's had. Of all the horses, Tango woke with the most grace, getting to his feet and stretching his neck and letting out a long, drawn-out sigh before giving himself a shake, as if he'd relished the nap.
Varric looked at the empty bottle Amelle held after administering the potion to Tango and said, "So we might have to make a stop by your cousin the apothecary's place if we ever wind up in this neck of the woods again."
"Varric," Amelle replied darkly, tucking the flask back into her bag, "if we never wind up in this neck of the woods again, it'll be too soon. I can't say I'm overly fond of this particular neck of the woods."
"Fond or not, sweet thing," Isabela said, "Fenris and I pulled some… interesting things off those riders. It's probably a good thing we caught their attention."
Amelle looked between the two of them. "Define interesting."
"Papers," Isabela explained, but before she could say more, Fenris' expression darkened.
"Better we look at the documents… later," he said.
"I'm almost afraid I'm going to regret asking, but what did you do with—"
"Hawke, you're too adorably transparent," Isabela said, shaking her head fondly. "We got the saddlebags off the horses and buried them, along with anything that might've identified the Tevinters. As for what we kept…" And here Isabela's expression turned more serious. "It's nothing simple or straightforward. But Fenris isn't wrong—we'd be better off stopping for the night first."
After taking time enough to make sure the animals hadn't suffered any lasting effects from the spell, Amelle packed away the remaining bottle of potion not smeared with horse saliva or grass stains—or some stringy combination of the two—and approached Falcon's side.
"Hawke." Fenris' voice came from behind and Amelle stilled, hands gripping the saddle horn, her left foot in the stirrup. She looked over her shoulder and slowly returned her foot to the ground.
"Yes?"
He looked for a moment as if he were going to say something, but then only shook his head and crouched down, lacing his hands together. "Your ankle is still not fully healed," he said, as if this were the only explanation necessary.
Amelle stood there a moment, staring down at his hands, white lines stretching down his palms as he waited with as much patience as she'd ever seen him display, when she realized how much she hated seeing him… do this. No, he wasn't on his knees or anything so overt, but there was something about the act of it, of… of lowering himself so she could place her muddy boot in his hands, all to get her on the back of a horse she'd been riding since she was a child.
She hated more that he seemed to know exactly when she most needed that help.
It was with a soft, resigned breath that Amelle let Fenris give her a leg up onto Falcon's back.
#
They continued on their way, traveling the hard-packed path through the Coastlands until darkness lengthened shadows into dusk. Until that point, the horses had shown no signs of fatigue, no adverse effects related to the sleep spell, and Amelle made a mental note to write to Daylen, thanking him for the potions. And, possibly, to ask the recipe.
When they stopped, it was to make camp in a small clearing lodged within an otherwise dense copse of trees off the main path. The earth was scarred with previous campfires—a trend they were able to continue, surrounded by plenty of kindling, and all of it dry. It was a far cry from both the feather beds in Kinloch Hold and the cave that had provided refuge from the rain, but as they made camp and built a fire over which two rabbits roasted, the sky above darkened and stars picked their way out one by one. It was peaceful and quiet, without rain or pursuing hoofbeats, just the occasional howl of a wolf, or the call of an owl.
That day and the one previous settled in Amelle's bones as she sat before the fire, one leg stretched out, her injured foot—newly bandaged after a recent application of healing magic—propped upon her folded saddlebags. Everything Isabela and Fenris had taken off the dead riders was spread before them—with the possible exception of a sum of money exceeding anything Amelle had seen in the whole of her life, which was stashed safely away in the bottom of her saddlebag—and Amelle's eyes burned as she squinted at small text, trying to parse the ridiculously thick language. Varric sat beside her, struggling far less with the documents he was reading. The gold pince-nez propped upon his nose caught the firelight and reflected it in both glass and gold, the flames winking along the chain that disappeared into Varric's waistcoat.
"I think we need to count the money again," Isabela announced.
"None of this makes sense," sighed Amelle, tipping her head back and rubbing her eyes. "And you absolutely do not need to count the money again."
