"..in the middle before I knew that I had begun."

“Unraveling velvet, wave after wave, driven

by wind, unwinding by storm, by gravity thrown—

however, heaving to reach you, to find you, I've striven

undulant, erosive, blown—

or lying flat as glass for your falling clear

down: I can't swallow you. So why

have I felt I've reached you—as two reflected stars,

surfaced, lie near—as if the sky's

close element is one in me, where starfish

cleave to stones—if you're so far?

I've touched you, I know, but my rush      

subsides; our meetings only leave desire's

fleeting trace. Every place I touch you

changes shape. Shore, lie down—

undo. I'll fill your thirsty bones with blue.

I'll flood your every cave and we'll be one.”

—Robert Fanning, “Song of the Sea to the Shore” 

“Well, what do you want to do, Fenris?” Hawke asked, crouched beside him with her elbows resting on her knees. 

Fenris tried to rise again, gritting his teeth against the pain, but the wound in his side responded with a vengeance. Hawke looked at the blood dripping there, her mouth tightening slightly, but when she met his eyes again her face was impassive. 

Fenris panted and tried to find words past the cacophony of his own heartbeat in his ears. Pain was an old companion, the first thing he’d ever known; usually, it was something he could work around. He struggled to form words around this pain even so.

“Will be fine…in a moment,” he said, and Hawke’s brows raised. 

“Your rib is broken,” she said. “You’ve a nasty slash there, and frankly the man’s axe didn’t look well-tended. The odds of infection are exceptionally high. If you want to wait, we can wait, but you’re bleeding an awful lot. That isn’t going to stop if you—”

“Hush,” Fenris snapped, closing his eyes tightly. For once, Hawke hushed. 

She wasn’t wrong. That didn’t keep his skin from crawling at the idea of her magic pressing into him, piercing the skin and spilling through the markings. The slave healers had always been brutally fast, which was a blessing and a curse in its way, but Fenris had seen Hawke heal the others. She would take her time with him, and the thought of it made his stomach turn. 

“Perhaps a potion—” he began, but when he opened his eyes to look at her she was already shaking her head.

“Varric took both of them when the Tal-Vashoth dented his forehead earlier,” she said grimly. “I haven’t another. Unless you…?”

No. No, of course he didn’t have a potion. She gave each of them a cut of the loot after these excursions, but he hadn’t been spending it on anything like potions. Perhaps that needed to change. 

“No,” he said. 

Hawke’s cheeks puffed up comically, as if she’d intended to exhale but had shut her mouth too tightly for it. Fenris blinked at her. The sun caught in the hairs that had come loose from her braid, giving her head an odd nimbus of light. It was a strange thing to notice in contrast to the face she was making.

“Alright,” she said finally. “Look. I understand why you can’t trust me, and that’s fine. I can ask Anders—”

“No,” Fenris interjected, reaching out and grasping her wrist before he’d decided to do it. She stared down at his bloody hand where it wrapped around her bare wrist, then looked at him again. 

“He really is better at—”

“No,” Fenris said. He could feel the bones in her wrist shift when she spread her fingers wide. 

“Then what do you want to do?” she asked. She didn’t sound frustrated, but there was a little frown gathering at the corners of her eyes. Fenris frowned back. 

Fast talking and smooth words would not have persuaded him. He’d seen her do plenty of both these past two months and there was no doubt in his mind that she would have turned the same tactic on him if she’d thought it would be effective. But this—this implacable wall of logic? He could see no way to deflect or disdain it. 

It didn’t help that she was…right. He could not go on like this. There would be no limping down the coast to his manor and licking his wounds in peace. He wouldn’t make it halfway before he collapsed, and that was a generous estimate. 

But he—didn’t know how he would be able to tolerate her company after he felt her greedy magic reach its hands into his very flesh. 

Fenris swallowed bile and nodded, only the smallest inclination of his head. Hawke did not move. 

“I need you to tell me,” she said. “Where and how much. Alright?” 

“Don’t you know?” he snapped back. “Are you not the healer?” 

“Oh, goodness,” she said, eyes widening. “Am I? I’d no idea.”

Fenris felt his upper lip curl at her, but she went on looking at him with her wide eyes. 

“Why?” he said instead of the many other things that came to mind. Was this some sort of gambit to humiliate him or—

“Because you don’t want me to,” she said, her wrist still held in place by his hand, “and I would only heal someone who said no if their life was in danger. But you won’t let me fetch Anders and if I wait your life will be in danger. So: tell me where and how much I may heal you. I won’t do an inch more, upon my word.” 

Fenris stared at her, his racing pulse accompanied by the discordant jangle of pain in his ears. 

“On your word?” he asked, the question coming out sharper than he’d intended. She hadn’t tried to pull her hand from his grip, and though he was not holding her tightly that seemed to mean—something. He wasn’t certain what. 

“Yes,” she said. “So?” 

Fenris uncurled his fingers at last, noting the bloody handprint he left behind, and braced his hand in the dust of the road instead. Carefully, he pulled his other hand away from the wound, baring it to her. 

“The bone,” he said, “and the—the worst of the cut. Only here. No more than that. Leave the rest.”

“Alright,” she said, and reached for him. “I’m going to fix the bone first; it will help support the muscle above while it heals.”

Fenris braced himself against the pain when she rested both hands over his ribs. There was pain—she was touching an open wound with a broken rib beneath—but nothing followed the ache. 

The hillside was shaking around him. Fenris closed his eyes to shut it out and spoke through gritted teeth. 

“Are you going to begin or do you need to think about it first?”

“Hm?” Hawke said. “I have begun.” 

He was about to name her a liar, but Fenris focused on the sensations he felt through the markings and—yes. She was calling magic. 

“This bit might hurt,” she cautioned. 

Ah, he thought, at last, but the thought was followed by a hard twinge, not the horrible, seeking thing he’d always felt before. 

“I need to adjust my hands,” she informed him. “If I seal the flesh wound from the outside in, bits of rock and such could get trapped inside.”

Fenris cracked his eyes open to watch her, bent before him. Her hair hid her expression—it had begun to come loose from its braid—but he could see her hands well enough. Just as she’d explained, she adjusted her hands to the edges of the ragged cut. Again, he felt the ripples of magic through the lyrium under his skin, and again it did not move any further into his body than the depth of the slice in his side. As he watched, the muscle and skin knit back together until the severed parts were whole again.

 The moment the wound had sealed into a silvery pink-brown scar, she removed her hands from his side and brushed her hair out of her face. 

“How’s that?” she asked. “Think you can stand or do you need a moment?” 

There was a streak of his blood over her eyebrow. Fenris looked at it until she brought her fingers to the spot in question. 

“Fenris?” she asked, smearing the blood further. Fenris grimaced. 

“I can stand,” he said, and did so. Hawke stood, too, passing her hands over the dark fabric of her robe. 

“Dizzy?” she asked. 

“No,” he answered. 

She looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and turned back to the others, who were companionably standing in the shade of the single tree beside the path. 

Fenris stretched to one side, then the other, testing the new muscles. They were barely healed and sore when he strained them, just as he’d asked. Good. He would still be able to fight if necessary, which was the only thing that really mattered. 

