![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lassarina posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
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.
Hawke hunched miserably, her blanket pulled over her shoulders, and tried to fix her gaze on some indistinct point that was not Sebastian's face. She could feel the tension that held Fenris curved away from her as though he expected her to lash out--and it hurt to think of what he must expect from that, after Danarius. She had heard the disappointment in Sebastian's voice when Fenris had tried to make his overtures, and then the snap when he called her to join them.
She might have been able to fuck this up more if she really tried, but it was hard to see what else she could have ruined right now.
Sebastian had his head bowed, digging two fingers into his forehead as though to relieve a headache. Hawke tucked her chin in tighter until it pressed against her chest and she felt the strain in her back.
The fire snapped and popped. She might as well have been naked in a Fereldan winter; she was cold all the way to her bones and nearly shaking with terror.
"Hawke," Fenris said, low and grating and harsh, like when he talked about Danarius, "do you no longer wish to be with me?"
She clenched her hands into fists until she felt her nails dig into her palms. Sebastian was watching them. "Of course I want to be with you," she said, her throat clogged and aching with tears. "But I want you to be happy. I thought maybe...." She pressed her fists into her closed eyes. "I thought you were saying you'd be happier." She wiggled her shoulders. "Happier not with me."
The aftermath of her words was thin and crackling, like ice on the river that wouldn't hold her weight. She and Bethany had pulled Carver out once, when the twins were six, and he'd taken a stupid dare from his friends. Her mother had been nearly in hysterics because her father was away, trading with someone from another village, and Hawke had had to heal her brother and that had caused an entirely different kind of hysterics.
At last Fenris moved. "I thought you were saying that...." He floundered. "That we could make something of all of us."
She felt that like one of Sebastian's arrows flying true. Now she knew what else she could have ruined. She could have had the joy of both of them--and she'd driven Fenris away.
Again.
And Sebastian was so disappointed he would not even look at her.
She curled in tighter, until her hips and knees and shoulders ached as she pulled herself into a smaller and smaller ball, and buried her face on her knees.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and didn't think it was loud enough for either of them to hear, but she had no more left, only gnawing despair and loneliness. "I would have wanted that."
What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil, indeed?
The fire crackled too loudly.
She felt, unexpectedly, the warmth of Fenris's hand on her shoulder. Tears stung her eyes.
"Would have, or do?" he asked her.
Her head snapped up so fast she cursed breathlessly when the muscles in her neck twinged. "What?" Her gaze jumped between them; both watched her intently.
Fenris glanced at Sebastian, who nodded. "If that is your wish," Sebsatian said, so softly, "then there are other things we must speak about."
She floundered. "But I--" Why was it so much easier to divine what people wanted when it wasn't about her? She looked at Fenris. "You aren't angry?"
"Some," he admitted, "but at myself as well." His smile was half grimace. "After all, I assumed, too."
The brief, unkind thought why is he never this understanding about magic bit at the back of her mind and she shoved it down like she did most thoughts. "You both want--" She tried to gesture to encompass all of them, and her arm threatened to cramp from being wrapped so tightly around her for so long. She hissed and settled for a wave of her fingers, tiny and insufficient. "Us?"
"I do want you both," Fenris said, quiet but firm.
"I, too, want you both," Sebastian said, but there was a hint of a question in it. "However...."
She had to shove tendrils of magic into her arms to make them uncurl without pain, but she reached out, one hand resting on Fenris's knee, the other extended to Sebastian. He was sitting too far away for her to reach. He rose and came closer, sitting down with his hand resting a finger's width from hers. She reached out and rested her hand over his. He did not pull away.
She tried to find her usual supply of sarcasm. "I do know you're a prince," she said.
He chuckled, but the amusement didn't reach his expression. "That is part of what needs discussion," he said. A lock of his hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back.
"I expect your vows also have something to do with it," Fenris said dryly.