"Oh, it makes sense," Varric muttered. "Just really slowly and not all at once."
"I absolutely do," protested Isabela. "Ask Fenris."
"No, you do not," he replied, glaring at the document Amelle rested in her lap. Without a word, he reached for a leather-bound diary—a record of the riders' travels—and opened it. "They had come up from Ostagar," he said quietly. "And were on their way to Highever."
Varric nodded, shuffling through the folded documents. "Looks like they'd visited each of the five mine locations before heading back north."
"Sealing the deal in Highever?" asked Isabela. "Possible. Even likely. But why stop and visit the mines?"
"To make sure it's a good investment," Varric answered, barely looking up from his reading. "If the mine's too small or it's been picked clean and the town around it's dying, why pour more money into it?"
Isabela made a small "I suppose so" hum of assent and leaned back against the moss-covered log, draping one tanned arm along the length of it. "Then why did they have the deeds?" she asked.
The rustling of pages stopped, and only the sounds of crickets and a crackling campfire remained.
"Say that… again, Isabela?" Amelle asked.
"I said, why did they have the deeds at all? You only get a deed for something if you own it. And nobody's carrying cash like that after they've bought something, so—"
Varric began to swear and continued to swear in as long a streak as Amelle had ever heard the dwarf utter. He made a grab for a ribbon-tied packet of papers—the deeds—which he'd already read through several times, and pulled it open. Amelle, Fenris, and Isabela exchanged curious glances as Varric pushed himself onto his knees and began pulling different documents closer, reading them in the firelight.
"Sneaky bastard," he muttered. "That sneaky son of a bitch."
"You know, Varric," Amelle drawled, "if you'd made your last installment of Hot Lead and Cold Lyrium this suspenseful, your publisher might've given you an advance like you'd asked."
Varric shot Amelle a good-natured glare over the pince-nez and lifted his eyebrows as he said, "You want me to tell you how a known mage who's not even a Ferelden citizen can own five lyrium mines or not, Hawke?"
Amelle blinked, then looked down at the various and sundry documents, ledgers, and diaries strewn around them. "Fair enough. How?"
"He doesn't own them at all. Yet."
"I knew it," Isabela hissed, slapping one hand against her thigh. "All that money?"
Amelle shook her head, not quite following. "But the deeds…"
"They're incomplete." He flipped to the back page and tapped it with his index finger. "The buyer's signed it, but the seller hasn't. Seller's gotta sign it—a witness, too—for the transaction to go through. Legally, anyway. Jury's out on whether the Archon gives a damn about legality."
"Doubtful," Fenris murmured.
"I'm inclined to agree with Broody on this one," Varric replied. "These sorts of transactions aren't ever easy, but what's here right now? This is way too much paper for a transaction to be legal. But here," he went on, rifling through the other packets of paper before snatching up the small leather book in which one of the riders had made cryptic marks about the different mining towns they'd visited, "here—no, here it references a meeting in Highever. But…" his hand went out over the documents, fingers wiggling in thought before plucking up a thin sheaf and flipping through it. "But whoever the meeting's with, that's the legal owner, right now."
Amelle shook her head. Her ankle had started to throb again, so she inhaled and pushed a wave of healing mana down to the joint. "Which doesn't explain how a known mage—and leader of the Imperium, let's not forget—expects to purchase them," she said.
"Like I said, there's a lot of paper here—even more than there ought to be for any sort of standard, legal transaction. And a whole bunch of names that don't add up. Names signed as buyers on deed signature sheets that aren't attached to any deeds. I wasn't sure what to make of it at first, but—"
"Names of… men and women who aren't mages?" asked Amelle, brows creeping to her hairline.
"Either they aren't mages or they're made up completely," Varric answered with a shrug. "Could've been the riders' names. Right now I can only guess. But what I do know is deeds have to be filed with the chantry, so I've got no idea how they expect to pull this off and fool the folks in charge."
"I do," Isabela said grimly as she tapped Amelle's saddlebags with the toe of one boot. "Money. And lots of it. That sum's more than enough to buy mines several times over. But it might just bribe a few important people into looking the other way."
