[Dragon Age] Offerings
Title: Offerings
Fandom: Dragon Age
Pairing: Marian Hawke/Fenris
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,191
Notes: Assumes a mage Hawke and follows "Best Served Cold."
Summary: In the wake of failed conspiracy, Hawke and Fenris do their usual slapdash job of explaining themselves to each other and find comfort even so.
When he wakes up on the cliffs of the Wounded Coast, Fenris can still feel the rush of his blood betraying him, the echo of his own body turning against him. It's not a completely unfamiliar sensation, but it's one he hasn't suffered in a long time now. And this time, he knows, he let Hawke down by allowing it.
In the midst of the dead and defeated conspirators, blood mage and traitor templar alike, he murmurs apologies to her for his weakness as she steps aside from the others to confront him. He fought, but it was not enough. Her stricken look when all he has to offer her is regret tells him everything he needs to know.
He would stay and watch her back now, if he could; shadow her every step of the way back to Kirkwall in the aftermath of the failed plot against Meredith (how could they, how could anyone have thought politicking against some meaningless authority was worth harming Hawke?). But she isn't alone here. Isabela is with her, Aveline is with her, Anders is there. And Fenris does not trust himself not to show weakness around them now.
He inclines his head to Hawke as she settles in to check the survivors and regroup her own companions. "I'll return alone. I will see you in Hightown, I hope." And he turns to walk the route back to the city. He lets his thoughts narrow to the reality of putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding rocks and debris on the path, keeping his body upright and his posture guarded. In this way, he stays in control until he's well out of sight of the others.
Only then does he slump, shaking, against a twisted tree. Fenris examines his own trembling fingers and curses himself in silence. Hawke has given him nothing but support and kindness and even, terrifyingly and unfathomably, love over these past six years. He has never had anything to give her in return but his hatred and his poorly hidden weakness, and so he has tried to be strong at least on the outside to begin to make up for it, to be of some use to her. His fall today stripped even that attempt from him.
Why does she still keep him even so? It's a question he can't answer. He can barely begin to understand his own feelings for her. Some days lately he has caught himself acknowledging in silence that perhaps her magic isn't so terrible after all, and he can't tell whether being able to think that is freedom or a betrayal. There are many things he can't decide for himself. He only knows, as he finally stills the trembling and moves to continue back to Kirkwall, that he needs what she gives him, even if he cannot return enough to her in kind.
And there is one other thing he knows, this one a plain fact. Even were he not aching from his injuries, the memories stirred up by the blood mages' attack would not let him sleep tonight.
* * *
Hawke sets the letters down at her desk. She can normally tend to Champion business with a smile and a flourish of a quill (though unfortunately the smile is less effective in writing than it is in person), but tonight is not a good one. She hasn't seen Fenris since returning from the Wounded Coast, and every time she tries to focus on some task at hand, his shamed voice lowering in apology rings in her ears again. Her gut clenches every time.
But what can she do? It's late, and it's best she not disturb his sleep, she tells herself. But even as she thinks that, she straightens to look out the window toward his mansion. The firelight flickering in its dusty windows gives the lie to her excuse.
Enough. They're past the point of pretending they can say nothing to each other and get away with it. Three years of that were agony enough.
She puts on her robes and takes up her staff--an heirloom from her father, an ornamental thing designed to pass as a fashionable walking stick. Something from the days when she needed to pretend. Now she's the only mage in the city politically powerful enough to walk unmolested no matter what she shows--and still not powerful enough to do anything for the mages, the people less protected by status.
Still not powerful enough to protect those dear to her. Some days she feels like giving up on that.
But not tonight. Tonight, she leaves her estate and makes her way to Fenris's mansion. So long as he allows her in, she will not let him suffer alone after what happened today.
When she knocks on his door he does not answer. She hesitates, then; she won't force her way in if he can't bring himself to see her. But she tries the knob, and it opens freely. So, with only faint pangs of unease, she lets herself in. Hawke walks past the broken statues still toppled, the cobwebbed corners, to the only room of the house he actually lives in and bothers keeping even halfway clean. Her footsteps leave prints in the dust, as always.
His voice reaches her just before she steps into the room. "Hawke. There was no need to trouble yourself."
She feints away from the implications there. "I saw the light in your windows. You aren't sleeping."
His chuckle is weaker than usual. "Perceptive. I should have put out the fire; I had no wish to concern you."
