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rose_in_winterCharacters: Fenris, Mage Female Hawke, Sebastian Vael (Fenris/f!Hawke/Sebastian)
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Canon-typical violence, explicit sex
Fic Wordcount: 117,000
Chapter Wordcount:
Notes: Canon-divergent, ignoring most of Act 3. A thousand thanks tosenmut's Discord server for cheering and brainstorming and reactions and encouragement.
Beta: breadedsinner and MikWrites_InSpace
Summary: After the duel with the Arishok, Ariane Hawke looks around at the wreckage of her life in Kirkwall and asks herself: what is left for me here? As tensions increase between the Circle and the Templars, she turns to helping Sebastian retake Starkhaven. Meanwhile, she is trying to figure out how to love Fenris when he hates mages, and also definitely not looking at Sebastian's gorgeous eyes. Definitely not. Neither is Fenris. Sebastian is not looking back.
Definitely.
Canon divergence in which almost all of act 3 goes in the bin, and three damaged people try to find a way to live with each other and themselves, and maybe heal a bit.
Chapter index here.
It was just the right time of night for the streets of Hightown to be crowded with people returning home from the Blooming Rose or whatever party they had attended. Hawke slid through the crowds, using the others as cover against the inevitable footpads. She didn't trust herself not to set half of Kirkwall on fire trying to handle one would-be thief.
She also didn't trust herself to sleep; who knew what she might bring back through the Fade?
Instead, she made her way to the Chantry. For all its other faults, the building was open all day and night. The main doors were closed, but there was a smaller side door that was always unlatched. Hawke stepped inside and dropped her contribution in the donations box, plus a bit more for Aron, the mage.
At this rate she was going to fund the ascension of a half-dozen new Mothers of the Chantry.
Even in daylight, the Chantry was dim and heavy with the smoke of candles and incense; at night, it was deeply shadowed. Hawke moved slowly lest she trip over some penitent absorbed in prayer. A few sisters were cleaning the wax of burned-down candles from the racks. Hawke inclined her head to them; no point in offending those who tended the Chantry, even if she loathed some of their teachings.
She wondered how many of them had had to live with the constant need to be aware of their own emotions, the endless vigilance lest something hurt those around them. Not every Chantry sister came from a happy home, she knew; some fled to the Chantry for safety, and she had evidence just today of how terrible people could be without magic in their blood.
But it didn't feel the same.
She lit a candle for Aron, and another for his daughter, whom she hadn't been able to face after she left the Gallows this afternoon. She knew she'd have to deal with it tomorrow, though Carver had said he would take care of notifying the family of Aron's death. Varric had promised her he'd find the woman, without her asking; he'd been otherwise quiet, which was unusual.
She wondered how much of the truth Carver would give them. Not enough, not if he wanted to keep his position. So she would have to clean up that mess as well.
She knelt to pray. The cold stones beneath her knees reminded her of the dungeons under the Gallows. She squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself that the air was scented with incense, not effluvia; that this was a place of worship, not imprisonment.
There was a rustle of fabric, and without opening her eyes, she knew before Sebastian spoke. "It's late for you to be here." There was no judgment in his tone. He knelt beside her.
"Better here than picking a fight in the Hanged Man or asleep," she said.
He made a thoughtful sound. "You can't stay awake forever, Hawke."
Watch me. "At least I'm not a somniari," she murmured.
Sebastian had disapproved of her sending Feynriel to Tevinter, but she hadn't been able to, and still couldn't, bring herself to sentence him to the Circle. Now he sighed. "This isn't what the Chantry tells them to do," he said. "I cannot understand why Meredith allows it."
"She doesn't allow it, Sebastian. She encourages it." Hawke opened her eyes and sat back on her heels, turning her head toward him. He looked troubled. "It may not be what you think the Chant advises, but it is what templars do. Especially here." There was more, so much more, she could have said, but unlike that night at the Hanged Man, she wasn't drunk, and she kept those words firmly locked away.
He looked up at the statue of Andraste that loomed over them, and seemed to be thinking his way through it. "I would have said the Starkhaven Circle was better than Kirkwall," he said quietly, "but perhaps I didn't know how to look."
