#fenabela

With that Fenris left and things stayed as they had been before. In a sense. The one time accident happened a second time. Then a third, and a fourth…..

“You know you should get some new tattoos” “What?” “I mean regular ones, that just look impressive.” “Pass.” “What about piercings?” She lightly touched his ear closest to her. “I think you’d look great with earrings.” “Hmmm, I’ll take that under consideration.” He mused his fingers ghosting over where her own had been.

That didn't stop either from engaging with other partners however. Yet there was no jealousy, only snide remarks and light teasing.

“Now thats a walk a shame if I ever saw one.” “Jealous?” “Hardly you’re still walking straight. Now if you weren’t walking then I’d be upset.” “Because you missed out.” “Precisely. I’d have to seduce them myself.”

Until an unexpected moment came. That changed them both.

An expensive vase shattered to her left as she approached.

“My my, Hawke wasn’t exaggerating when he said you were in a sour mood.” Isabella stated with little regard to the action striding her way into Fenris’ even more disheveled home.

“Leave me be…” He barked at her like a mad dog.

“What and let you have all the fun.” She smirked before kicking in a dusty dresser that might have been worth something once. “I’ve always thought that was tacky looking.” He smiled to her then and the pair continued to destroy what little was left in the home.

Hours past and they found themselves tired, drinking silently in the wreckage sitting against the bed in silence. It was Fenris who broke the silence as he passed the bottle off.

“I thought his death would feel…..different….” He stared and Isabella drank silently. “Better maybe? Less angry but it’s the same.” In annoyance he kicked the empty bottles beside him off. “But it’s as though he’s still alive.”

“That’s because he is.” She retorted tossing the empty bottle away.

“Are you mad? You saw him die we all did Hawke killed him!” He shouted at her inane remark, and yet she just sat there unfazed only lifting a single finger to poke his forehead.

“He lives here.” She sighed. “And as long as he does, you’ll always be a slave.” Fenris’s skin glowed in anger as he pushed her to floor. That single remark cutting deeper than any sword.

“Shut your mouth!”

“It’s the truth!”

“YOU DONT KNOW ANYTHING!”

“I KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE HERE!”

The glow faded as he was taken aback, but remained where he was, his weight crushing her. She didn’t move an inch only looking away.

“You think you’re the only freed slave I’ve met? Hardly. Pirate ships are an excellent hiding spot you know…” Isabela tried to laugh but very little came out. “Still that has nothing on personal experience, I know what it’s like to hate. To be consumed by it. To be rid of the waste of flesh and still…..” She bit her bottom lip in frustration.

“You…” Fenris loosened his grip on her. “You were a slave?”

“Heh. Sometimes it felt like that, a wife was what I was called….a pretty obedient doll was what he wanted, all I wanted was my freedom to be.” Pain rang in her voice at the mere thought of her old life. “Once I got it all I could think about was him. Showing him up, how much he’d disapprove, how I should have done the deed myself, him, him, him, him.” A light bitter laugh escaped her mouth then. “I was more obsessed with him when he was dead.”

“Was being the operative word there.” He let out allowing her to sit up, still straddling her form with his lanky body.

“I understood one day talking with a freed slave on my ship, that as long as he was in my thoughts, he had won. He had control.” She smiled then to him, a real genuine smile. “So I took it back, my life is mine and mine alone. I do what I do for me, I fight who I fight for me, I fuck who I fuck for me. Don’t let Danarius win Fenris.”

“You’re saying I should stop being angry?” He grumbled and she only laughed.  

“Oh Andraste no, you wouldn’t be you without a chip on your shoulder.” Playfully she batted at his shoulder to make her point. “I’m simply saying leave him in the ditch that Hawke did, and live.”

“So…what Hawke’s been saying to me since we met.” He retorted coldly only for her to brush it off by slinking her arms over his shoulders pulling him close.

“It’s the best revenge in the world.” She countered her breath warm and comforting as it slid across his ear.

They came together that night as they had countless times before yet it was different. Gone was the rushed force of impatience and lust, as they fought for control; and in it’s place was a slow tender pull of compassion, warmth and defiance. An act of feeling truly alive and clinging to another person for reassurance. And so unlike anything either had experienced before. Two broken souls offering comfort to one another.

