[Dragon Age 2] Nor Iron Bars A Cage

[lassarina]

Characters: Fenris/f!Hawke (and the cast)
Rating: Mature
Contains: Canon-typical violence, trauma, hurt/comfort
Wordcount: 6326
Notes: This fic belongs to the "When Love with Unconfinéd Wings" series.
Beta: goldmare
Summary: When Hawke is captured by templars on the Wounded Coast, Fenris comes to her rescue.

"Maker!" Isabela ducked under the templar's swing and cursed more colorfully when her dagger skidded along armor instead of digging deep into the soft flesh beneath a seam.

Hawke stood in the center of the mayhem, trying to calculate where her spells were most needed. She'd lost track of Varric completely—she hoped he was taking cover somewhere and not face down in the mud. She flung a healing spell at Fenris and then felt all the air leave her body as a mace struck her in the stomach. She doubled over, wanting to call out but unable to. Someone seized her staff and pulled it away; someone else stuffed a foul-smelling wad of cloth in her mouth and slung her over a horse, roughly tying her hands together behind her. Another piece of cloth was wound about her head to keep the gag in place. She heard, distantly, Fenris, Varric, and Isabela shouting and the clash of combat, but the horse started running and she had to put all her energy into not vomiting into the filthy rag.

She couldn't see enough detail to know where they were going, but from the sound of the sea coming closer, she guessed it was back to Kirkwall. She wondered what had changed with Meredith. Their private agreement had stood for years and Hawke had kept to her side of it like iron. Why would Meredith send the templars after her now?

The horse carrying her came too close to a rock and her foot scraped across it, tearing her boot away and wrenching her ankle in the process. Hawke screamed into the gag. A mailed fist slammed into the side of her head and her vision went grey, then bright white.

Right, she thought with a vague effort at her usual sarcasm, no screaming. They don't like screaming. At least the way she hung over the horse, its flanks muffled some of the grunts she couldn't silence as they jostled along.

They thundered into the city and across the cobblestones; a sickening whirl of smells and sounds crashed in on her. Hawke retched and tried to hold on. Her head ached abominably, as did everything else.

She recognized the wooden coverings above the deep gaps in the street where the Gallows gate could be dropped to defend it from invaders. At last, the horse stopped, and she found herself dragged off it. She tried to get the attention of the templars, to ask to be taken to Meredith, and for her trouble got another powerful backhanded blow. She staggered, and the templar at her arm hauled her forward, her knees scraping against the stone. At last she regained her feet and managed to limp after him. The cobblestones were slick and cold against her bare foot. Down into the depths of the fortress, and she was flung into a cell, the thick door slamming shut behind her.

It was dark. Cold, even now, in the height of summer. And, she discovered to her dismay, quite wet. With her hands bound behind her, it was awkward, but she crawled across the floor until she found a mostly-dry part of the uneven stone underfoot. Her entire body ached, and her left ankle was in very poor shape. She would have tried to heal herself—in for copper, in for gold—but gagged as she was, she could not shape the spell. She wriggled her hands, trying to see if she could free herself from those bindings, but to no avail.

So she settled in to wait.

She could count her heartbeats in the throbbing of her ankle and the pounding of her head. Water dripped periodically, but there was no other sound unless she made it herself. Her wet robes lay cold and clammy on her skin, and the stone floor beneath her was uneven. She tried to think through it. Not long after she'd arrived in Kirkwall, she'd encountered Meredith in the market. The Knight-Commander had raked her with a gaze that said she knew all of Hawke's secrets, at least the ones that mattered for this purpose, but she had said nothing. Three days later, a letter had arrived, bidding her visit the Gallows. Hawke went, with significant trepidation, but the conversation with Meredith was blunt and to the point: Hawke would do nothing to draw attention to herself as a mage, and Meredith would let her be.

For over three years, Hawke had not carried a staff in the city, nor done anything to make her less usual talents known. She let Varric fence any proceeds of their adventures, and kept a much lower profile than Anders and Merrill, and her own brother was a templar, for the love of the Maker. She'd given her word and she'd kept to it; even the Viscount called on her for aid.

And it still wasn't enough to keep her out of the Circle.