"So what happens…" Amelle said, looking down at the puzzle of forms and documentation that was slowly forming an altogether unpleasant picture, "What happens if… if nobody shows up in Highever? If the money never gets where it's supposed to go?"
"Depending on how rich the Archon is?" Varric shook his head. "He'll send more agents and they'll start over."
Fenris' tone was grim. "He's rich enough."
To that, Varric shrugged. "Then he'll try again. Maybe. Hard to say. There's no way the present owner doesn't know what's going on, so chances are good he'll be willing to wait if it means he's going to be rich at the end of all this."
"But what if," Isabela drawled, lingering over every word that passed her lips, "what if someone else bought the mines? Someone not the Archon?"
Varric and Isabela looked at each other for a long moment, an entire conversation telegraphing back and forth past Amelle and Fenris.
Varric arched a thick eyebrow. "You really think?"
Isabela smirked at him. "Could work."
"Might not."
"With you pulling the strings?" Isabela countered, propping one elbow on the log and leaning forward.
Varric snorted, but a smile hovered around his lips. "Flattery'll get you—"
"Anywhere. I know," Isabela replied, waggling her eyebrows.
"Anyone care to let either of us in on whatever sordid plot you're hatching?" asked Amelle, patience running thin.
Varric grinned in the firelight. "How do you feel about owning a few lyrium mines, Hawke?"
#
Varric's question hung in the silence. Hawke only gaped at the dwarf, but Fenris had no difficulty whatsoever finding his voice.
"If your goal is to get us all killed," he snapped, "it's an excellent plan."
Perhaps they had a limited idea of the type of people they'd be dealing with, but Fenris' knowledge of the Tevinters was uncomfortably intimate. And the Archon—Fenris was certain—would not be so sanguine about losing the opportunity to control such a vast amount of lyrium. It would have been bad enough had they been dealing with a magister; the Archon was no mere magister, and this was not the sort of interference that would go unnoticed. Or unpunished.
And yet Varric and Isabela looked entirely unworried. But Hawke… Hawke looked troubled, and that provided Fenris surprising reassurance.
"You've got a flair for the dramatic, haven't you?" murmured Isabela, meeting his answering glare with an arched eyebrow. "Listen. At first light, I'll ride back and dig up the saddlebags. If I'm right—and I usually am—there'll be a few changes of clothes in there and there'll be no need to—"
"Take clothes off dead bodies," Hawke finished for her, her jaw tight with disapproval;she, at least, still had her wits about her. "Isabela, you really need to keep talking—and fast—because this still sounding like your worst idea in recent memory—which, believe me, is saying something—and I don't think you have much longer to convince me otherwise."
"We get into that sale, posing as the Archon's agents. Then sit through whatever rigamarole it's going to take—"
"And watch while we facilitate the sale of a lyrium mine to the leader of the Imperium?" Hawke interrupted, glaring. "Definitely your worst idea."
Isabela only shook her head and gestured grandly at Varric, who shrugged and tucked his pince-nez away in a pocket, as if what he were about to suggest was the most normal, obvious thing in the world. "We change up the documents so you're the buyer, not the Archon."
Hawke blinked and stared. "You're going to… forge official documents."
"Correction. I'm going to forge documents that are of dubious legality anyway"
Fenris stared between Varric and Isabela. "And you honestly believe such a plan stands any chance whatsoever of working? Do you truly think the Archon will make no such distinction between the legality of his documents and the adjusted legality of yours?"
"Thank you, Fenris," said Hawke. "You've read my mind."
"Listen, elf, if the Archon were going about this legally," Varric explained, "we'd have no chance. He'd have the chantry on his side, for one, and they're a bunch of miserable bean-counters."
"And since he's already got his hand in the cookie jar, so to speak," added Isabela, "it's not as if he's on any sort of moral high ground here."