"Yes." Sebastian took a moment, studying their linked hands. "I was content with my role in the Chantry once," he said at last. "Even after my family was killed, I thought that I belonged there, that Starkhaven would be fine without me. My only claim to it is my lineage, after all, and there are others with the same lineage." His fingers flexed minutely under Hawke's. "I've since...come to think that the Chantry may not be the place for me, even if I never try to reclaim Starkhaven. I couldn't even consider this, otherwise."
Hawke flinched, guilty. She hadn't even thought of that when she'd encouraged Fenris. Though apparently it hadn't stopped him, either.
Sebastian seemed to be considering his words carefully. "Were I only Brother Sebastian, who might soon be only Sebastian, this might be different," he said. "Love isn't easy, but I think if we all were honest with each other, we would make it work." He did not look at Hawke. Shame seared her anyway. "But if I were to retake Starkhaven, and if I survived the attempt...." He looked at the fire.
"You would require an heir," Fenris said, just as Hawke said bitterly, "I am a mage."
Fenris looked at her sharply, and his hand tightened on hers. She thought--she hoped--he meant it as reassurance.
Sebastian nodded and looked at Hawke. "Your magic is part of who you are," he said, and the gentleness in his voice made tears rise again. "But it is something I would need to consider, and something for you to think about." He turned to Fenris. "Things would be very different for all of us, if I do. I do not say I am committed to retaking Starkhaven, but I need to be honest about the implications."
A choice all of them would have to make, Hawke thought. Did she want children? She'd thought of it occasionally, but casually.
"There is one more thing you should know," Sebastian said, and Hawke wondered tiredly how much harder her life could get, which was always a dangerous question. "My grandfather established a contract with House Amell for our generation. I would never demand you fulfill it--"
Hawke dropped her head onto her knees. "How many grandchildren did my grandfather expect?" she demanded of no one. Had this been before or after her mother had run off with her father? Had he been relying entirely on Gamlen--terrifying thought?
"An ambitious man," Fenris observed.
"As I was saying," Sebastian said, "I would gladly dissolve the contract, and I do not want you to feel that I am using it against you."
"You wouldn't," Hawke murmured into her knees.
"Your confidence humbles me," he said after a long moment. The sincerity in his voice made her throat ache with more tears she refused to shed. "There need be no decisions tonight. I only wished to be clear about....well, everything."
Hawke cleared her throat. "I realize I come with more than a few complications," she said, "and that what you might want as a brother of the Chantry is not what you might want, or need, if you do retake Starkhaven."
Sebastian made an odd strangled sound in his throat. "Hawke, you do know I would be leaving the Chantry, if....?"
"Maker, not for my sake," she said, horrified.
"Not for either of our sakes, I think," Fenris said thoughtfully, "but you cannot be wed to Andraste and love another."
"I know that," Hawke said, "but--"
"This wasn't the life I chose, at first," Sebastian said. "I thought I had resigned myself to it--embraced it, even--but I see now that I simply forgot that I could have done elsewise." He bowed his head. "Whatever comes of us, or doesn't, I am no longer content to serve as a priest, though I will ever serve the Maker in whatever I do. I don't yet know what that will be, but....the Grand Cleric has suggested she will choose not to renew my vows. At first I thought it a rejection, but now I think perhaps she saw me more clearly than I saw myself." He smiled.
Hawke nodded, and dug deep for the playful tone she wanted. "A smile like yours is wasted in vestments," she said.
"Just the smile?" Fenris murmured.
"Wasted or no," Sebastian said with genuine regret, "my vows yet bind me." He smiled. "In any event, we have a long journey back to Kirkwall, and it grows late."
He gathered his blanket and settled himself on the far side of the fire. Hawke closed her eyes for a moment. She was seated on Fenris's blanket and she needed to move, but every part of her felt weighed down.
He rested his hand on her shoulder, and the tears she'd been fighting since last night overwhelmed her.