Hawke swallowed hard against the burning in her throat. Would Meredith be content with forcing Hawke into the Circle, or would she take that further step and make her Tranquil? Neither thought appealed, though at least the Circle offered the possibility of escape; Anders was proof enough of that. She found herself shivering violently, and curled in on herself. Who knew stone could be so cold?

She didn't know how much time passed; she fell into a kind of half-doze, more to escape the pain of her injuries than anything else, but the scrape of metal jerked her back to full awareness.

After so long in the dark, even the single-candle lantern was dazzling, and Hawke's eyes burned and watered. She blinked away tears until she identified the shape before her as a templar in full plate armor, one she didn't recognize.

She tried to ask why, but with the gag still in her mouth, it came out as a wordless grunt instead.

"You are thinking that your agreement has been betrayed," the templar said calmly. A man's voice. Not her brother, nor anyone else she recognized. "Not so. I merely choose to give you a taste of the consequences of breaking it. You are making quite a name for yourself, Hawke. You accrue friends and favors in the Viscount's Keep. You seem to think these will protect you, but they will not. We cannot have the people of Kirkwall looking to an apostate as their defender and savior. Yet you are too useful to kill." The unspoken for now hung in the air. The templar studied her for a long moment. "You will be given time to consider your actions, now and in the future."

Hawke wanted to lunge at him, do something to fight back, but she made herself remain still and placid. She could not win a fight now, without weapon or magic or armor, not when he was fully armed and armored. A taste of the consequences? She hadn't done anything wrong. She forced herself to take a deep breath. She needed some kind of leverage. She didn't have it yet.

"I am pleased you understand," he said after too long, his eyes too bright in the candle-light. "We will speak again." He turned and left, the door grinding closed behind him with the creak of wood and iron, and darkness fell again; soon his footsteps receded, and silence joined it.

Time to consider her actions? Hawke huffed to herself. This was not at all keeping to their agreement. Oh, she and Meredith would speak all right, but not the way the Knight-Commander thought.

The energy from that spark of anger lasted only moments before Hawke dropped her head to her knees. It had been a long damned day before the templars had interrupted their skirmish with a handful of bandits on the coast. She was tired, and sore, and damnably hungry. She wiggled her hands in the bindings, but they remained steadfast. She felt awkwardly around behind her, looking for a sharp enough edge to cut them, but found nothing. Her throat burned like fire, enough that she was almost tempted to find the water that kept dripping and try to swallow it, even as she knew that for a dramatically terrible idea.

Instead, she bent her head to rub the cloth binding it against her knees, trying to dislodge it. The knot had been carelessly tied, and it pulled at her hair painfully. She kept at it until she managed to drag it mostly off her chin to lie around her neck like a limp scarf. Then she was able to spit out the cloth that had been stuffed in her mouth, which at the very least meant she could breathe freely--and she needed to, after that exertion.

Her head still rang, especially after her efforts to free herself, and for a while she just sat with her eyes closed and her head resting on her knees, trying to even out her breathing. She would heal herself when she was steadier.

She was not sure how much time passed; without light, it was near impossible to tell. It was cold, and her muscles were locked tight even as she shivered. She tried to summon a Heal spell, and found that her mana seemed far away, well out of her reach. Horror lurched through her. Had the templar come back and made her Tranquil? Her forehead didn't hurt, and she would think that she would feel it. Was she feeling anything? She wouldn't be able to be afraid if she were Tranquil. Was it just a memory of how that might have felt, before, doomed to fade?

Could the Tranquil still feel, but were too terrified or unable to express it? She wasn't sure if that was better or worse than unfeeling stillness.

Hot tears burned her eyes, and she buried her face in her knees again. There were days, she would admit it here by herself, when she thought the Arishok was right; Kirkwall an irredeemable pit and she wondered why she gave so much of herself to it. Maker knew it didn't want her--not her in particular, not an apostate. Kirkwall was greedy for would-be heroes, grinding them between the mortar of the templars and the pestle of the Chantry, leaving nothing but pulverized dreams to discolor the ocean foam. She'd lost her little sister on the way here, her brother to the organization that wanted to destroy her, and her mother to the reason the templars hated her. Only filth lay under Kirkwall's fine stone buildings.

It seemed she was going to lose herself, too.