Hawke thought of Grace and Decimus, and how the latter had turned to blood magic. Had he been uniquely angry at the world, uniquely prone to fall? Had he used blood magic to enhance his persuasion against the other mages? Or had their Circle been as bad as Kirkwall? They had only Grace's words to go on now, and she was not quite a reliable source.
"I don't know what to say to Fenris," she said.
Sebastian accepted the change in topic with equanimity. "You've not spoken to him at all?"
Hawke wiggled her shoulders, as though shaking off a cloak of disapproval. "I can't make myself go if I don't have an apology ready."
Sebastian was quiet for long enough that she thought he might not answer. "Are you sorry?"
Though softly spoken, the words landed like a blow. Hawke drew in a sharp breath. "No."
He nodded.
There was a gap in the mortar of the stone floor, a finger's length from her left knee. Hawke ran the tip of her index finger around its edge and felt grains of mortar crumble away beneath her touch. Sebastian waited patiently. She wondered if he'd always been that way or if it had come from Chantry training. "That's not quite true," she said after a while. "I'm sorry that I hurt him, but..." She sighed. "I don't know if I can love him when he hates me."
Sebastian considered it. "I don't think he hates you, Hawke," he said.
"He hates mages," she argued. "I can't stop being a mage; it's not like learning a new weapon and leaving the old behind. It's part of me. It's in my blood." Her voice was rising in volume; she caught herself.
Sebastian made a thoughtful noise. "If I know nothing else of Fenris," he said slowly, "I know these two things: first, that he is a man of honor and conviction, and second, that he does very little he does not wish to do. He has chosen you, Hawke."
Strange, that he didn't look at her when he said that.
She closed her hands into fists. The bits of mortar were gritty on her fingertip. "Is it because he wants me, or because he needs someone to remind him of what he hates when Danarius is not visible?"
She thought he flinched. "You would have to ask him."
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Sebastian gave her a smile that seemed....sad, and lonely. "I'll stay here as long as you like, Hawke, but I think you might want some time to yourself."
She couldn't speak past the lump in her throat. She nodded. He rose and made his way toward the door that led to the living quarters for those who served the Chantry. She stayed, studying the patterns in the stone floor and trying to think past the clawing sorrow she had been avoiding for days.
Thinking about the future was hard when most of her didn't expect to live to see it.
Gritty-eyed from exhaustion and tears, Hawke stood outside the mansion Fenris had claimed for himself, watching the first rays of sun cast stripes of bright and dark across the stone façade. No lights burned behind the windows; she hadn't expected any. She hoped he was asleep, like a reasonable person.
The door opened, and she startled.
She wasn't sure, at this distance, if the shadows on his face were from the dawn or from poor choices similar to hers, but he was awake right now, so that did tend to weight the scales.
He didn't say anything, but he did make a vaguely beckoning gesture before he turned and walked back into the mansion, leaving the door ajar.
She was not at all confident about this conversation, and she really wanted to go back to her house and have Orana mix her a sleeping draught, but then she'd have to go through the effort of keying herself up for this again, and that idea was worse.
Barely.
She squared her shoulders and walked inside, closing the door behind her. Sometime in the last week, he had oiled the hinges so it no longer squeaked. Only three years in coming.
He was waiting for her in the vast foyer, not in the back room where he tended to nest. She stopped in the shadows by the door and tried to find words. She'd had them, at the Chantry, but they'd been full of anger and resentment, and even if those things were true and real, that wasn't how she wanted this to go. Even if--even if this was the last time, she had to try.
He spoke first, his voice rusty and harsh. "I didn't expect you."