He followed Hawke, who’d paused to rustle through a bandit’s pockets. The smear of blood over her forehead was lurid in full sunlight. One of her curls had already begun to stick to it. 

It didn’t matter. She was capable enough of caring for herself. He had no responsibility over this. 

Though—he had left a handprint on her wrist. He could see it from here, blood in a clear outline of his palm and a series of fainter markings where his fingers had touched. 

Well. Alright. 

Fenris dug in the pouch at his hip and drew forth one of the rags he used to clean his sword. He hadn’t used it yet, and it was a simple enough thing to wet the cloth and hold it out toward her. 

“Hawke,” he said, and she glanced up. 

“Oh!” she said, pocketing a pouch from the bandit and rising. “Thank you.” 

She cleaned her wrist and moved to pass the rag back. Fenris shook his head and brushed his own hair out of the way to tap his forehead. Her eyes widened slightly and averted, even as she pressed the cloth to her own skin. 

“What?” Fenris asked, narrowing his eyes. 

“Nothing at all,” she replied, holding out the bloodstained cloth. “Thank you.”

“Hawke,” he said, not taking the rag back. “What?”

She pressed her mouth into a line, then sighed. 

“I didn’t realize there were more,” she said, tapping the center of her forehead. “It was—it must have—nevermind.”

“Say it,” Fenris told her, the twinge in his side informing him that he’d gone tense again. 

“The rest must have been bad enough,” she said at last, hand still extended between them, the red and white cloth swaying slightly in the faint breeze, “the markings everywhere else. I just thought—those must have hurt particularly. That’s all.” 

“Ah.” 

He took the cloth at last, tucking it away in his belt pouch and then immediately wishing he hadn’t done it so quickly. It would be easier if he had something to do with his hands. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said, taking half a step back and nearly tripping over the corpse she’d been searching moments ago. “I mean—you did ask, didn’t you?”

“I did,” he agreed, and took a breath. “We should move on.” 

Hawke inclined her head and turned away, waving at the other two until they wandered back toward Hawke and Fenris at last. 

The ache over his ribs faded over time, as did the scar. 

The memory did not. 

|

They’d been wandering through Sundermount for what felt like hours when Fenris noticed the change in Hawke’s spellcasting. 

He didn’t want to notice. For his own reasons, Fenris tried not to look too closely at her, even if his efforts were usually in vain. In the end, he couldn’t help noticing the change; during their fight against a particularly tenacious group of spiders, one of them carved a line across his chest and Fenris called out for help. Usually, this would be the point at which Hawke turned and threw fire at whatever he was fighting. Instead, she just hissed and hit it with a lackluster burst of sparks. 

Fenris cast a disgruntled look over his shoulder, but had little time to object to her lack of assistance. Three crossbow bolts thudded into the spider, felling it at last, and he paused to down a health potion before turning to the next. 

Several minutes later, when they were the only ones left, the others set about searching the cavern and Hawke went back to the stairs, peering down at her hand. She set her staff aside with little care, and it hit several steps before rolling to the floor.

Odd, that. Much as Fenris tried not to watch her, he knew that she was meticulously careful with her weapons. He paused, crouched over a long-dead explorer, and watched her warily. 

Hawke sat stiffly on a splintering step and bent over her hand. A lock of curly black hair drifted over her face and she blew it out of the way, annoyed. 

That—that was precisely why he kept his eyes to himself. 

Despite her occasional hints, Fenris had been careful to hedge his bets. Hawke was, above and beyond anything else she did, still a mage. Not to be trusted; he’d had a lifetime to learn that, even if he didn’t remember much of it. So—he hadn’t responded to her attempts at flirting, but he hadn’t turned her down outright, either. 

He could not explain to himself why he was crossing the cavern to her now, when it would be so much smarter to stay where he was.

“What is it?” he asked when he got close. “A wound?” 

Hawke grimaced, then looked up at him. 

“Hand cramp,” she said. “Foolish. I should have done something when it started hurting hours ago, but here we are. I’m sorry about earlier, by the way—dropped the damned thing and had to improvise without the staff. Nothing ever works right without the staff.”

She mumbled this last sentence, and glared down at the staff in question. It went on lying on the cavern floor, faintly muddy now, and Fenris peered down at it.

This was a bad idea. 

It was a very bad idea. 

“Let me see it,” he said, carefully holding out one hand. 

Hawke’s eyebrows shot up, but she offered her hand after a moment. Her fingers were curled in, the thumb extended past what must be comfortable, and there were red marks on her palm from where she’d been rubbing it. 

Don’t do it, he told himself firmly, she can manage it for herself. She’s a healer; let her heal it.

Fenris crouched before her and took her hand in his, running a thumb over the swell of her palm. There was a knot in the muscle there; he could feel it even without pressing hard, and the hiss between her teeth confirmed it for what it was. 

“Stretch after extended use,” he told her stiffly, and ran both thumbs down either side of the cramped muscle.

“Are you a healer now?” she asked, and he wasn’t looking at her (he wasn’t!), but he could see the quirk in her full lips when she said it, as if she was laughing at her own joke.

“No,” Fenris said stiffly, but went on after a moment. “There was a woman—an old slave—who did this for the swordsmen when I lived in Danarius’s household.”

“Oh!” Hawke said, and hissed between her teeth when he hit a particularly bad spot. Fenris ignored this and moved on to the skin beneath her knuckles. 

Her hands were callused here, which made sense. His hands were callused in the same places, for a staff and a greatsword were gripped in a similar enough manner. He’d not accounted for the warmth of her, though, nor the way her breath stirred his hair when she craned her neck to see what he was doing. 

Fenris had known this was a bad idea, but here he was nonetheless. Getting closer to her could only end badly for both of them. And yet…

“You should be more careful,” he told her sternly, to banish the odd fluttering in his chest. It had begun when he’d watched her blow her hair out of her face and ignoring it had not yet forced the sensation to dissipate. 

Good enough; he ought to let go and move away quickly, before anything else—

Her fingers clung to his when he drew away—not very much, only for a breath or two longer than he’d held onto her, but it was enough. 

Enough—ha! Too much by far. 

Fenris stood quickly, sidestepping her fallen staff without needing to look for it.

“Thank you,” Hawke told him, flexing and curling her fingers before bending to reach for the discarded weapon. 

Fenris turned away, willing the heat and tingling to vanish from his ears and cheeks. At his side, his hands flexed, as if by doing so he could banish the feeling of her skin against his.  

“It was nothing.”

He wondered if she could hear the lie in his voice as plainly as he did.

|

In time, Fenris came to expect her after the worst wounds in battle. 

The smaller hurts he handled on his own, sometimes before the fighting was even finished, but when he was badly injured she was always right there, hands already filled with magic as she asked him what he needed. He ought to tell her no. He ought to handle it himself or bear the pain. A small voice in the back of his mind, the one that had been responsible for his survival all those years, insisted that magic always came with a price. How could he expect that her magic would be any different? 