She tried to calm herself, tried to even her breathing, since her head was pounding worse. Nausea roiled in her stomach. She dropped her forehead back onto her knees and counted her breaths. In for four beats. Hold for seven. Breathe out for eight. Count two. Repeat. If she could keep the pattern for long enough, she could force the nausea back down.

She drifted in broken sleep, startling awake at the sound of rats squeaking in a corner, and then sleeping again. Time ceased to exist; there was nothing to mark its passage, and so she did not perceive it. No one brought her food or water, but her stomach stopped twisting in hunger after a while. She was exhausted beyond words, but in too much pain to truly sleep. She could still count her heartbeat in the throbbing of her headache and her injured ankle, but she could not mark time by that measure, so she drifted.

An extended metallic groan pulled her back to her surroundings. Something glimmered in the edge of her vision, and she snapped her head toward it so fast that she injured a muscle in her neck and gave a muffled cry. The glimmer resolved into a familiar, if blurry, pattern of lines. "Fenris?" Her tongue felt thick and unwieldy in her mouth.

"Shhhhh," he said, and she absolutely had to be dreaming.

"How?" she managed.

"Hawke," he whispered, barely audible, "not now."

The glow of his lyrium tattoos was probably not sufficient for him to see that she was sticking her tongue out at him, but she did it anyway. A dim light glowed behind him, outlining the doorway.

She heard the shiver of metal as he drew the knife he kept at his belt, and moments later he sliced through the bindings on her hands. Hawke pressed her mouth into her knees to muffle the sounds she couldn't help as blood, and feeling, returned to her arms and hands. They prickled and stung horribly, and her hands felt huge and clumsy, her fingers unable to bend.

She heard quick footsteps and the creak of plate armor and snapped her head up, desperately afraid for Fenris and herself. A torch's light blinded her, and she had to bury her face again.

"You have five minutes before the next patrol," Carver said. Carver?!

"Can you walk?" Fenris asked her, and she shook her head; if her ankle didn't prevent it, the sickening lurch of her sense of balance at that slight movement would.

Fenris picked her up and followed Carver into the hallway. Hawke kept her eyes squeezed closed and swallowed the nausea, praying to the Maker harder than she'd ever prayed about anything before that she wouldn't be sick all over her rescuer.

Carver stopped them once, then proceeded, and soon there was far more light and noise. The sound echoed inside Hawke's head like the tolling of a ship's bell. She was pretty sure she didn't close her mouth tightly enough to contain the whimper.

"Thank you," Fenris said, very quietly.

"Just go," Carver snapped, and she heard his footsteps moving away.

Fenris carried her into the Gallows courtyard and through a narrow hallway, down a set of stairs. Hawke felt damp mist on her face and heard the rustle of waves.

"Took you long enough," Isabela said, and Hawke was convinced now that this was a hallucination, because it couldn't be real, she was still in the cell and she was definitely going to die there--

Her breath jolted out of her when Fenris set her down on a wooden bench, and she was not expecting it. She felt herself tilt, and then his arm around her before she could fall out of what turned out, through squinted eyes, to be a tiny rowboat barely big enough for the three of them.

After three attempts at staying upright proved futile, Fenris tucked her into the bottom of the boat, which did absolutely nothing good for her churning stomach but at least meant she didn't have to fight that and her dizziness. She huddled there watching him and Isabela row in quiet, easy tandem. The muscles of his arms flexed, making the lyrium lines glow as the boat moved in near silence over the water.

She expected someone to stop them, but they benefited from a moonless night. The only light on the boat was the faint glow of a lantern Isabela had since shuttered. The dim lights of Kirkwall provided a guide, and the bay between Gallows and city proper was not so very wide, after all. They made their way around to the docks with no words spoken, only the soft slide of oars through the water.

Hawke concentrated on staying conscious and still.

She concentrated so hard, in fact, that it took her by surprise when Fenris spoke her name and shook her shoulder. She startled, and he drew back.

"We're here," he said. "Can you stand?"

She shook her head. Her throat still burned.

He lifted her out of the boat and passed her into someone else's hands. Leather and steel--she almost flinched away before she saw the moonlight gleam off Sebastian's black hair and heard him say "Maker, Hawke, what--"

"Not here," Isabela murmured. "Do you need to see Anders, sweet thing?"