He rose to his feet and lifted her as though she was insubstantial. The blur of firelight through her tears disappeared over his shoulder as he carried her to the other end of the cave, where the quiet sounds of their horses provided some cover for the little hiccuping sobs she could not stop.. He sat on an abandoned crate, with her in his lap, and said nothing.
She had to stop, had to get her voice back and apologize, but she couldn't. Pain twisted through her arms, chest, and shoulders as she tried to swallow her tears, and couldn't, her lungs seeming to burn with every breath. Fenris said nothing, only sat with his arm around her back and his other hand on her knee, and waited.
In the back of her mind, she could feel the prickles of the Fade, and the interest of the creatures that lurked beyond the Veil. The fear of that jolted her into silence. She pressed her hands to her mouth and tried to draw a deep breath. It didn't work, but the next one was better, and the one after that, until the tears stopped and the sobs were swallowed.
Maker, she hurt in every bone, muscle, and joint, from the sand-grit soreness of her eyes to the wracking dryness of her throat and the muscle on her ribs she had apparently managed to pull with her sobs, but she didn't dare reach for healing, not with the awareness of demons in the fade, drawn by her sorrow.
Still Fenris said nothing. His hands remained still. Had he learned this hunter's patience at the end of Danarius's whip, or did it come naturally to him?
She scrubbed the back of her sleeve over her face. She had a handkerchief in her pack; for now, sniffling would have to do. His arms tightened slightly around her.
"I'm sorry." it came out as a rasping croak.
He considered for a moment. "You'll need to be more specific, Hawke." At least his tone was kind.
He was warm, and solid, and under the sweat and dust of the road he smelled of leather and himself. Hawke pressed her face into the join of his neck and shoulder. Lyrium chilled her skin, and felt good against her sore eyes. She felt guilty enough about it that she almost jerked away, but he slid his hand up to cup her head, holding her close.
"I figured if I wasn't specific it could cover all the things I've fucked up," she muttered.
He smoothed her hair lightly. She could all but hear the sound of his thoughts rattling against each other as he sifted through them for the words he wanted. "I spoke once before of my time with the Fog Warriors," he said. "There, it was not uncommon for groups of three or more to choose each other, for a night or a month or longer. I had not intended to ask you for such an arrangement, because neither Tevinter nor Kirkwall seems to practice it as enthusiastically." She could hear the way his mouth twisted when he said it. "It seems I should have asked, but I thought....that we had come to an accord."
She shifted slightly so that her shoulder wasn't digging into his ribs, and curled her hand over his shoulder. "I thought we had as well," she said. The silence stretched while she tried to find the words she wanted. "I know what I am," she said after a while. "And I know it isn't easy for you. I thought....I wanted you to be happy. I still want that."
He scoffed. "If I did only what was easy, I would still be in Tevinter."
She decided there was no possible way to respond to that.
He grasped her chin very gently, and tipped it up so she looked him full in the eyes. "I am yours, Hawke," he said quietly. He held her still, not letting her break eye contact, and she felt the weight of his statement sink into her like magic, like a vow, simultaneously the weight of a binding and the lightness of freedom.
"I love you." Her voice is hoarse and cracked from crying. "I am yours."
He kissed her, no more than the brush of a butterfly's wing, and her hands closed tight on his shoulders.
And then, to her enormous horror, she yawned.
He overrode her sudden, frantic apology with a chuckle. "Sleep is a wise idea," he said.
She slid off his lap and onto her own two feet, and he clasped her hand as they crossed the cave. Sebastian was curled up near the fire, one leg thrown out of his blanket already, and snoring faintly. Hawke dampened a handkerchief with water from her canteen to wipe her face clean, and blew her nose, and then turned to her blanket. Fenris had pulled his close enough that they could touch.
She did not deserve this--but she was grateful.
She wrapped herself in her blanket and laid her hand over his, and was soon asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three
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.