Pushing to his feet, Fenris shook his head and as he began to pace the length of the small campsite, he spared a glance at Hawke, her foot propped up, the ankle still swollen beneath the bandages. She had risked too much already; she'd endangered herself simply by saving him, by healing him and taking him in. Involvement in a scheme such as this would doubtless put her within the Archon's notice, and the prospect of such a thing occurring sent something sharp twisting through his gut.
"Even if this plan does work," he said, slicing the air with one hand, "have you no idea the danger Hawke would find herself in for moving against the most powerful man in the Imperium in such a way? It will be her name on the documents—she will be listed as the owner of those mines. The chantry's only concern is that she isn't a known mage; the Archon will not care what she is, only that she stole from him."
"This is a far more convincing argument," Hawke interjected. "I'll be the first to admit we play fast and loose with the rules more often than not, but this… this is big. A lot bigger than anything we've ever attempted before. Leagues bigger than selling questionable potions off the back of a wagon."
"Your potions aren't all questionable," Varric said, shooting Hawke a look.
"Of course not," Hawke retorted, looking very nearly offended.
"And why not?"
"For starters? Because when people are sick, they've got more important things to worry about than whether some charlatan's going to try to take them for all they're worth. If I'm going to cheat somebody, it's going to be somebody who—"
"Deserves it," Isabela finished for her.
Hawke made a face. But she didn't argue. Fenris stared at her, and after too many seconds she looked up to meet his gaze; looking pained, she glanced away again and began grinding her teeth.
"You aren't honestly considering this," he said to Hawke, his voice low.
"Well. We're going to have to prepare, certainly," Isabela sniffed.
"Listen," Varric said, collecting the piles of papers and books. Hawke's head swiveled back in his direction. "You've said before you're getting tired of the travel. You get this kind of income, and you can start traveling for pleasure instead of business."
Hawke sighed, rubbing her forehead, still avoiding Fenris' eyes. "I—this isn't a good idea. I'm a mage. Remember? I can't even own property."
"Correction," Varric said, holding up a finger. "What you aren't is a known mage. Just don't become… known."
Hawke's fingers stilled against her forehead and she closed her eyes. "You know, I think there's a sanitarium in Highever. I ought to leave you both there."
"I've got to admit, I'm surprised you're having such a problem with this," Varric observed, returning everything to Hawke's leather bag.
She dropped both hands to her lap and sent Varric an exhausted glare. "Fenris' concerns aside—and let me say now how valid they are—one," she held up one finger, "I've never owned a lyrium mine and wouldn't know the first thing about running it." She held up a second finger. "Two, just how many camps have we come across, Varric, that've been populated with lyrium-sick miners I've drained my mana healing? I'm not contributing to that, I don't care how rich it makes me." A third finger unfolded from her hand. "Three, I don't know what the Archon was planning to do with all that lyrium, and I'm too afraid to speculate, but the chantry still controls the trade. I might own the mines—if I even went through with this, and I'm not saying I will, or am even thinking about it—but it's the chantry who'll be controlling who gets the lyrium, and perhaps you find this hard to believe, but I'd rather not contribute to that, either. Do you want me to go on? Because I could."
"Kitten," Isabela said, her tone startlingly sincere, "you still want to keep it from falling into the hands of anyone who makes their living in the slave trade." Her amber gaze slide from Hawke to Fenris, before settling pointedly on Hawke. "Chantry or no chantry, control of that much lyrium would be an instant infusion of power for anyone."
And there it was, laid bare in the firelight, the ugly truth of the matter.
So ugly was it that a bolt of shame tightened in Fenris' gut that his own worries were so focused on the pressing concern they would face retribution for deceiving the Archon in this way. But a more powerful Imperium would not be one he could run from forever. It was a matter of choosing between the vaster, more amorphous danger and the sharper, more immediate one.
His own concerns were quite firmly focused on the current threat. No, he didn't wish to see the Imperium gain more power either, but was this truly their only option to prevent such a plan from taking shape?
And if it was their only option, what were they supposed to do about it?
Much as Fenris hated to admit it, as ill as the knowledge made him, Isabela was right. And from the expression settling onto Hawke's features, she agreed.
