#stuartlohe

“I have told him that our relationship is just an extension of our friendship, nothing more exclusive, but I'm not entirely sure he believes me,” he further explained. “He seems one of those men who thinks pleasure of the body and a certain... dedication of purpose, are inextricably linked.”

Isabela smiled, teeth flashing white against her dark skin where she lay next to him, rolled over on her stomach, hands folded beneath her chin, a corner of the sheet draped over her otherwise naked body. “Have I mentioned lately how much I like the way you talk?” she asked. “Dedication of purpose. Inextricably linked. Such large and weighty words to hear dropping from the lips of an ex-slave.”

Fenris flushed slightly, shrugged. “I relearned proper speech mainly from listening to magisters talking while I guarded my master. It amused Danarius that I developed such a wide vocabulary and such exacting diction. I suppose I could change it, but it is a long-standing habit of speech...”

Isabela snorted, then suddenly rolled closer and kissed him. “Don't change it. It's part of what makes you you. Unless you want to change, and then by all means do whatever pleases you. But you're so lovely to listen to, especially in that wonderfully deep voice, that I hope you don't.”

Fenris had to smile at that, and kissed her in return, raising his hand to tangle in her hair for a moment. “I should go,” he said afterwards, regretfully, then smiled. “Pursue Alistair if you wish; I think it would do the man good.”

Isabela smiled and nodded, and rolled over on her side to watch appreciatively as he rose and redressed, leaning down to kiss her a final time before he left.

Watching the occasional manoeuvring between Isabela and Alistair over the next few weeks amused him, taking his mind off of his own dark thoughts. It was like watching a dance; Isabela would show up, talk, flirt a little with Alistair, then retreat again as soon as he began to get too flustered. Which sometimes took a surprisingly long time; a fact she privately expressed some surprise to him over some little time later. He laughed, and pointed out that Alistair's lack of experience didn't imply a lack of knowledge; this was a man who had been raised in a stable, after all, and then later dealt with Zevran's rather blatant approaches and total disregard of privacy for over a year.

If it was a dance, it was certainly once Isabela was very experienced with. And also one she was very, very good at. Less than a month later, Alistair hesitantly approached Fenris.

“Err. About Isabela. Are you sure it won't upset you if I... if she... if she and I...” he trailed off, blushing.

Fenris smiled, letting his amusement show. “I promise you, it won't upset me. If you're curious, go ahead – I agree with Sebastian and Zevran that she is likely to be a very good first experience for you.”

That made the man blush even more darkly, then he suddenly grinned, looking cheerful. “Good. I'll do that then.”

He didn't come home the next night. And when he finally did reappear late the next day, having presumably gone straight to work from the Hanged Man, he looked... different. Not in any great way, just a slightly more confident bearing to him, mixed with a tendency to lose his chain of thought and stare off into the distance, a bemused look or a slight smile on his face. He was very quiet for a couple of days, and then disappeared for another evening, and after that seemed back to normal, though the confidence remained. And perhaps more tellingly, his occasional absences continued.

By then Fenris had regained his own equilibrium as well, and was starting to feel what a difference it made in his life that Danarius was dead. Thoughts of his future were no long prefaced with the fear of Danarius reappearing and rendering all his plans moot. He began to take a real interest in the condition of the mansion; most of the preservative magics seemed to be failing now that the mage was dead, and he was finally able to begin properly cleaning out and repairing the more useful sections of it, with some certainty that they would remain that way.

It was a couple of weeks after Alistair had finally taken up with Isabela when Fenris heard a piece of news that disturbed his growing contentment with his life.

“She's living where,” he asked sharply, turning to look at Anders as the mage slouched along nearby.

“The alienage. With Merrill. I wasn't sure if you knew or not.”

Fenris drew a deep breath through his nose, face setting in an expression of annoyance. “No. I didn't know,” he snapped out. “Why did no one tell me?”

“Probably because they guessed you'd react exactly the way you are,” Varric pointed out.

“You knew as well?”