Hawke nodded. Fenris huffed in disapproval, but he took her back from Sebastian with care.

"I'll fetch him," Isabela said. "You get her home."

Sebastian fell in beside them, walking with his bow unslung. Hawke closed her eyes and found a slightly less spiky part of Fenris's armor. The steel was comfortingly cold against her forehead.

Maker, she hoped Meredith hadn't set guards on her house.

She lost track of time again, dimly aware of the matched footsteps of her two companions. The creaking of the docks and shouting of drunken men faded as they made their way into Hightown; she could tell by the smell, which was less dead fish and more ocean breeze. The city guard let them pass without comment; Aveline must have spread the word.

They turned; a door opened. Gwydion's barking felt like knives lancing through her ears. Hawke tried to cover them as Bodhan and Orana demanded to know what had happened, adding to the din.

"Enough!" Fenris snapped, and she felt the word rumble out of his chest.

"Anders is on his way," Sebastian said, reassuring, as Fenris carried her up the stairs and to her room.

"Wait," she croaked as he made to set her on the bed. "Robes."

He set her carefully on her feet instead, and steadied her when her injured ankle threatened to give way. The stone floor was cold but soothing against the lacerations on the bottom of her foot. "Shall I call Orana?" he asked.

"You've seen it before," she rasped, fumbling with the fastenings.

"This is hardly the time for that." He sounded actually offended.

"Didn't mean that." Maker, she was so dizzy she was seeing multiples of her own hands. She yanked at the clasps. One snapped free and pinged across the floor until the carpet silenced it.

Fenris grasped her hands gently and moved them aside, then unsnapped the clasps much more efficiently than she had. She batted at the fabric on her shoulders ineffectually until it fell away, desperate to get it off. Fenris helped her with the smallclothes, gloves, and one remaining boot, then settled her on the bed, pulling a sheet over her. Despite the heat of the summer night, Hawke couldn't stop shivering, and she pulled it up to her chin, grinding her teeth so they wouldn't chatter. Fenris noticed and pulled the blanket up as well, tucking it carefully around her shoulders.

She heard voices outside, followed by Anders racing headlong into the room. Isabela lingered in the doorway for a moment, then came in and leaned against the armoire, arms crossed.

"Isabela told me what happened, or some of it." Anders's hands were always warm, but now they felt icy cold against her face as he began his examination. She felt a vague tremor in his fingers as he brushed aside her hair to reveal her forehead; it steadied when he saw she bore no Tranquil brand. "What can you tell me, Hawke?"

She was so tired. She closed her eyes. "Templars," she muttered, and then coughed.

"Isabela, would you get her some water?" Even through closed eyelids, she saw the bright flare of his healing magic, and she flinched away as it seared her vision. A moment later, the sickening throb in her head had dropped to a much more manageable headache, and the faint slide of cloth on cloth as Anders leaned over her no longer seemed louder than Qunari blackpowder.

"Here." Isabela's hands were remarkably gentle when she tugged Hawke upright and set a cup of water to her lips.

"Not too much to start," Anders said, and Hawke ignored him. The water was gloriously clean and fresh, wiping away some of the rotten taste of sickness and dirty cloth. Much too soon, Isabela moved the cup away from her.

"You can have more in a bit," the pirate assured her, setting it aside and easing her back down on the pillows.

Hawke swallowed and tried words again. "Templars, on the Wounded Coast." It didn't hurt as much to speak, but forming sentences in her mind was hard. "Dumped me under the Gallows." She tried to figure out what was most relevant. "Left ankle," she added, then swore viciously when he prodded a bruise on her wrist with gentle fingers.

"How long?" she asked, and Isabela's hand paused in the midst of stroking her hair back from her face for a moment.

"A full day until Carver could figure out where you were," Fenris ground out, "and another half to wait for nightfall."

"Oh." She really had lost track of time. She closed her eyes again.

Isabela held the cup to her lips again, and Hawke drank greedily for as long as she was allowed. "Fenris," Anders said, and she heard the edge he tried to tamp down in his voice, "ask Orana for a thin soup for Hawke, would you?"

There was a long moment of silence before the creak of armor told her that Fenris was doing what Anders had asked. As his footsteps retreated, Anders leaned in close enough for her to feel the warmth of his body near hers. "Hawke, what else?" he asked, very softly.

