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“Fenris, Hawke needs help!”
Anders’s voice. Fenris turns, clearing his sword with a yank from the blood mage’s body.
Aveline is barely visible, corpses flocked around her like carrion birds, lurching, their arms jerking up as if manipulated by some puppeteer high above. The man hired mercenaries to protect him. When they died he did not seem particularly displeased. No wonder; corpses, on having their limbs hacked off, seem to react only with mild curiosity rather than screaming terror, that irksome habit that bedevils most human hirelings.
There should not have been a blood mage here.
Hawke is surrounded, which is the first sign something is wrong. Hawke does not allow himself to be dragged into the fray. Yet there he is. Anders is far away, on the other side of the battlefield, much better positioned to help Aveline than Hawke. So it is up to Fenris.
A smuggler, that’s all they had heard. If it were a blood mage Aveline would have brought it to the templars, and Fenris might have accompanied them when they left for the Wounded Coast. But he would not have brought Hawke. Might not even have told him. Leandra has been dead a bare week. Hawke professed that he needed to get back to work, to give his mind something to seize on besides the image of his mother’s corpse, or not truly his mother’s corpse, rather that of a half-dozen other women who, at the very least, were able to bolster the body so that Hawke was not faced with only his mother’s severed head, speaking to him words of forgiveness…
There should not have been a blood mage here. Hawke is not fighting. He is staggering, retreating, getting hurt. He needs help.
Fenris runs.
He lets out a battle cry as he sprints across the white sand. Ineffective against such mindless enemies, unfortunately, and they are not distracted. Hawke stumbles, his heel catching on the root of a small, hardy bush, and falls. There are five of them, five corpses gathered round. Fenris is not sure what stirs them to fight. The command of the blood mage? But the blood mage is dead. So, then, is it some innate desire to kill, to spawn more creatures in their own image—or to correct the wrongness of what they see before them, the strange, fluid movements of the living, so unlike their own?
Fenris crashes into them, spinning around with a wide slash.
They do not defend themselves, but they’re still in armor, which is very annoying. Putting them down will take work. They are much slower than he is, fortunately, and with some care, he may avoid serious injury. From the corner of his eye he sees Hawke, staggering upright once more. Venhedis. Hawke will not be careful. Fenris moves left, tries to block him from the fight; but even like this he is light on his feet and slips aside. Fenris exhales. Best to finish this before Hawke is wounded further.
Three are dead (again) when Aveline appears, finished with her own pack, and the remaining two are dispatched with haste. At last. Fenris takes a long breath, sheathing his sword.
“Shit,” Hawke snarls, and turns away, pressing his knuckles to his eyes.
“You’re bleeding.” Anders approaches. “Here, let me heal you.”
Hawke shakes his head. “No.”
“It’s all right, I’m hardly tired.” Anders reaches forward.
Hawke lashes a hand out and grabs his wrist.
Anders flinches, hard. Hawke’s grip is so tight Fenris sees his knuckles whitening. “Hawke!” he says sharply.
Hawke lets go, slowly, his fingers uncurling one at a time. He gives Anders a small, dark smile. “I said no.”
Hawke is dangerous. He’s the biggest of all of them, but it’s not only that, of course, he’s quick and observant and very, very clever. Fenris knows well how he uses all of that to intimidate people, to cow them into doing what he wants.
As he’s doing now. With Anders, a friend, who was trying to help him. “Hawke.”
He looks up at Fenris, lifting an uninterested eyebrow. “What?”
Fenris sighs, jerks his head at Aveline. She takes Anders’s arm and guides him away. “We’ll give you two a moment.”
They walk away across the field of corpses. Hawke stares out at the wide, black sea, anger radiating off of him as the shimmer off the sand in summer. Dangerous. He’s dangerous. And Fenris isn’t the least bit afraid. “Hawke, I’m coming with you back to the estate.”
“No.”
“It wasn’t a request.”
“No. I’m fine.”
“Do you plan to stop me?”
“I could slip you. It really wouldn’t be hard.”
“Ah, and you insult me. Is that how you feel about me now?”
It’s a low jab—it hasn’t been six weeks since they slept together—but if that’s the level Hawke wants to fight on, Fenris will meet him there. Hawke’s fists curl and relax, and his anger swells. But it does not break. Instead he shakes his head, rubs his eyes again. “No. I shouldn’t have said that.”
Good. “Let’s go.”
——
Hawke’s mood does not change as they walk.
He wrapped his own wounds, and by the time the arch of the Kirkwall gates passes over them his bandages have already soaked through with blood. Fenris had not expected his mood to lighten. But neither does it tilt off into sorrow. Fenris supposes he had not particularly expected that either. Hawke did not cry when he held his mother’s body in his arms, and when Fenris visited him during the days after, not once were his eyes red, nor his cheeks flushed. Instead he was empty, entirely.
But it seems he could not sustain that emptiness—perhaps he felt that he risked collapse. So instead he created…this.