“Of course I knew. Everyone knew except you, and the only reason you didn't know is because you haven't been paying much attention lately.”

Fenris frowned, then had to admit to himself that the dwarf's words had some truth to them. He'd been distracted lately, and even if he hadn't been, he'd never paid much attention to the witch and her doings apart from the rare time Hawke brought both of along on one of her little adventures. Which she'd only done once since Varania's appearance in Kirkwall and Danarius' death.

“So the wi... Merrill has taken in my sister?” he asked cautiously.

“Yes. Took off after her when Isabela and whatshisname were dragging you off upstairs. I suppose she figured an ex-Tevinter elf wouldn't know much about things like how to find the alienage – it's not like she'd have had any experience of one in Tevinter. Merrill's always been a little soft-hearted. And they're both mages, and female, too. I guess she had some fellow-feeling for her. Anyway, she took your sister in, and has been helping her to fit into alienage life.”

Fenris snorted softly. As poorly as Merrill herself fit into the alienage, he couldn't imagine she was a particularly apt teacher. And personally he'd be far more likely to refer to her as soft-headed than soft-hearted, though he supposed she could well be both. Still, what disturbed him most was not her actions, foolish as they seemed to him, but the knowledge that Varania was still here in Kirkwall; still within his reach. Though within his reach for what end, he wasn't quite sure.

“You're sure you want me to read this for you?” Alistair asked, as he unfolded the piece of parchment.

“Please,” Fenris said, more than a little anxiously. “I doubt my skills are up to it yet.”

That won a brief smile from Alistair; he'd been teaching Fenris, but they weren't much beyond the basics of the alphabet and the simplest of words yet.

“All right,” he agreed, and peered at the letter. “Whoever wrote this has terrible handwriting – even worse than yours. Let's see... Dear brother, I had given up on ever hearing from you again, or learning what had happened to you. Mother is some years dead. I am servant to a magister, but treated little better than I was as a slave. I have been saving my money to try and leave Tevinter, in hope that I can do better elsewhere, and have almost enough. If there is any way you could help, maybe I could come to Kirkwall and see you, and we could talk together like we used to. Your loving sister, Varania.”

Fenris sat in thought, unsure how to react to the letter. He was pleased to have heard back from her at all, but also disappointed that she had told him so little – almost nothing, really – in response to the rather lengthier letter that Alistair had penned for him. “Does she say anything about how much help she'd need?”

Alistair frowned and looked over the letter, then turned it over and checked the other side. “Ah, there's a postscript. She says she has eight gold saved up; she can get passage out of Tevinter for eleven gold. But going all the way to Kirkwall would be sixteen gold, and she'd also need money for food for the longer trip, since that's not included in the fare... call it seventeen gold in total she'd need.”

Fenris frowned, and rapidly twitched his fingers – he could do simple math, as long as the numbers weren't too big. “Nine gold, then?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Fenris rose and walked over to the fireplace, taking down the painted tin box that served as his petty cash. He had few expenses, beyond groceries, and the box was heavy with coin. He counted out the equivalent of nine gold, then looked questioningly at Alistair. “How do I even get it to her?” he asked. “I can't imagine that coin can be sent to her as easily as a letter can be.”

Alistair smiled. “Easily enough. Talk to your friend Varric; the merchants have a system of notes of hand, whereby you can give him the money, and he'll give you a special paper. You send it to Varania, and she can take it to any of the big merchants there, and they'll give her money for the paper.”

Fenris frowned. “The paper is worth that much gold?”

“No, not really. I don't understand how it works entirely myself, but basically anyone can use the paper as if it was the gold, and some day it'll get back to Varric or one of his business associates, and they'll give out gold or goods for the paper, and then destroy the paper.”

Fenris' frown deepened. “So they don't even keep the gold?”

“No they do, just... look, it's complicated. Varric can probably explain it better than I can, seeing as he's an actual merchant. I just know that you can send her the paper, and it'll work the same as if you sent her the gold.”

“All right,” Fenris agreed dubiously. “I'll go talk to Varric about it,” he said, and swept the pile of coins off the table and into one of his belt pouches.