"I'm...." She was not sorry, and she would not lie. Not now. "I couldn't leave things that way." She blinked fast to push back tears. "The thing is, I meant it. Maybe not the way I said it, but--" She wanted to pace. She didn't want to be close enough to watch him shut her out. She didn't trust herself not to trip on one of the wine bottles he'd left scattered around--more than there'd been last time, she noted vaguely--because that was exactly what this day didn't need. "I realize Danarius is a prick, and an asshole, and that he did horrible things to you," she said in a rush. "And yes, he did those things with magic, to you and to others. But he chose those things, Fenris. He did them on purpose. Being a mage is like--like being blond, or left-handed. It's just something you are. I can't stop being this! There are times I have wanted to tear it out of me, I would have cut off a hand if it would make it go away, but the only way I can stop being a mage is if I stop being me." She'd lost the battle against the tears. She dashed them off her cheeks with angry hands. "I love you," she said, the first time those words had been allowed to pass her lips. "But I won't let you destroy me. I might as well walk into the Gallows and throw myself at that bitch's feet as stay with you when you can't understand that I choose differently."
He moved slightly. She wiped away tears again. "I don't expect you to forgive me, or want me," she said, "but at least do me the courtesy of telling me so I can--"
"Hawke." She didn't think he'd activated his tattoos, there had been no telltale glow, but he was in front of her without her seeing him cross the room, his hands on her shoulders. They were cold. He smelled of old wine. His white hair was tangled, and in the light from the windows, he was pallid, his face drawn. "I don't want you to be Tranquil." His eyes were locked on hers, so green it was like falling into a forest. "I could not imagine a person, mage or no, who is more different from Danarius than you are. I wouldn't have--I could never--" He shook his head. "I would never have tried to be with you at all."
He fell silent, and she waited, but it didn't seem like he had more to say, or at least not anything he was ready to say.
They stood there, just linked, and she watched the edge of a sunbeam creep across the floor.
"I don't expect you to lead parades with Anders demanding mage liberation," she said eventually, and he snorted with amusement. "I don't expect you to like magic, or stop being wary of it. All I want is for you to understand that I never want to be a blood mage, and there are other mages like me."
She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders.
"Blood magic has taken my family from me." The horrible jerking movements of the puppet body with her mother's face flashed through her mind and she shuddered. "But blood magic allowed my father to strengthen Corypheus's seals. If you never believe another thing I've said or will say, ever, believe this: I would not turn to it for any reason more trivial than he did."
She felt the shudder ripple through him, and closed her mouth. She was so exhausted she thought she could fall asleep standing here. Her soul was scoured bare, a Harrowing of her own making.
All that was left was to see if it was enough. She closed her eyes.
All she could hear was their breathing, uneven, unmatched.
What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil? He'd asked her that once. She did not think she was rotten, but then again, the Chantry taught that corruption was subtle. Her father had always told her and Bethany that they knew what was right and wrong, and he trusted them to decide, but that they could always come to him for advice. She missed that about him most of all: the quiet, bedrock faith that they would do the right thing. He'd never told them that the Chantry was wrong, but he did tell them they had to trust their own senses, minds, and hearts over the words of another.
He let go of her shoulders and it felt like her heart stopped.
"I know," he said. It sounded like the words had been dragged out of him with hooked wire. "I know you wouldn't." He hesitated. "I could not love you if you would."
Did that mean--she squeezed her eyes tighter shut. She didn't want to watch him turn away.
His hands again, light and gentle in her tangled hair, tipping her head back just a bit. Against her own better judgment, she opened her eyes. He was so close he blocked out most of the sun.
"I would follow you anywhere," he said, and then a shiver ran through him. She felt it in his hands. "I believe in you."
Her throat closed with tears. She swallowed hard. "I know why you hate magic," she said, "not in the soul-deep way of what you survived, but--I know. I just can't listen to you tell me I'm hateful, all the time."
He tilted his head forward until it rested against hers. The silence was heavy and dense. "I will...learn to hold my tongue."
She marked what he said, but they had to start somewhere. She nodded, her head moving against his.
They stood there for a long time; she wasn't sure how long, only that the spun-sugar feeling snapped when her unreasonable body decided to remind her that she hadn't eaten in over a day by emitting a loud stomach growl. She flinched, then started laughing and couldn't stop, sliding down to sit doubled over on the floor and laughing until everything hurt. Fenris was more controlled, limiting himself to a chuckle or two, but he sat next to her, his hand smoothing her hair.
"Breakfast, then?" he asked, deadpan, when she gasped to a halt.
She shoved him, but nodded. He offered a hand to help her up, and they walked out into the morning light.