Hawke is angry. Very, very angry. Fenris hadn’t anticipated that, in truth. Hawke is suspicious of mages as a rule. That it was a blood mage who killed his mother should almost cushion the blow—that it was one of Kirkwall’s many twisted, vile abominations rather than a mundane person with no demon to excuse their actions. Yet the anger is there, and flows just as fast and high now as it did when Hawke grabbed Anders’s wrist on the Wounded Coast. What’s causing all this? Fenris remembers Hawke four years ago, as gentle a man as he’d ever met. What could be fueling this terrible rage?
No matter. Fenris is not afraid of Hawke, and plans to help him regardless of resistance. Aveline hangs back and walks with Anders. She has plenty of problems with Anders, but he certainly didn’t deserve to be grabbed or snapped at, and she stays with him to dull the smart. She’s probably irritated with Hawke’s behavior as well. As any reasonable person would be, but Fenris is rather prejudiced on the subject of Hawke—in this case fortuitous, because Aveline can leave the whole business to him.
It’s early evening by the time the estate comes into view. Hawke unlocks the door and steps inside. He still hasn’t looked at Fenris, not once the entire journey here. “Master Hawke!” The dwarf steward appears in the hall. “Oh, goodness, you’re injured—“
“Yes,” Fenris says. “I’m going to wash his wounds. Would you mind bringing a needle and thread?”
“Certainly.”
Fenris takes Hawke’s arm, only to have it wrenched out of his grasp. He cocks an eyebrow at Hawke and takes his arm again. Hawke shuts his eyes a moment and doesn’t fight back. “Sorry,” he mumbles.
Well, that’s a mild improvement. Fenris drags him to the washroom, notes the bath already filled and steaming in the corner—thinks of getting a steward himself, they seem quite useful. Then he starts getting Hawke’s armor and clothes off. Hawke helps, listless, unties the bandages, pulls up buckles and straps. Halfway through the door creaks, and Fenris looks up to find it swinging closed, a needle and thread placed neatly on the sink.
At last Hawke is naked, and he hugs himself, though the room is warm. Fenris puts his hands on his hips and tries to figure out where to start.
None of the wounds are especially bad. That is a small comfort. But they are bleeding plenty, and there are a half-dozen that will need stitches. Fenris wets a cloth in the basin of warm water by the wall, rubs in some soap, and begins wiping the dried blood away. Hawke hisses when the soap hits the open cuts. Fenris does not slow. He scrubs at Hawke’s back, his chest, his arms and legs. In the course of all this, he notices—can hardly fail to notice—all the things about Hawke’s body that delighted him so much those few weeks ago, when they came together at last: the broad hips, the dark hair coating his chest and stomach, his powerful shoulders, his thighs thick with muscle. Fenris smiles drily to himself. What a fool he was to leave this all behind.
“Sit down,” he instructs.
Hawke obeys, sitting beside the drain in the middle of the floor. Fenris retrieves the needle and thread. He has lain stitches before, many times—on the run he had no one else to help him—but that doesn’t mean he’s any good at it. He slips the thread through the needle and ties it off, chooses a gash up the back of Hawke’s shoulderblade first. Long and shallow, as all these wounds are. Fenris positions the needle at the wound-edge and sticks it in.
“Ow.” Hawke flinches.
“You’d best get used to it,” Fenris replies. “I do not have a delicate hand.”
He pulls the needle through, then jabs it in for the second stitch. Hawke flinches again. “Maker. Haven’t you ever done this before?”
“Yes, often. On myself.” Fenris drags the thread through and hopes it does not break. He would not enjoy digging it out again.
“So you would just…grin and bear it?”
Fenris shrugs. “It’s only pain. And I knew it would not hurt for very long.”
They lapse into silence again. Fenris finishes the first wound and moves onto the next, a slice in Hawke’s forearm. His methods are not gentle, but at least they are quick. Hawke narrows his eyes at the half-closed cut. It might be intentional, the way his face so openly shows resentment but his gaze follows Fenris’s actions instead of pointing at Fenris himself. Put it together, and it’s an unsubtle way of saying I hate your presence here that lets him retain that ever-useful cloak of plausible deniability. It’s only that the stitching hurts, after all. He isn’t looking at Fenris.
Or maybe he isn’t thinking about any of that.
The rage dogs him still. He is Hawke, and thus always in control, so he does not snap or shout. But Fenris sees how the anger roils and seethes, how Hawke flounders, wave-tossed, and threatens to drown. It doesn’t make sense. Hawke won’t let Fenris comfort him—never lets anyone worry over him, ever, and perhaps allowed Fenris into the estate only because their exchange earlier was not careful but barbed. So Fenris needs to find what’s at the root of this and pull it out from there.
He sews Hawke’s chest and ribs, moves to his thigh—remembers the last time he knelt between Hawke’s legs, and how his hands were occupied not with stitching but with something considerably less painful. How perfect a night that was, how impossible to believe. Almost as implausible as Hawke’s anger, still, still so vivid, his face stormy and dark, and Fenris can’t imagine how he’s sustaining it like this. He should be exhausted by now—should have been granted reprieve—yet Fenris watches him struggle to contain it, watches his hand close around his wrist and tighten, his knuckles turning white once more.