"Nothing." She heard his disbelief in his silence. "Truly. They didn't--they just put me there, and left me--" She clenched her teeth to hold back the words that crowded in her throat and choked her. "Nothing too bad," she said, carefully, a long moment later, when she had forced all the other words back down.

She didn't have to open her eyes to know Anders and Isabela were communicating silently over her head. She didn't have the energy to scold them for it.

Anders resumed checking for injuries, cool blue-green magic flowing smoothly from his hands for anything worse than a bruise. He healed a few of those too, particularly on her stomach where her journey in the templars' care had left an ugly pattern in the shape of the back of a saddle. He was probing at her ankle, to Isabela's amusement given Hawke's verbal reaction, when Fenris returned with a steaming mug of soup in his hands.

Orana really did make the best soup. The scent made Hawke's mouth water.

"Your turn to play nursemaid," Isabela told Fenris, and moved away. Hawke winced, braced for the acerbic response, but Fenris said nothing, only dragged the chair from her escritoire over and seated himself beside the bed, mostly out of Anders' way. They studiously ignored each other.

Fenris set the mug on the table beside the bed. "It needs to cool," he said, but he offered her the cup of water in the meantime. The burning thirst had eased enough that Hawke could pace herself this time, sipping slowly.

The pain in her ankle faded with the glow of magic, and Anders straightened. Hawke wiggled her feet experimentally. She was bruised and sore--not to mention starving, especially now that she smelled the soup--but no worse than after most days tramping around Kirkwall and its surroundings.

Anders fixed her with a stern look. "You need to rest. Actually rest, not run around Kirkwall. At least three days."

At the moment, Hawke would have happily slept for three days straight, but she knew herself well enough to know that wouldn't last--and Anders was looking at her so expectantly. "I will. I promise." She made herself sit up a little straighter. "Thank you. All of you."

Anders tugged at one of the feathers on his robe, his gaze moving from Hawke to Fenris and back again. "I want to look something up in your library, if I may," he said, unexpectedly formal.

Even in this state, Hawke understood what he was really saying: that he wanted to stay so that he could check on her. She dug deep for some sarcasm. "You've never needed to ask before," she said, and even made her voice tolerably light. "Have Orana light the lamps for you, at least."

Anders nodded and left the room with one more look at her. An awkward silence fell which Isabela broke. "I've got to see a man about a boat," she said, and left the room. Fenris made some sound that started to be a word before he choked it back, and then turned back to Hawke. He offered her the mug of soup, cooled enough now to drink, but her hands shook too much to hold the cup. He had stripped off his gauntlets at some point, she noticed as he wrapped his hands around hers to steady them. She took a tiny sip, then another. Even that landed in her empty stomach like a stone. She lowered the mug to her lap and counted her breaths, twenty of them, before she lifted it again.

Fenris stayed with her, not speaking, but more patient than she'd expected as she slowly drank the soup. Orana must have had it simmering all evening, waiting for them to get back from the Gallows. Hawke tried to shove down the guilt; she was supposed to be rescuing other people, not needing rescue herself.

"You should rest," Fenris said, the words loud in the weighted silence, when she finished the soup. He set the mug aside and made to rise, and she found herself with her fingers wrapped around his wrist, the red fabric warm beneath her fingers, smooth with wear.

Their eyes met.

"Please stay," she whispered, and she had no right to ask that, he'd already taken enough risks for her, but she didn't want to be alone right now, and while she could have called any of the others, she wanted him.

He looked down at her hand on his wrist, and the nod he gave her was almost imperceptible. He settled back into the chair, but didn't shake off her grip.

Hawke let the claws of sleep pull her under.

She dreamed of the Wounded Coast, of running, with rocks sharp beneath her bare feet. The trail of bloody footprints was going to lead the templars right to her, but she had to get them away from her companions. She veered left, skidding and sliding on rain-wet leaves, headed for the slave holding caves where they'd fought Hadriana; she could lose the templars there, or maybe shove them into a fire trap. She pushed herself harder, but she could hear the sounds of armored footsteps drawing nearer.