Finally, with a sigh, Hawke said, "We'll talk about it more… later. Isabela, ride back first thing and see what you can salvage. Bring back whatever you can and we'll see what we can do, if anything. Before you go, we'll distribute Tango's load to the other horses so he won't be slowed down by weight."
And with Isabela's nod, the subject was closed for the evening.
Night grew thicker, and the stars picked their way out of the night sky one by one. Varric produced a deck of cards and tried to entice Hawke and Fenris to play, but Hawke shook her head, wearily.
"I'd be better served placing that concentration elsewhere," she said, gesturing at her ankle. "Or sleeping. Maker, I miss sleep."
"Highever, Hawke," Varric reminded her as he shuffled the cards. "Feather beds in Highever."
With a sigh, Hawke's hands lit with healing magic as she turned her attention once more to her ankle. "You know, I'd probably feel better about that if there weren't worse things there, too."
But whether Hawke meant templars or Tevinters, Fenris didn't know.
#
Later, after the cards had been played and watch had been determined—Hawke insisted on first watch, so she'd have time to devote to healing her ankle with more time to rest it afterward—they slept.
Fenris' dreams were dark and twisted—more so than they'd been of late.
Black shadows stretched like groping hands across a bare, jagged landscape, with him running, always running, forever running, stumbling, falling, pushing to his feet and running again, a race against the shadows threatening to smother him, to swallow him, or worse. Rocks tore at his bare feet as he ran and ran and ran, always alone, ever alone, with nothing—no one—stretching out for miles ahead, and grasping shadows behind. A chasm yawned before him, too wide for him to jump—too, too wide, and he knew it, but there was blackness behind him, breathing a foul breath down his neck. Worse things would happen if he were caught, ensnared in darkness and shadow. There were always worse things.
He ran. He jumped. He fell.
Worse things, even, than death.
Fenris woke with a start and a gasp. There was nothing of the bleak landscape; he was surrounded by lush, dark pines, with a star-studded sky above. And though there were shadows, the warmth and light of the cheerfully blazing fire kept them at bay. He swallowed hard and blinked, willing the nightmare to fade and his heartbeat to slow.
"Bad dreams?"
He wasn't alone, either.
Hawke sat before the fire, her foot propped up and one of the bundles of legal (or not, as actually seemed to be the case) documents in her lap, forgotten. She was watching him, her lips pressed together in thought, her brow furrowed in a way that made him wonder just what she saw. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. After a moment she looked down, folding the papers and retying them. Fenris' answer was barely more than a grunt, but she nodded all the same. "You've been tossing and turning a while now."
Fenris swallowed hard. At least he'd not woken the forest with screams. Too many nights after his escape had he jerked awake, his body soaked through with sweat, his throat raw.
Small favors, indeed.
"Tea?" she asked, reaching for the dented tin kettle.
"No," he replied, sitting up slowly. Then shook his head. "Yes."
Hawke nodded and poured water from a canteen into the kettle, mana flaring from her hands as she heated it.
"Quicker this way," she said, answering the unspoken question sketching itself across his face.
"I will take next watch."
"First watch is hardly over. You've been asleep for an hour, maybe two."
"Even so."
She sent him a sidelong glance. "That bad?"
Fenris considered dissembling, but he was tired—as if he had been running for countless miles—and there was no point to it. "…Yes."
To her credit, she didn't ask. She merely added tea to the kettle and waited. When Hawke did finally speak, it was to change the subject, shifting it—thankfully—away from his dreams.
"So, what do you think of Varric's plan?" she asked.
Casting an eye to the slumbering dwarf, Fenris snorted and shook his head. "Beyond being reckless and sure to fail?"
Hawke smiled, but there was a strange sort of melancholy to it. "Beyond that, yes."
He pushed a hand through his hair and gave a weary sigh. "If you want the truth of it, I would rather nobody owned those mines."
Hawke nodded once, murmuring, "Better they be shut down and closed forever?"
"Indeed. But… that will not happen."