“I'll walk with you part of the way,” Alistair said, rising to his feet as well. “I feel like picking up some extra groceries. You want anything?”

“Some figs or dates if you can find any at not too ruinous a price. Raisins, otherwise. I assume you're buying cheese?”

Alistair grinned. “Yes. And some sticky buns.”

“Mmmm. We're low on plain bread too. You might as well pick some up while you're at the bakery anyway.”

“Certainly,” Alistair said, as the two men left together.

Fenris hated the Deep Roads. Hawke and Varric were obviously unbothered by them, even after the near-fatal outcome of their own expedition so many years before, the two of them chatting away as blithely as if the group was on nothing worse than yet another trip to the Wounded Coast, but Fenris felt uneasy and on edge.

He didn't think it was the intermittent darkness that bothered him, nor the weight of stone overhead – his cellars were as dark, and their adventures within assorted caves and underground ruins on both the coast and Sundermount had long since inured him to having rock overhead instead of sky. It was something else; the smell, perhaps, or the sound, both somehow oddly different than that of any lesser cave or structure. He wondered if it was simply the brimstone odour from the copious amounts of lava that the dwarves of old had seemed to delight in channelling through their structures – as much just because they could, it seemed, as because of the dim light its molten glow provided – or due to some darker source; the Deep Roads were the home of the darkspawn, after all.

The only person in their party who clearly disliked their current location even more than he did was Anders. The mage was walking along between him and the other two, back hunched and head sunk down between raised shoulders, his feathered mantle giving him a look rather like a bedraggled crow. He seemed nervous, head constantly turning back and forth; sensitive to every little sound in the place, and carefully walking wide of any falls of rock or other debris, of which there were a lot.

The mage stopped, suddenly. “Hawke,” he said, very quietly.

She turned and looked curiously at him; whatever she saw in his face, which Fenris could not see from where he stood, had her reaching for her weapons, even before she asked, speaking just as quietly, “Darkspawn?”

Anders nodded. “Yes. Ahead, and to the left... and more than just darkspawn. At least one Grey Warden,” he said. “Possibly more... I can't tell for sure, with all the darkspawn in between.”

Fenris frowned slightly as he drew his own sword, puzzled by the mage's words, then abruptly remembered how Anders had stopped on the stairs in Fenris' mansion, how Alistair had called out, knowing that there was someone there – someone who wasn't Fenris. Chalk it up as yet another odd Grey Warden ability, he supposed, along with near-insatiable appetite, nightmares, rapid healing, and uncommon strength and stamina.

They proceeded quickly but quietly, following a route that Hawke and Varric remembered from their previous journey here, that led in the direction Anders had indicated. It wasn't long until faint sounds of fighting reached their ears. They picked up their pace, torn between the desire to get there in time to save whomever it was – hopefully the man they'd come here to find – and the necessity of not arriving so abruptly that they entered the fight unprepared for it.

They came out in another open area, a large one, the sounds of nearby battle echoing strangely through it. They hurried along an area of unstable-looking dwarven roadway that skirted along the edge of yet another channel flowing with molten rock, then crossed over it on a bridge – thankfully in rather better condition than the roadway – and came to the top of a wide staircase. They could see the fight now; a lone dark-clad figure with a bow, standing with his back to the railing along a bend of the channel, casting arrow after arrow at an enclosing force of darkspawn – the squat shapes of genlocks, interspersed with the taller forms of hurlocks. The railing at his back and two tremendous stone pillars to either side meant they could only come at him along one front, but it was a wide front, and even as they hurried down the stairs he reached back for an arrow and cursed, finding his quiver empty. He dropped the bow at his feet and drew two wickedly long knives as the darkspawn charged him, giving a loud battle cry as the darkspawn surged in toward him, the words of it lost among the growling cries of the spawn and the echoes of the cavern.