They caught up with her before she reached the cave. She slammed a repelling glyph at their feet, but a mailed fist to her jaw sent her flying as well, dazed. By the time she struggled back to her knees, they had her, and she found herself over the back of a horse again, dragged back to the Gallows. But this time, they dragged her into a room that reeked of blood and burnt flesh, and bound her not with rope and cloth but with steel manacles and bars that held her head still, a chain across her throat so that she could not move.

She smelled hot metal and Ser Alrik stood before her, Meredith behind him. She knew the shape of the branding iron he held in a decaying hand. What should have been his eyes were dark pits, and old-blood bruises marred his flesh. He was dead, and still he came for her. She thought she could see his fanatic hatred blazing around him like a corona of magic.

"I warned you," said the Knight-Commander, as Alrik began to recite the litany of the Rite of Tranquillity.

Hawke tried to argue, but one of the templars clamped his hand over her mouth, holding her still as Alrik approached, the iron looming before her eyes--

She jerked awake with a cry, her heart pounding in her chest, and clawed at the blankets over her, like an animal caught in a trap. To her right, Fenris glowed lyrium-bright, springing to his feet with his sword in hand, searching for the threat. Hawke pressed both hands to her mouth to hold back the scream that wanted to escape. Only a dream, she told herself frantically. Only a dream. She wasn't in the Gallows, might never set foot there again if she had anything to say about it, and it was only a dream.

"Hawke?" Isabela appeared in the doorway, daggers drawn.

"A dream," Hawke choked out, clenching her fists until her nails dug savagely into her palms. "I'm sorry."

Steel sang when Isabela sheathed her weapons. "All right, then."

"Didn't you go see a man about a boat?" Hawke asked, and it was a stupid question, but her mind stuck on that single detail.

Isabela smirked. "And then I came back," she said with a wink. "Can't let Fenris have all the fun."

Hawke doubted, very much, that anything about this entire situation had been fun for anyone involved, perhaps least of all Fenris, but she didn't say it; she didn't need to hear it confirmed. "I'm sorry," she said again.

"Not to worry," Isabela said, and left as suddenly as she'd arrived.

Fenris remained standing, though the glow of the lyrium lines faded until they were merely reflective in the firelight. At last he set his weapon down and turned toward her.

Hawke realized then that she was talking, too fast and terrified and barely above a whisper, words chasing and tangling in her mouth and searing her tongue like magic gone wrong as she tried to explain, the dream and the reality mixing until she scarcely knew what had happened at all. Fenris stood, silent as stone, his eyes fixed on some distant point, not on her. She told him of the templar's threats, of the Rite of Tranquillity, of the warning that she ought not think her status or service to the city any kind of protection, and more; once she had started, she could not stop. She confessed dozens of worries that had been plaguing her, her fears that Merrill and Anders would be hunted down (that she would be hunted, again, because no matter what she might do for Kirkwall, she was still an apostate), that it would be Carver, her baby brother, sent to bring her in and she would have to let him because it was his duty and she couldn't fight him for this, that with Leandra gone there was no family, anymore, just her and Carver and Gamlen circling each other like feral dogs.

At some point Fenris seated himself, very carefully, on the edge of the bed, and reached out awkwardly, one arm draped around her shoulders. He tugged her closer, as though he knew what gestures he ought to make but was unsure of how they would be received, and she knew better than to reach for him--she had been trying so hard to give him the space he'd asked for after their one night together, she knew better--but she did it anyway, and then she couldn't let go, her face buried against the cool metal of his shoulder plate, the joints between plates pinching her bare arms as she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight.

He lifted a hand to her hair, gently, and she shuddered.

"Hawke," he said, so quietly, and that seemed to break the last seal she had somehow kept intact.

"And I'm going to lose you," she said, the words half swallowed by his armor but not enough. "Whether I can't keep you safe from Danarius or I don't heal you fast enough in a fight, or just because I can't be what you need me to be, you'll be gone and it will be because of me--"

"Ariane." He so rarely used her given name; she could only remember one other time, and it was that night, before he had remembered and left. His hand tightened slightly on her hair, until she looked up at him through tear-blurred eyes.

His eyes were very dark in the dim room, the lyrium a faint shimmer through her tears. The words came slowly, as though he dragged them out of his throat with his own ghostly grasp. "You won't lose me."