Fenris ignored this voice whenever possible, because he was mostly convinced that there wouldn’t be a cost, that perhaps she offered her aid freely in exchange for his presence when she left on these excursions. And…in the end, Fenris had been forced to admit to himself that he liked it when Hawke healed him. Or—perhaps it would be more correct to say he liked the way it felt when Hawke touched him. 

Too much, perhaps.

“It doesn’t look all that bad,” Hawke said now, lifting her clean hand to brush a curl back from her forehead. “A clean break, I’m sure of it. How’s the pain?”

“Manageable,” Fenris said through gritted teeth, and went on watching her. She was not paying attention to him—or rather, she was paying very close attention to him, but her focus was exclusively locked on his forearm.

Pain was an old companion, though he could not call it a friend; Fenris pushed past it now, sharp and hot and centered several inches below his wrist, and focused on the sensation of her hands instead. One held his wrist steady and the other cupped his elbow, her grip firm but gentle. She’d removed his gauntlet as soon as the battle was done, but had left the rest alone; he could feel the rasp of her callused palm over the skin of his forearm, but only the warmth of her hand at his elbow through the leather of his armor. 

And, of course, he felt the rising ache that radiated from the broken bone on his arm. Not taken at an enemy’s hand—he would feel less embarrassed about that. No; when Fenris had fallen unconscious, he’d been thrown back against a boulder. He’d woken with the conviction that the arm was broken and—well, here they were. 

Hawke shot him a chiding look through her eyelashes (why was he looking at her eyelashes? He had no business looking so closely there, nor at the constellations of freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks, nor the deep brown of her eyes, nor—stop) and pursed her lips. 

“You can tell me it hurts, you know,” she murmured, angling her head to peer at his arm more, “It would at least give me an idea of how bad it is.”

The air between them smelled like her hair: sage, flaxseed oil, and some spice he’d yet to put a name to. Fenris leaned his head back against the stone that had broken his arm and took a sharp breath. 

“Hawke,” he said, “it hurts.”

He’d intended the words as a joke, the sort of dry phrase she seemed to find amusing. The words came out solemn instead, and she looked up at him immediately, the corners of her eyes creasing deeply. 

“Right,” she said. “Can you support your arm for a moment? It shouldn’t be jostled, but I need to shift this blighted robe or I’m going to muck the whole thing up.”

Her hatred for robes was well known to him by now—three years traveling in someone’s company would do that. Fenris’s hand replaced hers long enough for her to move the length of cloth out of the way and kneel. She was very careful when she took the arm again and Fenris did his best not to react when her forefinger brushed against his thumb.

“I’ll need to handle the skin closer to the wound,” she told him, as she did every single time she’d needed to heal him—though he hadn’t yet heard her give the same speech to anyone else. “Alright?”

“Do it,” Fenris said, closing his eyes when he could not bring himself to look away. 

Hawke’s fingers skimmed closer to the break. She did not press hard, but it hurt nonetheless, the ache intensifying all at once with the pressure. Pain was an old companion; Fenris did not greet it with the hiss that wanted to escape between his teeth. He held it tight in his chest instead, waiting for the moment it would finally abate. 

Hawke was warm—she was always warm, as far as he’d been able to tell—but her magic was cool, sinking into his skin like balm, or drops of water on dry, cracked earth. 

The tattoos reacted to it, as they always did, in the hum of awareness that spread from the point of contact. Once, when she’d been tipsy Hawke had asked him (usually, she never so much as acknowledged the lyrium; she’d only asked him once) if he could feel the resonance of spells through them, if magic could conduct along the length of the markings somehow. Fenris had recognized the question as academic curiosity and chose not to answer it. In truth, he did not notice the hum of magic against them in battle unless he was using them himself. But when she healed him…he supposed he felt much like still water might after a stone had been skipped along its surface. It was not a comfortable sensation, but it didn’t hurt either. He could ignore it as long as she was touching him. 

That—that was the thing he’d been avoiding thinking about, wasn’t it? 

That he didn’t especially care for the way it felt when she healed him, but he cared very much what it felt like when they touched. The occasional, brief contact when they said goodbye in the evenings was not enough. Enough for what, he could not say. 

For…himself? To understand why she was the way she was? 

It was baffling. 

Fenris opened his eyes to look at her again and found Hawke looking back. The pain in his arm dimmed slowly as the bone knit itself back together, and she watched him all the while, her hand resting over the bruised skin of his forearm. Slowly, pointedly not thinking about what he was doing, Fenris set his hand over hers. They were close enough that he could hear the quiet, sharp breath she gave when he made contact. 

Fenris was unfamiliar with the way he felt about her touch, but he wasn’t a fool; he knew that Hawke was attracted to him. She’d made this clear, in actions if not in words (what did it mean, he wondered often, that someone so self-assured seemed to fumble her words when she spoke with him?). More importantly, she’d made it clear that wanting him was all she would do if he made no indication that he felt the same about her. 

You are beautiful, Fenris thought, looking at her now in the unbroken sunlight, is there truly no one else for you?

He held the words back, just as he’d held back the pain. Now was neither the time or place, no matter how much he wondered. The question would need to be asked and answered soon. Whatever lay between them would not lay quiescent for much longer. But for now…

For now, the pain had faded entirely from his arm, and all that remained was the warmth of her hand under his, the way his fingers had fit so neatly in the gaps between hers. No; they would not speak of this yet. It was not time.

Fenris felt it just the same.  

|

The sight of the altercation made Fenris sick, and it lingered long after Hawke was safe again.

They’d been fighting again—weren’t they always, with Hawke? She’d asked him along because there’d been word of slavers along the coast again. Unerringly, they’d found the scum, and as always the slavers had looked at their party and seen coin instead of their own deaths.

Fenris lost himself just a little when he fought these creatures. It was his only excuse for the lack of attention that had seen her caught on the other side of the battlefield, a pair of slavers holding her between them. One of them had her by her thick braid, yanking her head back until her throat was bared, and the other struck her staff from her hand with a crack Fenris could hear even from a distance. 

“I’ve got her,” the one who clutched her hair crowed, and indeed they did have her; Hawke’s eyes rolled back in her head and her body went limp all at once. Fenris had seen sudden pain knock her out in an instant before, and that must have been what happened here, too. Her wrist, perhaps—they’d likely broken her wrist.

The second one pulled a set of manacles from his belt and snapped them over her arms one by one, oily silver stark against the red-purple blooming across her skin. Fenris didn’t have to be close to recognize what they’d done. He’d seen this often enough, hadn’t he? Those were enchanted bonds, magic suppressors, and he’d seen plenty of slaves with permanent versions in Danarius’s household. They would collar her soon enough with something fitted to her elegant throat, or perhaps she would wear double bracelets, all the better suited to somebody’s pet, somebody’s showpiece. In moments, they would—they would—

He was too far away. He’d let himself be led across the battlefield and he would have to cut his way through the rest of them to reach her in time. If he could reach them at all before they dragged her off to their bolt-hole. Fenris bellowed his anger and cut two of the slavers down in one blow, but it was too slow, insufficient when the space they’d occupied was filled immediately with new combatants.