Hawke hunched miserably, her blanket pulled over her shoulders, and tried to fix her gaze on some indistinct point that was not Sebastian's face. She could feel the tension that held Fenris curved away from her as though he expected her to lash out--and it hurt to think of what he must expect from that, after Danarius. She had heard the disappointment in Sebastian's voice when Fenris had tried to make his overtures, and then the snap when he called her to join them.
She might have been able to fuck this up more if she really tried, but it was hard to see what else she could have ruined right now.
Sebastian had his head bowed, digging two fingers into his forehead as though to relieve a headache. Hawke tucked her chin in tighter until it pressed against her chest and she felt the strain in her back.
The fire snapped and popped. She might as well have been naked in a Fereldan winter; she was cold all the way to her bones and nearly shaking with terror.
"Hawke," Fenris said, low and grating and harsh, like when he talked about Danarius, "do you no longer wish to be with me?"
She clenched her hands into fists until she felt her nails dig into her palms. Sebastian was watching them. "Of course I want to be with you," she said, her throat clogged and aching with tears. "But I want you to be happy. I thought maybe...." She pressed her fists into her closed eyes. "I thought you were saying you'd be happier." She wiggled her shoulders. "Happier not with me."
The aftermath of her words was thin and crackling, like ice on the river that wouldn't hold her weight. She and Bethany had pulled Carver out once, when the twins were six, and he'd taken a stupid dare from his friends. Her mother had been nearly in hysterics because her father was away, trading with someone from another village, and Hawke had had to heal her brother and that had caused an entirely different kind of hysterics.
At last Fenris moved. "I thought you were saying that...." He floundered. "That we could make something of all of us."
She felt that like one of Sebastian's arrows flying true. Now she knew what else she could have ruined. She could have had the joy of both of them--and she'd driven Fenris away.
Again.
And Sebastian was so disappointed he would not even look at her.
She curled in tighter, until her hips and knees and shoulders ached as she pulled herself into a smaller and smaller ball, and buried her face on her knees.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, and didn't think it was loud enough for either of them to hear, but she had no more left, only gnawing despair and loneliness. "I would have wanted that."
What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil, indeed?
The fire crackled too loudly.
She felt, unexpectedly, the warmth of Fenris's hand on her shoulder. Tears stung her eyes.
"Would have, or do?" he asked her.
Her head snapped up so fast she cursed breathlessly when the muscles in her neck twinged. "What?" Her gaze jumped between them; both watched her intently.
Fenris glanced at Sebastian, who nodded. "If that is your wish," Sebsatian said, so softly, "then there are other things we must speak about."
She floundered. "But I--" Why was it so much easier to divine what people wanted when it wasn't about her? She looked at Fenris. "You aren't angry?"
"Some," he admitted, "but at myself as well." His smile was half grimace. "After all, I assumed, too."
The brief, unkind thought why is he never this understanding about magic bit at the back of her mind and she shoved it down like she did most thoughts. "You both want--" She tried to gesture to encompass all of them, and her arm threatened to cramp from being wrapped so tightly around her for so long. She hissed and settled for a wave of her fingers, tiny and insufficient. "Us?"
"I do want you both," Fenris said, quiet but firm.
"I, too, want you both," Sebastian said, but there was a hint of a question in it. "However...."
She had to shove tendrils of magic into her arms to make them uncurl without pain, but she reached out, one hand resting on Fenris's knee, the other extended to Sebastian. He was sitting too far away for her to reach. He rose and came closer, sitting down with his hand resting a finger's width from hers. She reached out and rested her hand over his. He did not pull away.
She tried to find her usual supply of sarcasm. "I do know you're a prince," she said.
He chuckled, but the amusement didn't reach his expression. "That is part of what needs discussion," he said. A lock of his hair fell into his eyes. He pushed it back.
"I expect your vows also have something to do with it," Fenris said dryly.