She couldn't say anything, didn't dare break the silence in the wake of his words. Her hands tightened, metal edges digging deep. Fenris twisted, reaching back with his free hand to uncurl her fingers from his armor. Hawke let go and pulled back into herself, staring down at the covers that lay tangled around her.

"I'm not leaving," Fenris said quietly. She heard the scrape of leather straps and metal buckles as he unfastened his armor, and the thud as he set it aside, next to his sword. He sat again on the bed beside her and she scooted back so she wouldn't be in his way. Sore muscles protested and she ignored them. He stripped off the sleeveless tunic he wore beneath his armor and set it aside before he lay down.

He reached for her, more easily this time, and drew her close, tucking her against his side. She was cautious when she lifted her hand, very slowly, and rested it on his chest. The lyrium lines were thin and cold against her skin. His skin was warm. He smelled of steel and leather and Fenris, and she almost felt safe again.

Almost.

She dared a little more, and shifted until her head rested on his shoulder. He tightened his arm around her. She felt wrung out, destroyed, her eyes and throat still burning dry as dust and every inch of her sore despite Anders' healing. "Sleep, Hawke," he said quietly.

She wanted to ask what he'd meant, wanted to know if this was simply a favor he was doing for her as a friend and she was going to have to sit here tomorrow morning and put a brave face on watching him walk away. But if this was all she could have, did she want to ruin it with the knowledge of certain doom? She would still have tonight.

Fenris's quiet, even breathing lulled her. She closed her eyes, and slept.

She woke to sunlight streaming in her window, the angle suggesting midday. She was still tucked against Fenris's side. She knew from the pattern of his breath that he was awake, but he was still there.

It was easier to blink back the tears in daylight.

She lifted her head to look at him. His face was solemn. She struggled for words, and found none.

He lifted his hand to smooth her hair back from her face. "Are you well?" he asked, and from the twist of his mouth he knew what a strange question that was, but she guessed he couldn't think of one better. She couldn't.

She took inventory. A Heal spell would likely take the last of the aches, but better she lie low for a few days anyway, given. "I'll do," she said. "Though--I'll be back."

A short trip to the necessary closet later, she returned to the bed with trepidation. Fenris was sitting up, flexing the shoulder she'd lain on, but he hadn't donned his shirt or armor. Tentatively, she perched at the foot of the bed.

"I don't think I should roam Hightown today," she said, at the same time he asked "What are you going to do?" She winced at the clash, but continued. "I think I'll write a note to the Knight-Commander, assuring her that I have not forgotten the terms of our agreement."

He thought about it for a moment. "A challenge?"

Hawke shook her head. "A reminder," she said. "She never actually spoke to me. I wonder if one of the templars....took matters into his own hands." She considered it. The Knight-Commander's grip on her troops was surprisingly tenuous, given the freedom that templars like Ser Alrik felt to abuse their charges, and the templar who'd lured her to that corner of Hightown to exact revenge for Ser Karras's death. (In fairness, Hawke hadn't thought it unreasonable at the time, nor did she now, though it had been massively inconvenient to be constrained to the small spells that wouldn't draw attention while she was in the city; she'd had to rely on Aveline's shield and Isabela and Varric's powers combined to get out of that one.)

"I will not be much help with letter-writing," Fenris said.

She forced the words out of her throat. "Your company is welcome regardless."

He hesitated, but nodded. Relief and joy rushed through her like the moment a healing spell landed, and she knew she wasn't better but for just a moment, she could feel like she was.

She slid off the bed. "Before that," she said, "I am starving." She needed to bathe, too, but she wanted food first.

His lips curled into a reluctant smile. "Then let us see what there is to eat."

When she appeared at the top of the stairs, it was Anders who noticed first, followed immediately by Isabela. Anders jumped to his feet, disrupting the game of Wicked Grace they had apparently been playing with Varric, Merrill, and Sebastian.

"Hawke?" Varric looked at her with concern. So much meaning imbued into her name, and they all did it differently.

She made herself smile. "Tell me you haven't eaten everything Orana prepared."

It had the desired effect--the joke distracted them, or they were willing to pretend for her sake that it did, and which one was true didn't really matter at this point--and she joined them for lunch, secure in the warmth of their support, for now.

She could worry about the consequences later.