Only—he was not the sole witness of Hawke’s predicament. A voice boomed across the battlefield, and rattled as Fenris was he could not catch what it said. It didn’t matter—the tone was enough to tell him that Justice had joined the battle, a relief for the first time. Anders had been standing much closer to her, and though he’d failed to intercede before, he was better-positioned to do something now. Hawke was freed in moments, slumping to the ground between two smoking piles of ash. She hadn’t woken for several minutes after they’d finished off the last of the combatants (Fenris hardly remembered this part; surveying the mess afterward, it would appear that he’d felled more than his fair share of them. They were heartless in a more literal sense now than they had been before, to his satisfaction). When she stirred at last, there was a glassiness to her eyes that Fenris did not like. 

Now, he stood behind her while Anders tended the wrist in silence. Her hair fluttered in the wind, the curls having sprung loose from their confines. She batted them aside twice before Fenris crouched beside her and cleared his throat. 

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked. He had to push the churning guilt aside to say the words, and Hawke must have heard something odd in his voice because she turned her head to look at him. 

“Hold still,” Anders murmured, angling himself closer. Hawke blinked at Fenris, her dark eyes unfocused, and scraped a handful of hair away from her face for the third time. 

“Only…if you know how to braid hair,” she murmured, her voice distant, the corner of her mouth twitching as if she remembered that she ought to be joking, but couldn’t quite recall why. 

“I will do my best,” Fenris responded solemnly, though he didn’t think she’d been serious. He glanced around at the ground for the leather hair tie she’d been wearing before this fight, but there was nothing—only bloodstained rags he might rip apart to use instead. They seemed a poor tool for the task, too dirty by far to use for this purpose.

Anders cleared his throat and held out a piece of string without looking at Fenris. Fenris took it, careful not to touch the mage, and knelt behind Hawke. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Anders murmured when she hissed through her teeth a moment later. 

Hawke shuddered. Automatically, as if this was something he did ever, Fenris set a hand on her shoulder in comfort. She set her hand over his and pressed down firmly, the trembling in her bones only quieting with pressure. 

“You are safe,” he told her, casting a glance at the ruined cuffs discarded on the dirt beside them. She nodded once, jerkily, and her hand spasmed over his. 

“Almost done,” Anders murmured, casting Fenris a look, which Fenris ignored.

“Let me see what I can do with this,” Fenris said, squeezing her shoulder once more before withdrawing. After a moment’s hesitation, he removed his gauntlets and set them on the ground beside him. Her hair would catch between the joints—he knew this because he’d felt it himself when he occasionally forgot and pushed his hair back from his forehead. When his hands were finally bare, Fenris bent to his task.

Her hair was hot to the touch, soaking in all the sunlight where they sat, but he ignored the faint sting and separated it into three sections. It would not be as neat as the versions she managed for herself, but at least it would be out of her face. What small comfort he could offer—though it was a frail, paltry thing compared to the fear she must have felt only minutes ago—was worth a small measure of pain. 

Each piece of hair that he twined into the next was a small apology: I should have stayed closer, I should have paid better attention; you have always been there when I needed you most and I could not afford you the same. 

They were, none of them, words that he would say aloud. Hawke would not accept them even if he tried. She would tell him she could take care of herself, that she’d been careless or too slow and it served her right. This was something he could not stand to hear at the moment, so Fenris gritted his teeth against the words and offered the gesture instead. He was far more careful than he needed to be, each motion slow and deliberate, and her curls clung to his fingers with each inch of progress he made. They were soft, unexpectedly so, and smelled of sage and—something he still did not recognize. Fenris could not remember if he’d ever touched her hair before, but he was certain he would not forget the experience after this.

“Anders! A little help over here, whenever you’re finished,” Varric called from the path, where he’d propped himself against a rock. Anders sighed and looked down again, touching Hawke’s arm. It was not discolored anymore—the healing had dissolved the bruise before it could finish forming—but he checked it thoroughly nonetheless. 

“Let me know if there’s any more—” he began, but Hawke was already waving her newly-healed hand at him. 

“I’m fine, Anders,” she said. “Thank you. Go help Varric. I’m just going to…sit for a moment.”

“If you’re sure,” Anders said, glancing up to give Fenris a hard look. Fenris ignored him again, too preoccupied with the curls twisting around his fingers and the way Hawke had, at some point, begun to lean back against him. After a moment, the mage stood and walked away and the two of them were left more or less alone. 

“Are you?” Fenris asked quietly. 

“Am I what?” 

“Fine.”

Hawke took a deep breath, bowing her head when his fingers traced lower on her scalp. 

“I don’t know,” she said at last. “I’d feel a fool to say no. It was only a few moments, when you…”

Fenris went on weaving her hair back into shape, his fingertips occasionally grazing the back of her neck. 

“I was thinking about what you said,” she went on finally. “About…Hadriana, I mean. When I woke up and I couldn’t touch the Fade…I thought about what it must have felt like to be—that is—ugh. Don’t listen to me, I’m—”

“Hush,” he said, slowing down deliberately, as if to prevent her from turning to have this conversation face to face. It felt like too much at the moment. Perhaps it would be; they’d had too many conversations about his past lately, and she had a way about her that made him want to spill it all into her lap. But this was not about him; this was about Hawke, and fear, and finding that her best weapon had been placed utterly out of her reach.

“What I…experienced has little to do with this,” he went on. “I know that you fear…that you are concerned about what it would mean to lose your…magic. You are not wrong to fear what almost happened here.”

Fenris had been with her when they’d found that Tranquil in the Gallows; “I am Ser Alrik’s now. Only he can command me,” the woman had said, and Hawke had lost some of her color. The moment they’d reached the rowboat that would take them back to the docks, she’d leaned over the edge and been quietly sick into the tossing waves. “Damned seasickness,” she’d said, avoiding her friends’ eyes, and had said little else until they’d reached shore. So—yes, he’d some idea of the depths of her fear. Fenris didn’t need to use his imagination to think of what it might feel like to wake with his hands bound, sick to his stomach and in pain, incapable of fighting back or protecting himself. He’d lived it. 

The string that Anders had given him was a little stretchy, somewhat ragged on one end. It didn’t seem right to use this against the fineness of her hair, but he didn’t have a better alternative. 

“I am sorry,” she told him. “That’s all. It never should have happened to you. What a…what an insufficient thing to say, but it’s true.”

“Nor this to you,” Fenris said, tying off her hair at last. He took the base of the braid between his thumb and the knuckle of his forefinger, running the length of it between the two so it would lie flat again. His knuckles skimmed the back of her neck, just barely, and he found that her skin was warm and soft here, too. The bones of his knuckles tapped against two knobs of her spine before he let go and his hand fell away. 

“Some other night,” he’d told her last week when she’d come to him and he’d told her about Seheron. Now was not the time—how well he knew that—but the brush of her skin against his told him that the night in question was drawing closer and closer every time they saw each other. Soon, he would run out of reasons to keep away. Even now, two more left his mind entirely, for she so plainly liked his touch and wanted his company that he could no longer convince himself otherwise. 

Hawke half-turned to look up at him, one wrist cradled in the opposite palm. Her eyes had stopped looking glassy. They were soft instead, soft in a way that clutched at his chest, and Fenris’s eyes fell to her mouth without his permission. 