"No, it won't," she agreed, staring down at the kettle, running her thumb over the handle. "Not until the mines are scraped dry." When Fenris didn't say any more, Hawke's expression turned moody; the expression didn't suit her, he thought. "If we do nothing," she said, shaking her head and glaring down at the steaming kettle, "those mines could be under Imperium control in under a month. They've got their song and dance all rehearsed, while we're struggling to make up the steps."
"Yet if…we—" oh, and that word tasted strange on his tongue, "—do… something…"
"I'm in deep, deep trouble, anybody finds out I'm a mage." A raw, frustrated noise tore from deep in her throat. "Daddy always warned me never to get involved. But do I listen? Do I ever? No."
"Involved?" he asked. "In what?"
"Anything," she answered, gesturing futilely with one hand while pouring tea with the other. "Everything. Hopeless cases. Risky schemes." Hawke handed him a scratched and battered tin mug. "Sometimes it's advice I wish I were better at following."
He took the cup between his hands, letting its warmth sink into his skin as he turned over his words. "Hawke, had you elected not to involve yourself in my… problem—"
Hawke paused in pouring her own tea long enough to snort and shoot him an eloquent look. "A delicate way to describe that predicament if ever I heard one."
"Perhaps. In any case, had you elected not to get involved, I likely would be dead now, or as good as it."
Hawke barely let him finish before she started shaking her head. "That's—"
"Entirely true," he replied, lifting his chin and meeting her eyes. Hawke fell miraculously silent, though not without a glower—the expression was… amusingly out of place on her face. After a moment, one eyebrow arched toward her hairline.
"Something funny?" Hawke asked. Too late, Fenris realized he'd been smiling. Schooling his expression into something more neutral, he shook his head. "Not in the least."
She did not look as if she believed him—to that end, he wasn't sure if he believed himself. As silence settled around them, Fenris brought the cup to his lips, breathing in the scented steam that curled in tendrils from the cup; he exhaled slowly as his heat sunk further into his palms, his fingers. Somewhere at the top of his spine, tightly-wound tension began to release. He took a sip from the mug and closed his eyes; around him crickets sang, mingling with Varric's low snores and the crackle of the fire. Tipping his head back, Fenris opened his eyes to the sky. The crescent moon was a sliver of light hanging above the pines. To his right, the flare of Hawke's magic competed with the campfire's light as she focused another round of healing energy upon her ankle.
In his dream, he'd been alone. His fear perhaps, but—dare he think it?—perhaps this was not the reality.
"I put too much healing into you to let anyone undo my hard work, Fenris. Not Danarius, not the Archon, not even one of the Old Gods, should one of them see fit to turn up."
"I believe owe you an apology," Fenris said at last. Perhaps more than one, he thought, feeling a sudden bolt of discomfiture at the memory of Hawke's mouth against his. It wasn't shame or embarrassment, no, this prickling at the nape of his neck was something else less easily named. It had seemed the obvious thing to do at that time, in that moment, and then what had started out as an act in the name of verisimilitude then slid into something else entirely. He hadn't expected Hawke to…respond. He hadn't anticipated his own response, for that matter.
"No, you don't," replied Hawke, breaking into his thoughts. She was gazing skyward as well.
It had been rash and impulsive and entirely unlike him, that much was certain, and yet Fenris could not quite banish the memory of Hawke's mouth working greedily against his, the way she'd mewled against his mouth, clutching at him. Nor could he forget the way her hair had parted beneath his fingers, or how his heart had thundered in his chest with every gliding swipe of her tongue.
"How can you be so certain?"
Hawke leaned back against the heavy log, head still tilted back. A smile played at her lips a moment before she answered, "Because I'm not feeling offended, insulted, or put-upon." Pulling her gaze from the sky and settling it on him, she added, "Which tells me you haven't done anything worth apologizing for."
"I…in the tower. I should not have… taken such a liberty without warning you in advance."
In the silence that unfurled, Hawke's throat moved as she swallowed. Another moment passed and she licked her lips. "You tried apologizing once, and I told you then it wasn't necessary. That hasn't changed. I… I think I understand why you did it, Fenris."
Do you?
But Fenris said nothing at all to betray his thoughts.