“Done,” Fenris announces, tying off the thread and snapping the trailing end. “You should eat something. It’s been a taxing day.”
“Not hungry,” Hawke murmurs, and pulls his knees up to his chest.
“That isn’t a requirement for eating something.”
Hawke’s quiet for a moment. “You should go.”
“No.”
“Fenris.”
“That kind of anger won’t just go away on its own, Hawke. I won’t leave you to be consumed by it.”
Hawke glares dully. “So what now? You’ve sewn me up, are you going to start shoving food down my throat?”
Fenris will not allow himself to be distracted. “Talk to me, Hawke.”
“I’d rather not, actually, hence asking you to go—“
“It won’t go away if you ignore it, either. Talk to me. I can help you.”
“Has it occurred to you that I don’t want your help?”
A twinge of annoyance sparks through Fenris. “I don’t understand why you insist on keeping this anger! The damned blood mage is already dead, this rage won’t hurt anyone but—“
Oh.
It all falls into place, and Fenris wonders how he could have been so very dense, not to realize it before now. It’s the only answer that makes any sense at all. Hawke is throwing out some cutting riposte, but Fenris interrupts. “Hawke, it wasn’t your fault.”
That shuts him up.
“It wasn’t your fault.” Fenris sits a little closer. “The blood mage is the one who killed your mother, not you.”
Hawke is silent for another second.
And then it comes bursting out, his normal reservation gone, his voice that of a desperate child. “Of course it was my fault! I had a chance to catch the bastard years ago, and I failed! Surely you must see that. I did this, Fenris, I did all of this.”
Venhedis. “All of this?”
“Yes.” Hawke pulls his legs closer, mumbles. “Carver running off toward that bloody ogre and me, five years older, too afraid to go help—“
“Hawke—“
“And telling Bethany she should come with us to the Deep Roads, even when Mother begged me not to—“
“Hawke! You weren’t at fault for any of that!”
“And how would you know?” Hawke snaps.
“Because I know it was darkspawn that killed them, and you were fighting the darkspawn with everything you had in you! I was there in the Deep Roads, it was a miracle you weren’t Blighted yourself—“
“But if I’d just—“ He falters. “If I’d kept a better eye on her—“
“Or if there hadn’t been quite so many, or if one of them tripped on a rock and cracked its skull open, any of a hundred things could have happened, Hawke, and it would have been different! If there’d been just one more, then who knows, we might all have died down there.” Fenris waves a dismissive hand. “Assigning blame is useless. If Bethany were here—“
“Fenris—“
“If Bethany were here—she would not blame you. Neither would your brother, nor Leandra. Nor would they wish you to blame yourself.”
Hawke doesn’t have an answer for that.
Good. It’s working, so far. “In fact,” Fenris adds. “I dare say they might want you to eat something before you go to bed, to keep your strength up.”
Hawke assembles a half-smile, rests his chin on his knees. “I—“ He hesitates for a long second, then continues. “I miss them.”
Fenris reaches out and takes his hand. “Yes. I—am sorry. I cannot imagine the loss.”
“And sometimes it—it feels like I’m all alone. Even though I have—“
“—you have us. All of us. Hawke—“ Fenris realizing only now what happened when he walked away from Hawke six weeks ago, how it was not only I cannot have you but also you cannot have me, when that isn’t true, that isn’t true at all— “Hawke—you have me.”
Hawke uncurls and embraces him.
He smells of soap, lavender with traces of mint, and buries his face in Fenris’s neck. Fenris holds him, rubbing his back, remembers how comforting it was to feel Hawke’s calloused palm making slow circles on his bare skin after they’d lain together. “I know we can’t replace them,” he says. “But I hope we can help.”
Hawke mumbles into his chest, “You are helping.”
They sit like that for a moment. Fenris is content to stay there—it’s certainly a marked improvement from the charged tension that lay between them five minutes ago. Hawke’s chest expands softly against him, with breaths even and quiet. Fenris holds him close and does not let him go.
At last Hawke relaxes, sitting back. He rubs his eyes and smiles a little. “Fine, you win. I’ll go eat something.”
“I’m pleased to hear it. Although…” Fenris stands. “Some clothes, first, I think. Wouldn’t want to give your steward any reason to speculate.”
Hawke grins and goes to the tall cabinet in the corner. “He saw you sneaking out that night, you know. Asked me if he should start setting extra towels in the washroom.”
Fenris flushes. “Oh. I—did not think anyone would be awake.”
Hawke takes a housecoat and a pair of trousers from the cabinet and begins to dress. “Er—Fenris?”
“Yes?”
“Thank you. For staying. Even after I was such an incredible ass.”
Fenris folds his arms. “I do not mind, but you may want to apologize to the mage.”
“Oh, shit.” Hawke heaves a sigh, tying the housecoat closed. “You’re right. I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
“A wise plan.”
He turns. “I…don’t suppose you’d like to stay for dinner?”
And sometimes it feels like I’m all alone.
Fenris comes forward and takes Hawke’s hand in his own. “I would be happy to.”