“You’re avoiding me.”

“I am not.”

Now Isabela was sincerely annoyed. “You blocked the window.”  Of course he knew which window. The window she came in through, because the front door was always locked, and the window at the top of the garden trellis was not. He’d moved a dresser in front of it. Her window. Of all the nerve.

He smirked. “It didn’t stop you.”

She crossed her arms. It did stop her, though she was not about to admit it. It stopped her when she found it two nights ago, and it stopped her when she returned last night. It was only tonight that she had shoved the thing over and come in anyway. 

Fenris kept his back to her, his shoulders tense. The silly feather pauldrons of his quivered slightly and he leaned his forehead against the glass of the window and sighed. “I’m not in the mood for this tonight,” he said quietly. 

Isabela watched him. Every inch of him held tight against whatever he was fighting against. The next thing he was going to say, perhaps. She could feel something coming, it was in the air.

When he did say it, his voice was low and hard. “You heard him. What he said.”

She made herself say, “what do you mean?” But of course she knew what he meant. She knew it since she first saw how he had shut her out. 

“About my... talents.” The last word dripping with disgust. The feathers at his shoulder quivered again as he shuddered. “Perhaps the others did not realize what he meant, but you did. I know you did.”

Isabela shifted in her seat, ran her hands through her hair and she wandered to her feet. She had to stop looking at him for awhile; it made her uncomfortable. She could see how much he was hurting, that was the problem. It was making *her* hurt, and that was not on. Pirate Queens did not ache for other people. It was bad for business.

“Look,” she said.

Then she stopped, because she had nothing to say. She had come to him to say something important, but even she didn’t know what it was. It was just something tied up in her throat that she had to let out, or else choke.

Even she was surprised to hear it come out. 

“When I was a girl. We were dreadfully poor. And I -- my mother sold me, all right? She sold me to a man.”

He was looking at her now. Listening. She couldn’t stop now. She crossed her arms against her chest and let it out, then. It was too late to stop now.

“He gave her a bit of money. Not even that much. And he took me home. Not as a daughter. As a wife.”

His eyes were locked on her now; she could feel them. 

“I had to do a lot of things I didn’t want to do,” she finished, and rested her head back against the wall. That was it; the words that wanted to come out. So blasted hard, for some reason. They were only words.

Fenris started to say something. “You--”

“He’s dead now.” She cut him off shortly, straightening up and squaring her shoulders. She wasn’t going to tell him the whole bloody story. It was none of his business, anyway. She didn’t know why she told him that much of it. 

“And see, I’m fine.” She smiled at him. Back to normal. “We’re fine. They’re dead and gone and you and I are alive. The past doesn’t matter. What happened happened, but it can’t hurt us anymore.”

“But--” Fenris started to argue with her, and he hesitated. He looked like he wasn’t really buying what she was saying, but maybe he wanted to. 

“What, you don’t think I’m fine? Am I really a ruined little girl? No,” she shook her head defiantly. “Not on your life. I’m the fucking queen of the seven seas. I’m wonderful.” 

She made the mistake of looking at him then. She saw the look on his face. He was staring at her with a look of such wonder and admiration it made her heart stammer in confusion. “You are wonderful,” he told her, and she could see in his eyes that he really meant it.

She hadn’t known it would mean so much for him to say it back.

“Anyway,” she went on cheerfully. “No more of this nonsense, okay? Your thing and my thing, that’s in the past. No need to speak of it again, right?”

“Right,” he agreed, relieved and grateful. 

“Get some sleep, cutie,” she waved over her shoulder. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. That’s my motto, you know. Sleep it off.”

“Right,” he said again. He still had that look. Fuck, that look. She’d been asking for the smouldering look for years, and now that it was here she needed to get away really fast before she did something they’d both regret. 

She made it all the way to Lowtown before she noticed she was being followed. She must have been awfully thrown by that scene back in Fenris’s manor, not to notice. She was slipping.

“You sure you want this?” she said into his ear.

“I need this,” he growled back, between kisses. 

He really meant that too. That was new. Being wanted she knew; being needed was another thing. 

“What about you?” He stopped suddenly, almost shyly. “You can back out.”