Even as the darkspawn charged, Hawke and her group did the same, coming up on the back of them and engaging before the creatures had even realized they were there. It was chaos for a few minutes; Fenris laying about him with his great-sword, Hawke darting in and out to hamstring legs, cut throats, and slice into assorted vital organs. Varric had stayed back on the stairs, where he had a good view, and was peppering the edges of the fight with bolts, taking out anything he could that didn't involve shooting too dangerously close to the humans and elf. Anders was between Varric and the rest, casting bolt after bolt into the closely-packed mass of darkspawn, occasionally pausing to let loss a burst of healing magic.

The fight ended quickly, the last few darkspawn falling to a scything cut from Fenris' sword. The Grey Warden sagged, clearly exhausted and on the edge of collapse. Hawke stepped forward. “Nathaniel Howe?” she asked.

“Yes,” he responded, tiredly. “Who are you? What are you even doing here?”

Varric stepped forward, twirling a bolt between his fingertips. “That's the Champion of Kirkwall you're addressing, son,” he said, staring up at the lean, dark-haired human. “Your sister hired us to find you.”

He stared blankly at Varric for a moment, then looked at Hawke and nodded tiredly, before straightening up with an obvious effort, and looking dazedly around. “My men...”

At least two of the forms on the ground at his feet were not darkspawn, Fenris abruptly noticed, but other Grey Wardens, lying motionless and drenched in blood. He could not tell if they were already dead, or merely wounded and unconscious. “Mage!” he snapped. “Work for you here.”

Anders walked forward, hunched over even more than he had been, face turned slightly to the side, the very picture of reluctance. “Nothing I can do for them,” he said shortly.

“Maker's breath... Anders!” the other man exclaimed, looking astonished. “You're alive...” He stepped forward suddenly, face lit up with joy and looking for a moment as if he was going to embrace the mage. Then his expression abruptly changed, becoming an angry scowl, and he lashed out, punching Anders in the jaw hard enough to send Anders windmilling backwards before he crashed to the floor, unconscious. His actions drew a startled exclamation from Varric and an angry outcry from Hawke. Fenris quickly grabbed her arm before she could do anything unfortunate to the man they were, after all, being paid to rescue, not slaughter.

For a moment he felt confused, dream and reality blending, going as he did from a dream of sleeping in his sister's arms, to waking in Alistair's. He jerked and gasped, waking the other man.

“Mmm?” Alistair groaned questioningly.

“Nothing. A dream. Go back to sleep,” he whispered.

Alistair snorted, and smacked his lips, rolling partway over on his back to peer through slitted eyes at the nearest window. “Almost morning anyway,” he said, then yawned hugely. He rolled back, frowning at Fenris. “Must have been some dream. You're shivering. Nightmare?”

“No,” Fenris said, then sighed. “I dreamed of my family. My mother, my sister... it's the first time I've ever remembered anything about them.”

Alistair nodded understandingly; he already knew that Fenris remembered nothing from before when the lyrium marks were being etched into his flesh, a process so painful it had driven his prior self away. “What did you remember?” he asked sleepily.

“Our house. My mother and sister; they both had red hair, green eyes. Eating, sitting around a pot on the floor. And sleeping; my sister and I used to sleep just like this,” he said, shrugging one shoulder slightly so his side moved under Alistair's arm, to indicate what he meant. “Wanting better for them than what we had. It fades so quickly... I can remember their hair and eyes, my mother's smile, but not their whole faces, not their voices, not anything they ever said.”

He was shaking now, and badly. Alistair drew him closer, hugging him tightly. For a moment he felt on the verge of tears, and then he had an especially strong full-body shudder and that too passed away, leaving him limp and tired and empty-feeling. Only fragments of the dream remained. Impressions, more than distinct images. A stray thought occurred to him.

“Before I killed her, Hadriana told me that I had a sister. Varania. That she was still alive, servant to Magister Ahriman.” He paused a moment, thinking. “It didn't bother me before. I couldn't remember anything about her. Now... I don't know. I want to know more.”

Alistair nodded. “Have you ever thought about trying to contact her?” he asked. “To write her maybe?”

Fenris bit on his lip, then sighed. “I do not know how to write,” he confessed. “It was not a skill my master felt I needed to know.”