Chapter Twelve
Rating: NC-17
Contains: Canon-typical violence, explicit sex
Fic Wordcount: 117,000
Chapter Wordcount:
Notes: Canon-divergent, ignoring most of Act 3. A thousand thanks to
senmut's Discord server for cheering and brainstorming and reactions and encouragement.Beta: breadedsinner and MikWrites_InSpace
Summary: After the duel with the Arishok, Ariane Hawke looks around at the wreckage of her life in Kirkwall and asks herself: what is left for me here? As tensions increase between the Circle and the Templars, she turns to helping Sebastian retake Starkhaven. Meanwhile, she is trying to figure out how to love Fenris when he hates mages, and also definitely not looking at Sebastian's gorgeous eyes. Definitely not. Neither is Fenris. Sebastian is not looking back.
Definitely.
Canon divergence in which almost all of act 3 goes in the bin, and three damaged people try to find a way to live with each other and themselves, and maybe heal a bit.
Chapter index here.
It was just the right time of night for the streets of Hightown to be crowded with people returning home from the Blooming Rose or whatever party they had attended. Hawke slid through the crowds, using the others as cover against the inevitable footpads. She didn't trust herself not to set half of Kirkwall on fire trying to handle one would-be thief.
She also didn't trust herself to sleep; who knew what she might bring back through the Fade?
Instead, she made her way to the Chantry. For all its other faults, the building was open all day and night. The main doors were closed, but there was a smaller side door that was always unlatched. Hawke stepped inside and dropped her contribution in the donations box, plus a bit more for Aron, the mage.
At this rate she was going to fund the ascension of a half-dozen new Mothers of the Chantry.
Even in daylight, the Chantry was dim and heavy with the smoke of candles and incense; at night, it was deeply shadowed. Hawke moved slowly lest she trip over some penitent absorbed in prayer. A few sisters were cleaning the wax of burned-down candles from the racks. Hawke inclined her head to them; no point in offending those who tended the Chantry, even if she loathed some of their teachings.
She wondered how many of them had had to live with the constant need to be aware of their own emotions, the endless vigilance lest something hurt those around them. Not every Chantry sister came from a happy home, she knew; some fled to the Chantry for safety, and she had evidence just today of how terrible people could be without magic in their blood.
But it didn't feel the same.
She lit a candle for Aron, and another for his daughter, whom she hadn't been able to face after she left the Gallows this afternoon. She knew she'd have to deal with it tomorrow, though Carver had said he would take care of notifying the family of Aron's death. Varric had promised her he'd find the woman, without her asking; he'd been otherwise quiet, which was unusual.
She wondered how much of the truth Carver would give them. Not enough, not if he wanted to keep his position. So she would have to clean up that mess as well.
She knelt to pray. The cold stones beneath her knees reminded her of the dungeons under the Gallows. She squeezed her eyes shut and reminded herself that the air was scented with incense, not effluvia; that this was a place of worship, not imprisonment.
There was a rustle of fabric, and without opening her eyes, she knew before Sebastian spoke. "It's late for you to be here." There was no judgment in his tone. He knelt beside her.
"Better here than picking a fight in the Hanged Man or asleep," she said.
He made a thoughtful sound. "You can't stay awake forever, Hawke."
Watch me. "At least I'm not a somniari," she murmured.
Sebastian had disapproved of her sending Feynriel to Tevinter, but she hadn't been able to, and still couldn't, bring herself to sentence him to the Circle. Now he sighed. "This isn't what the Chantry tells them to do," he said. "I cannot understand why Meredith allows it."
"She doesn't allow it, Sebastian. She encourages it." Hawke opened her eyes and sat back on her heels, turning her head toward him. He looked troubled. "It may not be what you think the Chant advises, but it is what templars do. Especially here." There was more, so much more, she could have said, but unlike that night at the Hanged Man, she wasn't drunk, and she kept those words firmly locked away.
He looked up at the statue of Andraste that loomed over them, and seemed to be thinking his way through it. "I would have said the Starkhaven Circle was better than Kirkwall," he said quietly, "but perhaps I didn't know how to look."