"Yes." Sebastian took a moment, studying their linked hands. "I was content with my role in the Chantry once," he said at last. "Even after my family was killed, I thought that I belonged there, that Starkhaven would be fine without me. My only claim to it is my lineage, after all, and there are others with the same lineage." His fingers flexed minutely under Hawke's. "I've since...come to think that the Chantry may not be the place for me, even if I never try to reclaim Starkhaven. I couldn't even consider this, otherwise."
Hawke flinched, guilty. She hadn't even thought of that when she'd encouraged Fenris. Though apparently it hadn't stopped him, either.
Sebastian seemed to be considering his words carefully. "Were I only Brother Sebastian, who might soon be only Sebastian, this might be different," he said. "Love isn't easy, but I think if we all were honest with each other, we would make it work." He did not look at Hawke. Shame seared her anyway. "But if I were to retake Starkhaven, and if I survived the attempt...." He looked at the fire.
"You would require an heir," Fenris said, just as Hawke said bitterly, "I am a mage."
Fenris looked at her sharply, and his hand tightened on hers. She thought--she hoped--he meant it as reassurance.
Sebastian nodded and looked at Hawke. "Your magic is part of who you are," he said, and the gentleness in his voice made tears rise again. "But it is something I would need to consider, and something for you to think about." He turned to Fenris. "Things would be very different for all of us, if I do. I do not say I am committed to retaking Starkhaven, but I need to be honest about the implications."
A choice all of them would have to make, Hawke thought. Did she want children? She'd thought of it occasionally, but casually.
"There is one more thing you should know," Sebastian said, and Hawke wondered tiredly how much harder her life could get, which was always a dangerous question. "My grandfather established a contract with House Amell for our generation. I would never demand you fulfill it--"
Hawke dropped her head onto her knees. "How many grandchildren did my grandfather expect?" she demanded of no one. Had this been before or after her mother had run off with her father? Had he been relying entirely on Gamlen--terrifying thought?
"An ambitious man," Fenris observed.
"As I was saying," Sebastian said, "I would gladly dissolve the contract, and I do not want you to feel that I am using it against you."
"You wouldn't," Hawke murmured into her knees.
"Your confidence humbles me," he said after a long moment. The sincerity in his voice made her throat ache with more tears she refused to shed. "There need be no decisions tonight. I only wished to be clear about....well, everything."
Hawke cleared her throat. "I realize I come with more than a few complications," she said, "and that what you might want as a brother of the Chantry is not what you might want, or need, if you do retake Starkhaven."
Sebastian made an odd strangled sound in his throat. "Hawke, you do know I would be leaving the Chantry, if....?"
"Maker, not for my sake," she said, horrified.
"Not for either of our sakes, I think," Fenris said thoughtfully, "but you cannot be wed to Andraste and love another."
"I know that," Hawke said, "but--"
"This wasn't the life I chose, at first," Sebastian said. "I thought I had resigned myself to it--embraced it, even--but I see now that I simply forgot that I could have done elsewise." He bowed his head. "Whatever comes of us, or doesn't, I am no longer content to serve as a priest, though I will ever serve the Maker in whatever I do. I don't yet know what that will be, but....the Grand Cleric has suggested she will choose not to renew my vows. At first I thought it a rejection, but now I think perhaps she saw me more clearly than I saw myself." He smiled.
Hawke nodded, and dug deep for the playful tone she wanted. "A smile like yours is wasted in vestments," she said.
"Just the smile?" Fenris murmured.
"Wasted or no," Sebastian said with genuine regret, "my vows yet bind me." He smiled. "In any event, we have a long journey back to Kirkwall, and it grows late."
He gathered his blanket and settled himself on the far side of the fire. Hawke closed her eyes for a moment. She was seated on Fenris's blanket and she needed to move, but every part of her felt weighed down.
He rested his hand on her shoulder, and the tears she'd been fighting since last night overwhelmed her.