“Thank you,” she said. 

Slowly, the newly-healed hand lifted and rested over his where he’d set it on his thigh. 

“I should probably cut it,” she murmured, lifting a hand to trace the criss-crossing lines of the plait. “It’s a liability in combat.”

“No,” Fenris blurted, then shook his head. “I mean to say—if that is what will help, then you should. But it is…beautiful.”

He’d sheared his own short with the sharpest section of his sword just after Seheron, dropping ragged hanks of blood-crusted hair in some forgotten wood. It had seemed the right thing to do when he’d still thought he could cover the lyrium markings or dye his shorn hair and be hidden. When it had finally grown back, he’d been too relieved to do much with it. It was his, in a way so few things had ever been. His hair, his choice to cut or leave it, his decision to let it drape in his face or style it. His. He would not fault her for whatever choice she made—but he would miss her curls if she decided to remove them.

“Oh,” Hawke said quietly. Her hand was warm over his, touching without holding. “Thank you.” 

Not now, Fenris reminded himself, swaying closer, not here. She is afraid, she is healing; not now. 

It was the only thing that forced him to his feet at last, though he helped her up a moment later. 

“I am glad you feel better,” he told her, stilted, and walked away before she could spy his thoughts plain on his face. 

When Hawke was steady on her feet, Fenris turned away, kicking the manacles off the edge of the cliff as he passed. The waves crashing below covered the sound they made when they fell into the sea, but Fenris didn’t care. 

They wouldn’t close around anyone’s wrists again. That was good enough for him. 

|

“Andraste wept,” Hawke murmured somewhere above him, her voice odd and fuzzy around the edges. “Fenris, can you hear me?” 

Fenris opened his mouth to answer, but only a groan escaped. Something heavy was on top of him and he couldn’t seem to get in any air around it. There was a scuffling sound from above, after which some of the pressure abated and he managed to suck in a breath.

“Don’t move,” Merrill said, her voice distant. “It was a very big rock, and I don’t think it did anything good to your body. You’ll need to lie still for a moment, catch your breath if you can.”

He could. 

Very slowly, but he could. 

“Fenris?” Hawke said, and he pried his eyes open to look at her. Her eyes were focused somewhere over his midsection, but she tapped his limp hand with the cold glass of a bottle.

“Hawke,” Merrill said gently, and there was a great thud somewhere behind them. “I don’t think he’ll be able to drink it. Look at his—”

“I see it, Merrill. Thank you.” 

Fenris could see her enough to see the look that passed over her face before she capped the little bottle and tucked it away again. It would be melodramatic and inaccurate to say that the intensity of her reluctance hurt as much as the rock had, so he wouldn’t say it. What would be the point?

What was done was done.

“I’m…going to need to touch you, Fenris. To heal this. I’m sorry. I know you can’t talk yet. I’ll—I’ll stitch up your lungs and then we’ll…go from there.”

Everything felt oddly slow and fast at once, the sensations in his body scrambled with noise and the light over her hair and the smell of dust and sea air. He hurt—he knew he hurt—but for the life of him he couldn’t remember what he’d just been doing. 

If she touched him, he did not feel it. Time skipped a beat, like an overworked heart, and when he looked at her again she had a long smear of blood on her cheek. 

“Are you with me, Fenris?” Hawke asked carefully, eyes settling on his hand where it was pressed against the cool dust of the road. 

She never looked directly at him anymore. He wished that this weren’t the case nearly as much as he wished he’d never noticed. 

“Yes.” 

“Good,” she said quietly. “I fixed the worst of it. How do you feel?” 

His whole torso was throbbing. There would be bruises, bad ones, and when he tried to sit up the pain ripped through him. 

“Alright,” Maria—Hawke said, raising a hand. “Alright. Ah—I can try something, if you don’t mind. Lie still. It should feel about how it usually does.”

“Do it,” he told her, and though he might easily have looked away he went on watching her instead. 

Soft blue light spilled from Hawke’s cupped hands in motes, brushing over the still-damaged parts of his chest. They did not feel as they usually did. Instead, the healing felt like the very lightest of misting rain, so fine it might have been fog alone, and the pain lifted gradually as it touched him. When she lowered her hands at last, eons later, he supposed he did feel better but…

“What was that?” he asked. 

Hawke waited until he’d sat up to stand and step away. 

“Anders showed me,” she said, pulling a cloth from her belt and cleaning her hands with meticulous attention, spending considerable time scrubbing at each finger. “It’s a type of healing that doesn’t require touch. I thought you might prefer…Well. In any case. I am glad you’re feeling better. Whatever we were looking for will have to wait another day, I’m afraid, or we’ll have lost the light. Here—take this. If you’re still feeling…it will help.” 

Automatically, Fenris took the bottle she was offering him and weighed it in his hand, lost for words to say. 

I thought you might prefer—

He did not, in fact, prefer. He didn’t prefer any of this, but there was no choice, no other way —

But the time for explaining such things had passed. Fenris found his feet and took his sword from Sebastian, who looked between the two of them with concern plain on his open face. When Fenris looked back for Hawke, he found her half-gone, her arm linked with Merrill’s on the path. 

At some point, the sun had dropped in the sky. Hawke was right. They would lose the light before they made it down the coast if they didn’t start back now. Sunset was already upon them.

Fenris set his jaw, settled his sword at his back, and followed. 

|

Time eased the hurt, just as it had lightened his scars and softened the ache of old wounds. It took Hawke nearly a year of healing after the battle with the Arishok before she was ready for regular combat again, and by then the two of them had recovered much of the friendship they’d lost in that single night of carelessness. There was a new caution there, perhaps, a hesitance between them. Even now, Hawke rarely looked him in the eyes, but Fenris was willing to ignore all of these things for the sake of staying near. 

His insistence on staying was gratified every time she put herself in one of these situations. 

Hawke stood away from the rest of them at the moment, braced over Varric’s unmoving body, her face set in a grimace of pain. The pace of her attacks was uneven and wrong. Usually, Fenris could have kept time by the blasts, but now they staggered from the end of her staff as unevenly as a drunk from the Hanged Man at dawn. Even at this distance, he could hear her cursing the bandits roundly. 

When he turned to look at her, Fenris watched an arrow break through the last of her barrier and clip her shoulder. The fire she threw in response was launched on pure reflex; he could tell because it missed half of the group and erupted against a nearby wall instead, barely managing to engulf one of the bowmen in flames. Bits of wood went flying in every direction and she turned from them, shielding her face with her arm and staff.

“Hawke, I’m coming!” Fenris shouted, cleaving the arm of the woman he fought and knocking a handful of the others back. She was on her knees when he turned to race toward her, blue motes of magic just beginning to spin from her hands. She could heal herself, but it would not be in time; even now, Fenris could see the last of the archers aim for her, pulling up to full draw. In seconds, he would loose an arrow. She’d never be able to call up a defense in time. 

Fenris sped up, dashing toward her and, when that wasn’t enough, reaching for the network of markings over his body. They hurt a little—they always did when he called on them—but they moved him the last few feet he needed just in time. Fenris let go of the power just as the arrow sailed through the air. Just as he’d intended, the missile struck his own body instead of hers. His momentum carried him several steps more. Each motion jostled the shaft of the arrow, which had lodged itself in his left side just below the bottommost rib. 