Hawke thought of Grace and Decimus, and how the latter had turned to blood magic. Had he been uniquely angry at the world, uniquely prone to fall? Had he used blood magic to enhance his persuasion against the other mages? Or had their Circle been as bad as Kirkwall? They had only Grace's words to go on now, and she was not quite a reliable source.
"I don't know what to say to Fenris," she said.
Sebastian accepted the change in topic with equanimity. "You've not spoken to him at all?"
Hawke wiggled her shoulders, as though shaking off a cloak of disapproval. "I can't make myself go if I don't have an apology ready."
Sebastian was quiet for long enough that she thought he might not answer. "Are you sorry?"
Though softly spoken, the words landed like a blow. Hawke drew in a sharp breath. "No."
He nodded.
There was a gap in the mortar of the stone floor, a finger's length from her left knee. Hawke ran the tip of her index finger around its edge and felt grains of mortar crumble away beneath her touch. Sebastian waited patiently. She wondered if he'd always been that way or if it had come from Chantry training. "That's not quite true," she said after a while. "I'm sorry that I hurt him, but..." She sighed. "I don't know if I can love him when he hates me."
Sebastian considered it. "I don't think he hates you, Hawke," he said.
"He hates mages," she argued. "I can't stop being a mage; it's not like learning a new weapon and leaving the old behind. It's part of me. It's in my blood." Her voice was rising in volume; she caught herself.
Sebastian made a thoughtful noise. "If I know nothing else of Fenris," he said slowly, "I know these two things: first, that he is a man of honor and conviction, and second, that he does very little he does not wish to do. He has chosen you, Hawke."
Strange, that he didn't look at her when he said that.
She closed her hands into fists. The bits of mortar were gritty on her fingertip. "Is it because he wants me, or because he needs someone to remind him of what he hates when Danarius is not visible?"
She thought he flinched. "You would have to ask him."
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. Sebastian gave her a smile that seemed....sad, and lonely. "I'll stay here as long as you like, Hawke, but I think you might want some time to yourself."
She couldn't speak past the lump in her throat. She nodded. He rose and made his way toward the door that led to the living quarters for those who served the Chantry. She stayed, studying the patterns in the stone floor and trying to think past the clawing sorrow she had been avoiding for days.
Thinking about the future was hard when most of her didn't expect to live to see it.
Gritty-eyed from exhaustion and tears, Hawke stood outside the mansion Fenris had claimed for himself, watching the first rays of sun cast stripes of bright and dark across the stone façade. No lights burned behind the windows; she hadn't expected any. She hoped he was asleep, like a reasonable person.
The door opened, and she startled.
She wasn't sure, at this distance, if the shadows on his face were from the dawn or from poor choices similar to hers, but he was awake right now, so that did tend to weight the scales.
He didn't say anything, but he did make a vaguely beckoning gesture before he turned and walked back into the mansion, leaving the door ajar.
She was not at all confident about this conversation, and she really wanted to go back to her house and have Orana mix her a sleeping draught, but then she'd have to go through the effort of keying herself up for this again, and that idea was worse.
Barely.
She squared her shoulders and walked inside, closing the door behind her. Sometime in the last week, he had oiled the hinges so it no longer squeaked. Only three years in coming.
He was waiting for her in the vast foyer, not in the back room where he tended to nest. She stopped in the shadows by the door and tried to find words. She'd had them, at the Chantry, but they'd been full of anger and resentment, and even if those things were true and real, that wasn't how she wanted this to go. Even if--even if this was the last time, she had to try.
He spoke first, his voice rusty and harsh. "I didn't expect you."