He rose to his feet and lifted her as though she was insubstantial. The blur of firelight through her tears disappeared over his shoulder as he carried her to the other end of the cave, where the quiet sounds of their horses provided some cover for the little hiccuping sobs she could not stop.. He sat on an abandoned crate, with her in his lap, and said nothing.
She had to stop, had to get her voice back and apologize, but she couldn't. Pain twisted through her arms, chest, and shoulders as she tried to swallow her tears, and couldn't, her lungs seeming to burn with every breath. Fenris said nothing, only sat with his arm around her back and his other hand on her knee, and waited.
In the back of her mind, she could feel the prickles of the Fade, and the interest of the creatures that lurked beyond the Veil. The fear of that jolted her into silence. She pressed her hands to her mouth and tried to draw a deep breath. It didn't work, but the next one was better, and the one after that, until the tears stopped and the sobs were swallowed.
Maker, she hurt in every bone, muscle, and joint, from the sand-grit soreness of her eyes to the wracking dryness of her throat and the muscle on her ribs she had apparently managed to pull with her sobs, but she didn't dare reach for healing, not with the awareness of demons in the fade, drawn by her sorrow.
Still Fenris said nothing. His hands remained still. Had he learned this hunter's patience at the end of Danarius's whip, or did it come naturally to him?
She scrubbed the back of her sleeve over her face. She had a handkerchief in her pack; for now, sniffling would have to do. His arms tightened slightly around her.
"I'm sorry." it came out as a rasping croak.
He considered for a moment. "You'll need to be more specific, Hawke." At least his tone was kind.
He was warm, and solid, and under the sweat and dust of the road he smelled of leather and himself. Hawke pressed her face into the join of his neck and shoulder. Lyrium chilled her skin, and felt good against her sore eyes. She felt guilty enough about it that she almost jerked away, but he slid his hand up to cup her head, holding her close.
"I figured if I wasn't specific it could cover all the things I've fucked up," she muttered.
He smoothed her hair lightly. She could all but hear the sound of his thoughts rattling against each other as he sifted through them for the words he wanted. "I spoke once before of my time with the Fog Warriors," he said. "There, it was not uncommon for groups of three or more to choose each other, for a night or a month or longer. I had not intended to ask you for such an arrangement, because neither Tevinter nor Kirkwall seems to practice it as enthusiastically." She could hear the way his mouth twisted when he said it. "It seems I should have asked, but I thought....that we had come to an accord."
She shifted slightly so that her shoulder wasn't digging into his ribs, and curled her hand over his shoulder. "I thought we had as well," she said. The silence stretched while she tried to find the words she wanted. "I know what I am," she said after a while. "And I know it isn't easy for you. I thought....I wanted you to be happy. I still want that."
He scoffed. "If I did only what was easy, I would still be in Tevinter."
She decided there was no possible way to respond to that.
He grasped her chin very gently, and tipped it up so she looked him full in the eyes. "I am yours, Hawke," he said quietly. He held her still, not letting her break eye contact, and she felt the weight of his statement sink into her like magic, like a vow, simultaneously the weight of a binding and the lightness of freedom.
"I love you." Her voice is hoarse and cracked from crying. "I am yours."
He kissed her, no more than the brush of a butterfly's wing, and her hands closed tight on his shoulders.
And then, to her enormous horror, she yawned.
He overrode her sudden, frantic apology with a chuckle. "Sleep is a wise idea," he said.
She slid off his lap and onto her own two feet, and he clasped her hand as they crossed the cave. Sebastian was curled up near the fire, one leg thrown out of his blanket already, and snoring faintly. Hawke dampened a handkerchief with water from her canteen to wipe her face clean, and blew her nose, and then turned to her blanket. Fenris had pulled his close enough that they could touch.
She did not deserve this--but she was grateful.
She wrapped herself in her blanket and laid her hand over his, and was soon asleep.
Chapter Twenty-Three