The spell she’d spent four months learning unfurled from her hands a moment later. She’d been so delighted when she’d finally cast it correctly that she’d picked Merrill up and spun her in a circle for no apparent reason save excitement. It might have been endearing if they hadn’t been in the middle of battle, but even then it’d been difficult not to feel heartened by her enthusiasm. 

The healing spell brushed over his hands now,  just the way she’d used to touch him—reassuring, friendly—like a pat on the shoulder when he was losing at cards. For a moment, he missed those days so intensely that he nearly forgot the arrow in his side. But—just as he’d been taught the hard way that he couldn’t let pain keep him from fighting, Fenris had also learned that emotion was best left examined when he wasn’t in danger of being skewered. He snapped the shaft of the arrow and turned back to the fight, casting a glance at Hawke to make sure she was on her feet again. She was, a trickle of blood making its slow way down the side of her face, and she nodded to him again before she did something else that had Varric jolting out of his unconscious state. 

When all was over and their foes lay dead or dying, Fenris found a crate to sit on and waited, the arrowhead still grinding painfully against bone whenever he moved too strenuously. Hawke checked Varric first. One of his arms was still hanging at the wrong angle and needed attention before he could carry on with the crucial business of tossing the place. When she turned toward Fenris at last, he saw that the color of her face was all wrong, faintly gray in cast, not warm and flushed as it ought to have been. 

“Hawke?” he said, alarmed, and she blinked at him dully for a moment before sitting at his side with a thud. 

“Be alright in a moment,” she said, the words slurred, and leaned sideways until her head rested on his knee. Fenris froze, one hand hovering at her shoulder, but she was still breathing, if shallowly, and one of her hands had fisted in the fabric of her robes. 

“Hawke?” he said, letting his hand rest over her shoulder. “Do you need…”

“Ngh,” she said, words he felt against his leg more than he heard them, though neither ear nor thigh gave him any additional insight. 

“Hawke,” he said as gently as he could manage with a bit of arrow still lodged under his skin. “You need to heal yourself.”

“Can’t,” she said. 

This he heard as clearly as he felt it, and tucked away the sensation of her mouth moving against his leg for later consideration. Fenris let go of her shoulder to pull something from her belt pouch—a red vial, likely what he was looking for, and held it before her. Her hand shook when she took it from him, and the cork went rolling off into the darkness when she fumbled it free. Fenris was half-supporting her weight; he couldn’t let go to help her with the potion. But she managed to drink it at last, shivering the whole time, and sighed and dropped the glass when she was done. 

They sat like that for several minutes, the shaking gradually subsiding until they were only sitting there with her head in his lap and his hand on her back. 

This. 

This was why they did not sit too close, why they could not be truly alone together. Fenris already felt memory nipping at his heels, could already feel what it had been like to trace the soft curves of her, what it had been like to be held for one perfect, foolish night. It was dangerous; it was something he could never have again. He had to push her away before this got any worse.

“Are you better?” he asked after a moment. Hawke lifted her head and moved away, still looking slightly off. 

“Something wrong with my head,” she said, shaking it once, hard, and almost slumping straight to the ground. Fenris caught her shoulder again, hurriedly, and bit back a groan when pain flared again in his side. 

“Don’t do that,” he gritted out, and she laughed, a warbling, unsteady thing. Fenris lifted his head to look for the others and found them on the opposite side of the room. Varric knelt beside Merrill, whose foot appeared to be caught in some sort of trap. They’d be no immediate help. 

“Here,” Fenris said, and grunted when he lowered himself from the crate to the ground. He pulled her closer and called up the brands again. They hurt worse this time—too soon since the last time he’d used them, almost certainly—but he ignored that and used the light of his fingers to examine her scalp. 

It wasn’t hard to find the blood; it’d clumped in her curls and dripped down the nape of her neck, a sure sign that something had been damaged here. Hawke made an awful noise when he shifted the mass of it aside to look for the wound and Fenris’s lips tightened in response.

“I know,” he told her, grimacing. “I know, Maria, I am sorry.” 

In the end, he’d no choice but to retrieve the little canteen of water she kept at her hip and pour it over the wound. Only when the worst of it had cleared away could he see the trouble, and when he did his stomach turned. 

“What is it?” she asked, one hand wrapped firmly around his calf, the only bit of him in reach. Her voice was wavering and her hand tightened slightly, then loosened all at once, as if she’d just realized what she was doing. 

“There is…a splinter,” he said, eyeing the wound in the pale blue light of his markings. 

“A…splinter?” she said, and he could hear an edge in her voice. “Just a splinter?” 

“It is…sizeable,” he said, swallowing hard. 

In truth, it was a sharp piece of wood longer than his forefinger. Only the very tip of it was visible, but the other had been swallowed by new skin when the potion had closed the wound. He could see the shape of it beneath the skin just to the right of the place where her spine met her skull. A bad place for a wound; too much jostling could damage the nerves there, though he knew this for the opposite reasons she likely would. 

There were options. 

They could send one of the others for Anders. Deep as they were, they were still in Darktown. It would take nearly an hour, but that was probably not too long. Or they could use a blade to cut the skin open and remove the splinter, hoping that it didn’t catch on anything important on the way out. 

Or…

“Hawke,” he said quietly. “Listen to me. I can remove this. It shouldn’t…I do not think it will hurt. But if you move while I do so, I could damage you badly.” 

She was shivering again, just a little, and he would not have noticed it if she weren’t leaning so hard against him. 

“I can send for Anders instead,” he said, readying himself to move again, but her hand tightened on his leg. 

“I—is it—how bad is it?” she asked in a small voice. Fenris traced the skin just above, gauging the safest method for drawing it forth. 

“Bad,” he said, “I can leave it; you will likely not get worse in the time it takes Anders to reach us. But if there are more of these bandits before then, or if it moves a great deal more…It is bad, Hawke.”

She took a slow breath. 

“What do you need me to do?” she asked. 

Fenris hesitated. Only once before had he done this with the intention of the other party living through it, and that wound had been in a far less delicate place. What if he reached through her skull on accident? What if he—

“Lie down,” he said. “Face angled downward. Once I begin, you will need to remain perfectly still.”

She did as he asked without further questions, the weight of her head settling into his lap. He adjusted her position, then brushed her hair away again. It was still wet enough to stay put when he moved it, but…

“Can you make a light?” he asked. “A small one, near the crown of your head.” 

She flicked her fingers and a small light bloomed there, illuminating the curve of her skull in harsh light and deep shadows. Luckily, it was already positioned well enough to see what he needed to see, but still he hesitated. 

“Fenris?” she said, and would have moved if he hadn’t set a hand on her shoulder. 

“I will fix this,” he said firmly, as much to himself as to her. “Hold still and trust me.”

“I do,” she murmured. 

It would have been difficult to explain what he did when he made his body insubstantial, and he’d tried many times. It was as if there was a here and a not-here and he angled his body somewhere between them until he existed in both at once. When he reached inside of someone, he passed the effect to whichever part of their body he wanted to alter and the absence of that part was what killed them. 