"I'm...." She was not sorry, and she would not lie. Not now. "I couldn't leave things that way." She blinked fast to push back tears. "The thing is, I meant it. Maybe not the way I said it, but--" She wanted to pace. She didn't want to be close enough to watch him shut her out. She didn't trust herself not to trip on one of the wine bottles he'd left scattered around--more than there'd been last time, she noted vaguely--because that was exactly what this day didn't need. "I realize Danarius is a prick, and an asshole, and that he did horrible things to you," she said in a rush. "And yes, he did those things with magic, to you and to others. But he chose those things, Fenris. He did them on purpose. Being a mage is like--like being blond, or left-handed. It's just something you are. I can't stop being this! There are times I have wanted to tear it out of me, I would have cut off a hand if it would make it go away, but the only way I can stop being a mage is if I stop being me." She'd lost the battle against the tears. She dashed them off her cheeks with angry hands. "I love you," she said, the first time those words had been allowed to pass her lips. "But I won't let you destroy me. I might as well walk into the Gallows and throw myself at that bitch's feet as stay with you when you can't understand that I choose differently."
He moved slightly. She wiped away tears again. "I don't expect you to forgive me, or want me," she said, "but at least do me the courtesy of telling me so I can--"
"Hawke." She didn't think he'd activated his tattoos, there had been no telltale glow, but he was in front of her without her seeing him cross the room, his hands on her shoulders. They were cold. He smelled of old wine. His white hair was tangled, and in the light from the windows, he was pallid, his face drawn. "I don't want you to be Tranquil." His eyes were locked on hers, so green it was like falling into a forest. "I could not imagine a person, mage or no, who is more different from Danarius than you are. I wouldn't have--I could never--" He shook his head. "I would never have tried to be with you at all."
He fell silent, and she waited, but it didn't seem like he had more to say, or at least not anything he was ready to say.
They stood there, just linked, and she watched the edge of a sunbeam creep across the floor.
"I don't expect you to lead parades with Anders demanding mage liberation," she said eventually, and he snorted with amusement. "I don't expect you to like magic, or stop being wary of it. All I want is for you to understand that I never want to be a blood mage, and there are other mages like me."
She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders.
"Blood magic has taken my family from me." The horrible jerking movements of the puppet body with her mother's face flashed through her mind and she shuddered. "But blood magic allowed my father to strengthen Corypheus's seals. If you never believe another thing I've said or will say, ever, believe this: I would not turn to it for any reason more trivial than he did."
She felt the shudder ripple through him, and closed her mouth. She was so exhausted she thought she could fall asleep standing here. Her soul was scoured bare, a Harrowing of her own making.
All that was left was to see if it was enough. She closed her eyes.
All she could hear was their breathing, uneven, unmatched.
What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil? He'd asked her that once. She did not think she was rotten, but then again, the Chantry taught that corruption was subtle. Her father had always told her and Bethany that they knew what was right and wrong, and he trusted them to decide, but that they could always come to him for advice. She missed that about him most of all: the quiet, bedrock faith that they would do the right thing. He'd never told them that the Chantry was wrong, but he did tell them they had to trust their own senses, minds, and hearts over the words of another.
He let go of her shoulders and it felt like her heart stopped.
"I know," he said. It sounded like the words had been dragged out of him with hooked wire. "I know you wouldn't." He hesitated. "I could not love you if you would."
Did that mean--she squeezed her eyes tighter shut. She didn't want to watch him turn away.
His hands again, light and gentle in her tangled hair, tipping her head back just a bit. Against her own better judgment, she opened her eyes. He was so close he blocked out most of the sun.
"I would follow you anywhere," he said, and then a shiver ran through him. She felt it in his hands. "I believe in you."
Her throat closed with tears. She swallowed hard. "I know why you hate magic," she said, "not in the soul-deep way of what you survived, but--I know. I just can't listen to you tell me I'm hateful, all the time."
He tilted his head forward until it rested against hers. The silence was heavy and dense. "I will...learn to hold my tongue."
She marked what he said, but they had to start somewhere. She nodded, her head moving against his.
They stood there for a long time; she wasn't sure how long, only that the spun-sugar feeling snapped when her unreasonable body decided to remind her that she hadn't eaten in over a day by emitting a loud stomach growl. She flinched, then started laughing and couldn't stop, sliding down to sit doubled over on the floor and laughing until everything hurt. Fenris was more controlled, limiting himself to a chuckle or two, but he sat next to her, his hand smoothing her hair.
"Breakfast, then?" he asked, deadpan, when she gasped to a halt.
She shoved him, but nodded. He offered a hand to help her up, and they walked out into the morning light.
Chapter Twelve