“Oh,” Alistair said, and fell silent for a little while. “You could tell me what you want to say, and I could write it for you,” he offered. “And if you want to learn to read and write, I can teach you.”

“You'd do that?” Fenris asked, feeling a little surprised.

“Of course,” Alistair said. “Why not?”

Fenris considered that for a minute. “Why not, indeed. Thank you. Yes,” he said. “I would like to write to Varania. And I would like to learn to read and write as well.”

“Good,” Alistair said, then yawned again. “Later though. Right now I'm thinking breakfast would be good. I think there's still cheese and bacon left, and some bread that isn't too stale.”

Fenris laughed softly as the other man rolled over and got out of bed. “We'd better buy more groceries soon. You're a bottomless pit for food.”

“Yeah, well, Grey Warden. Comes with the territory. Along with nightmares and a greatly-reduced lifespan.”

“I haven't seen you have many nightmares,” Fenris pointed out as he too got out of bed.

Alistair shrugged. “No Archdemon around, and very few darkspawn either. Put me near either and I'll be waking in a panic on a regular basis. Oh, and I was wrong, we're out of bacon. Just cheese and bread left, at least that we can breakfast off of. And tea.”

Fenris nodded. “I'll pick up more groceries later today then.”

He also bought more food, as he was beginning to run low. He was trying to decide what cheeses to get when a familiar voice hailed him.

“Morning, elf... I hear you have a house guest.”

“Varric,” Fenris said, turning and nodding at the dwarf. “I suppose I should have expected that the ma... the healer couldn't keep his mouth shut.”

“Nope. So why'd you take him in?”

Fenris shrugged. “Truthfully, I don't know. It just seemed the right thing to do at the time.”

Varric nodded. “Well, let me know if you need a hand with him. Or a hand with getting rid of him.”

Fenris smiled slightly, “I don't think that will be an issue,” he said, then looked curiously at Varric. “I'm surprised you're not more interested in him. I'd have thought a bastard prince would be right up your alley.”

Varric snorted and waved one hand dismissively. “One of the first rules of story-telling is know your audience. A bastard prince that valiantly overcomes all odds to regain his father's throne – preferably with some sexy scenes thrown in for spice – that'd sell. But who would want to read about a drunken failure?”

“Mmm. I see what you mean,” Fenris agreed.

“Well, I should be on my way. You'll be at our next card night?”

“Perhaps. I regretted missing the last one, but I had my hands full.”

Varric nodded and started to walk away, then turned back. “Oh, Sebastian is back in town. Got back last night – I bumped into him disembarking down at the docks.”

Fenris nodded. “Good to know. Thank you for telling me,”

“No problem,” Varric said, turned, and left.

Fenris finished his purchases – selecting three different cheeses, in the end, sure they would all be consumed before they had a chance to go off, though one looked to him as if it already had – and headed home. Alistair was dozing, but woke when he came in, and was profusely grateful to have at least some of his belongings back.

After Alistair had changed into some real clothing, they had a large lunch of sausages and potatoes fried in a spider pan over the fire, with plenty of tea and, of course, some of the cheese, one with a dry white rind that proved to be soft and creamy inside, as rich as butter.

“How are you feeling?” Fenris asked Alistair.

Alistair smiled, licking a last bit of cheese off of his thumb. “Well fed. Much better, overall. Other than wobbly as a newborn kitten,” he added with a grimace. “Too much time flat on my back and sick, I suppose. I'll have to get back in condition... not that I was in particularly good condition any more anyway, what with all the sitting around drinking I'd been doing. And then I need to find a new place to live. And a new job... I doubt the one I had is still waiting for me. Not that it was much of a job, but at least it paid the rent.”

Fenris smiled slightly. “You're welcome to stay here until you've found a job and a new place. Though the place isn't much. And it has some... peculiarities, having been the home of a magister.”

Alistair smiled back. “I'll have to take you up on that. Thank you, again. Which I'm sure I'll be saying several times a day for the foreseeable future.”