Now, he performed the mental twist that made his hand both here and not-here and rested his fingers on the skin over the splinter. 

Just a little; the smallest amount of pressure possible. Too much—too much and he could—

Fenris set his fingers over the wood, imbuing it with the same state as his hands, and plucked it from the base of her skull. Hawke gasped as soon as it was clear and he dropped both the wood and the power at once to lean forward and look at her. Had he hurt her? Was she—

“Maria?” he said, searching what little of her face he could see. “Are you—do you—”

“Mph—I’m alright.” 

She sucked in a breath and rested one hand above his ankle. 

“Give me—give me a moment. I still feel odd.” 

“Of course.”

He felt odd, too, though he imagined it was a different sort of oddness. This was the shivery strangeness of a deep-rooted relief, when one had expected the very worst and charged on nonetheless, only to find it had turned out alright in the end. Fenris had felt it before, very rarely, nearly all of those times in Hawke’s company. She had a knack for producing exactly that sort of situation, he supposed. 

When Fenris had finished with the splinter, he’d set his hand on her shoulder because it felt natural to do so, not because he’d chosen to. Here, he could feel the soft swell of her arm, the hard bones beneath, the ridge of muscle and the dip where her collarbone began. None of these were things he ought to notice. It would be wisest to let go; there was a reason they were rarely alone together. For what felt like the hundredth time, he reminded himself of this and removed his hand. 

“I can manage now,” Hawke said at the same time, letting go of his leg at last and pushing herself up. She sat like that for a moment, both hands braced on the ground. 

“Let’s see it, then,” she added after several moments, her voice strained.

Fenris lifted the bloody bit of wood from where it had fallen and dropped it into her hand. He still couldn’t see her face; her hair had come undone and hung in drifts around her head, obscuring everything but the rounded tip of one ear where she’d tucked some of it back. 

“Ah. I see,” she said crisply, and leaned the other direction to be violently ill on the tunnel floor. 

Fenris closed his eyes, tried not to think about the thing still lodged under his own skin, and waited until she’d stopped panting. 

“Sorry ‘bout that,” she murmured at last, her words accompanied by the sound of her canteen. 

“Yes,” he said, not opening his eyes, “next time I need to pull something from your skull in a midden heap, perhaps you could react with more decorum.”

Maria laughed, as he’d intended, and a moment later he heard her shuffle back to his side. 

“Let’s get this out of you,” she murmured. “I’ll need to touch your side here to draw it out.”

“Do what you need to,” Fenris replied, opening his eyes. She was very close to him, peering down at his wound and she smelled strongly of ginger—which he supposed she was chewing on to banish the taste of regurgitated health potion. He couldn’t blame her. 

“Fenris?” she said, glancing up quickly and then away. 

There—her eyes, brown and briefly lit by the little star she’d summoned and hadn’t dismissed. He’d almost forgotten what she looked like when she was looking at him, but her eyes were deep and warm as ever. When she gestured, the little golden light shifted closer, illuminating the remnants of the arrow that would have struck her if he hadn’t gotten in the way.

“Maria, I am fine. Do what you need to do; I trust you to do no more.” 

She did as he said, her hand tracing something on his skin before she worked the arrow from the wound. Her hands stole the pain, replacing it with that cool sensation, and then that dimmed as she withdrew again. Magic went on spiraling from her, gathering in soft blue light along his side. 

“Hawke,” she reminded him quietly. 

Fenris looked away from the swiftly healing wound and realized his mistake at once. Hawke, not Maria. That was what she meant. She’d given him her name once and he had handed it back to her, right before he’d walked out of her bedroom and into the cold dawn. He’d no right to use it now. 

It was easy, he’d found, to avoid the eyes of someone who did not want to look at you. 

“Hawke,” he repeated, and they waited in silence until the healing was finished and they could go see what was to be done about Merrill’s ankle. 

The splinter went into her belt pocket, as he’d expected. She cast him a brief look over her shoulder while she did it, a half-smile, as if she knew what he was thinking. 

Once she’d turned around again, Fenris returned the look, even though he knew she would not see it. 

|

“Give me a hand?” Hawke asked, and Fenris turned back for her automatically. The others were further ahead, but she was still nursing an injury from the last round of giant spiders they’d fought in this cave system. Fenris had lagged behind them to walk with her, though she’d refused his offer of more direct assistance. 

Hawke steadied herself on his shoulder as she stepped from the ledge. Fenris caught her opposite elbow and waist when she stumbled. 

“Steady?” he asked. She glanced up at him to answer and paused like that, looking up at him. 

Things had been…different between them these past weeks. Fenris hadn’t noticed in the first days after Danarius’s death, when he’d still been reeling, but as soon as he’d resurfaced and turned up at cards he’d known at once that something was wrong. He was yet trying to discern what it could be without asking, but he’d had little success at it. 

Her eyes were so deep. They caught him, as they had so many times before, and whatever he’d intended to do or say left his mind entirely. They were standing close—closer than they’d been in years, save the moments when one or both of them bled. He wanted badly to trace the lines of her freckles, to ask if she now felt as she once had for him, if the way she looked at him sometimes still meant anything.

“You’ve got blood on your face,” she said, the words uneven, and Fenris blinked. “Here.” 

She only glanced away for a moment, drawing a cloth from her belt and dampening it with her waterskin. When she held the cloth out to him, Fenris did not take it. 

“If I let go of you, you’ll fall,” he said. It might even be true; she did seem to be resting most of her weight on one foot. 

“Oh,” she said. “Alright.” 

She was very gentle when she reached up and rested the cloth over his cheekbone. The fabric was cool and not especially soft, but every ounce of his being focused on the sensation. The cloth traced over his cheek carefully once, then again. Hawke watched its path, her lips slightly parted, and her eyes darted to his when she drew away. 

“There’s more—on your forehead,” she said. “Just under the hair.”

“Go ahead,” he murmured. Her other hand had remained on his shoulder, but she lifted it now to tuck his hair to the side. He closed his eyes when she wiped that part clean, too, and he almost followed her touch when she drew away at last. 

“That should be all of it,” she said. Her pulse was thrumming at the base of her throat. He was standing so close to her that he could see it very clearly. It would be a very bad idea to press his fingertips to it to feel for himself; there were words, many of them, that had yet gone unsaid between them. 

“Thank you,” he said. 

“Think nothing of it,” she replied, and then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she blurted: 

“Are you going to leave?” 

Fenris looked at her. Her eyes widened when she was done speaking, and some calculation was going on behind her eyes. If he waited long enough, if he did not answer, she would make some joke and turn away. It would be as if she’d never asked at all. That would be the safest option. 

“Do you want me to leave?” 

“Of course not!” she said, frowning. 

“Then I will stay,” he said, unaccountably relieved, as if it was that simple. She wanted him to stay; he would stay. Where else could he possibly wish to go?

Was this…what she’d been so worried about these past weeks? That he would leave now that he was not pursued any longer?

As they spoke, he’d held on to her elbow and waist. He did not want to let them go and she showed no signs of moving away. The others were far ahead—he could barely hear them now, the scuffling sounds of their boots on gravel and stone fading into the distance. He ought to let go and move on, but he did not. He looked at her instead, and went on looking when she held his eyes. 

How long had he been willing her to do just that? Look at me, he’d thought a thousand times, missing her intensely even when she sat no further away than the other side of the table. Now that she was doing just that, he found that he could not move away or break the stare. 

Hesitantly, as if expecting to be pushed away, she reached up and combed his hair back into place over his forehead. When she was done, her hand hovered over his chest for a moment before touching lightly, lightly, just below his gorget. 

The cave around them was buzzing faintly, but he did not think it had anything to do with this place’s usual inhabitants. Fenris swallowed hard when she pushed away at last, wavering on her feet. 

“Your ankle,” he said. “If you need help walking…”

“The potion should still be working. It shouldn’t be long before…”

Fenris offered his arm, waiting. After visible hesitation, Maria looped her arm with his, leaning in to him as he’d silently requested. Fenris resisted the urge to pick her up and clutch her to him. It would be entirely inappropriate, and again—there was much left to say. He did not know whether she had ever forgiven him for that night. Though he suspected he knew her answer already, the words were important. 

They’d always been important, with her, because he knew she meant them. 

“Nevertheless,” he said, and they continued on down the tunnel until at last they saw the light of day and the green grass beyond. 

She let go of him well after she’d stopped limping.

|

“Here?” Fenris asked, touching the small of Hawke’s back. The hiss between her teeth gave the answer before she could, so he shifted onto his knees and touched the bare skin with his fingertips, tracing the outline of the strained muscle. 

“You don’t have to do this,” she told him, her voice tight. 

“I know,” he said absently, trying to remember how this was supposed to work. There were other places he’d watched healers tend to on his own body, so he could more easily approximate the necessary pressure there. For obvious reasons, he’d never watched anyone work on his back. It seemed like the most logical way to start was gently around the edges and work his way in. 

Her bedroom was quiet enough, though Fenris could hear Bodahn puttering in the atrium beyond. It was warm enough that the hearth in her bedroom didn’t need a fire, and Hawke had hung lights like stars in the air to save them the added heat of candles. He supposed he was grateful for it, though he often felt that he ought to be more uncomfortable with her casual use of magic.

“Oh,” she said at last, sighing, and her shoulders slumped. 

“Better?”

“Maker, yes.” 

The balm he’d smoothed over her back gleamed faintly in the little lights she’d made. The most pressing injury done, Fenris ran a firm hand over the line of her spine, tracing the knobs and dips of it. She sighed again, wiggling deeper into her sheets, and turned her head to look at him. 

“If you keep doing that, I’ll make it worth your while,” she told him, belying the words with a yawn that made her jaw pop. Fenris raised a brow. 

“Somehow,” he said, shifting to run his fingertips over each swell of her ribs in turn, “I find I do not believe you.”

“I am shocked and dismayed,” Maria yawned, “that you would accuse me of such things.”

“Ah, my mistake,” Fenris said, looking at her sidelong and smiling when he saw that she was still looking at him. 

“You’ve the best hands in the world, I’d wager,” she told him, shifting in the blankets again. She’d tied her hair up for the night, braided and tucked neatly into a silken scarf. 

“Ah, so you’ve felt all the others?” he asked. 

Hawke dragged her eyes open to roll them at him and Fenris smiled again. 

“Last time I give you a compliment,” she grumbled, but a smile tilted the corner of her mouth, too, and when she pillowed her head on her crossed arms she looked nothing but content. Fenris stayed the comment he might have made in response—though he did sincerely doubt that it was the last compliment she’d give him—and focused on rubbing the last of the balm into her skin instead. 

When he was finally done, Hawke was more than half-asleep. Fenris spent a moment looking down at her fondly, one hand resting on her back. She went on breathing softly, and Fenris went on feeling her heartbeat through her skin, soft and strong and steady. 

“Are you coming to bed?” she murmured at last, not bothering to open her eyes. Fenris unfolded himself from the mattress at last, shaking the pins and needles from his legs, and cleaned his hands off before he returned to the nest of sheets and Hawke. 

“The lights,” Fenris reminded her. When she flicked her fingers at them, he felt the old, familiar echo of magic race across the markings under his skin. He ignored them and climbed into bed, pulling the crisp sheet over his chest before reaching for her. Hawke draped herself over his chest obligingly, though they both knew she’d need to move before either of them actually fell asleep. 

“I like it,” she said, her voice heavy with sleep, and didn’t go on. 

Fenris kissed her forehead. 

“What?”

“Hmm?”

“You said you like it. What?” 

“Oh,” she shifted slightly, looping an arm around his waist, and touched the swell of his hip, which hadn’t quite been covered by the sheet. 

“When you touch me,” she said. 

“That’s good, as I intend to go on doing it.”

She laughed, stirring the fine hairs on his chest, and squeezed him lightly. He closed his eyes and held on to this moment as intensely as he could: the cool sheets already warming to his skin, the pressure around his waist, the silk of her scarf on his bare chest, and the texture of her skin under his hands when he lifted one to rest on her arm. 

Fenris had never imagined he would find this; when he’d come to Kirkwall, he had sought only an end to his running. He could never have anticipated being comfortable enough with someone to share their bed, soft and comfortable and not immediately armed. He’d never imagined wanting someone to hold him, to touch him as she was doing right now. The years of the absence of this had been a horrible, open wound that they’d both been forced to ignore. That it was healed now was—a relief beyond words, for he’d missed her touch gravely. 

“I feel the same,” he told her quietly, and kissed her forehead again. 

In the end, she rolled away and swathed herself in sheets, as she always did.Fenris was glad of it. Hawke was a restless sleeper and had kicked him once and elbowed him twice in the night before they agreed that the comfort of falling asleep wrapped around each other was not worth the rude awakening. 

Even so, she reached one hand across the bed between them and Fenris took it, tangling their fingers together. This was their routine now, the point of contact they usually maintained until morning. Usually, this would be the point where the evening ended and they both fell to their evening rest.

Tonight, Fenris lifted their joined hands and kissed her fingers, one kiss for each joint and another on each knuckle, and then he turned her hand over and kissed the palm, too. This last touch he held for a moment, his lips pressed to the place where lines crossed and calluses grew. He set her hand back on the sheets a moment later, squeezing it gently.

“What was that for?” Hawke murmured. 

What could he tell her? 

For the scars, for the wounds they’d made and healed between them? For keeping her promises to him, as well as any promises could be kept? For being generous with her touch, her body, her bed? For sewing him back together with her will alone when he had anticipated only pain, only solitude as his closest companions?

For holding him, when he’d once thought he would never want to be held? 

No. 

Over-romantic foolishness. He would find better words in the morning, if she remembered this well enough to question it then.

“Go to sleep, Hawke,” Fenris said instead, and she squeezed his fingers in answer. 

When he woke the next morning—before her, as always—their fingers were still twined between them on the sheets. Fenris considered their hands for a long time, eyes tracing the scars over her knuckles and the pale lines of his markings.