"What a fun way to spend an evening," she says as she steps past the threshold. He isn't at the table as usual, but crouching before the fire. And yet she is still unable to bring herself to voice why she came. "Sitting alone in the dark. You could give all the bumps in the night names! How about 'Creaky' and 'Little Crackles'?"
"Without you, I would not have the creativity to manage it," he says. She's sure it's meant to be a joke, but he fails at his attempt to smile as he says it.
There are too many things she should say to him, too many things she should apologize for. What of her fool decision to bring Anders to the Wounded Coast that day? He was the last person Fenris needed to see at the time, and if Fenris had lashed out, both of them could have been hurt. But though Hawke is a good healer now herself, she couldn't be certain her skills alone would be enough to tend to whatever she found there, and she would not have been able to live with herself if they hadn't been. Of course, in the end, no healing was needed at all. Fenris was fine. For certain values of "fine."
And she let him walk back alone! What could she possibly say to make up for that?
He interrupts her thoughts of self-recrimination by rising to his feet. He moves with the same lean litheness as always, the same taut control that makes her hunger to take the burden of his pain from him even though she knows trying would only make it worse. But she realizes with another twist of guilt as she watches him now that he's dragging one leg and shielding his chest gingerly.
"You're hurt," she says. "How did I not see it before?"
"I didn't want to worry you," he says, a mirror of her guilt flashing into his eyes instead.
"Maybe I enjoy worrying about you," she says. "Maybe you should have figured that out by now." Six years ago, he made her angry and confused and not a little sad with his incessant accusations and suspicions and expressions of hate; now there's so much else to be frustrated, bewildered, and distressed with him for. Where does she begin?
He bows his head. "If you wish to heal me, then do it."
"I wish for a pet griffin, but they're extinct," she says. "Do you want me to heal you, Fenris?"
He straightens up a little, but his gaze is still averted. "I won't burden you with my desires tonight. Not after I have failed you already."
Hawke nearly chokes. It's usually almost effortless for her to halt the sting of tears when they threaten her composure, but right now it's actually hard. "That wasn't an answer."
"Do with me as you will," he says with grave and perfect calm. "I am yours."
Her stomach turns, and her throat tightens.
In another life, she takes him by the shoulders and tells him right there never to say that to her again, because she doesn't want to own him, only to love him. In that other life, he struggles to hold his head up straight and meet her gaze but finally tells her that he'll try to love her back as an equal.
In this life, his armor has spikes at the shoulders, so she can't grasp him like that anyway. The words all go unsaid. Instead, she grasps her staff in one hand, holds out the other, and feels the energy flow into her from the Fade, and those spirits she's called to watch over her work, through some secret place and back out through her fingers to surround him and mend his damaged flesh, or at least what of it can be mended. As the light fades, she settles her staff across her back again, closes her eyes, and offers up her promise as always.
When she opens her eyes again he is watching her keenly. It is, she realizes, the first time she's healed him outside of battle. There's a question on his lips, but he hesitates to voice it. "What is it?" she asks.
"You looked as though you were saying something for a moment," he says.
Hawke hesitates. Telling Fenris about the decisions and sacrifices that went into her taking up this sort of healing does not seem like the best of ideas. But he wants to know. Now of all times she will not deny him that. "I was," she says. "I call spirits to help me heal, now. They won't help me if I don't promise them every time that I will only use what they offer to heal and revive, and hold fast to that promise."
Predictably, his face falls into a scowl. "You owe them no such promise."
"They're the ones providing the power," she says. "I'd owe them dragon bones if they asked for that. I'm rather glad they don't. Think of the trouble!"
That doesn't help. He's still scowling. "You owe it to the people around you who would be harmed if those things came through the Veil. You owe it to yourself, Hawke. Why do you consort with such entities? You are too strong to need their so-called help."
She planned on telling him, she really did. He deserves it. But the flood of memories and motivations is as overwhelming and inexpressible as always. Her hand on the knife on Carver's throat. Mother dying in her arms. The desperate conviction that she must lose no one else, or she would lose herself too. Any risk to herself was worth the power to protect the few people she had left, she believed then, and she believes it now. But how can she tell him she would do anything to keep him safe when he doesn't even understand how she cares for him in the first place?
"Choosing the path of a spirit healer was my decision," she tells him. "And what you think of it is yours."
He sighs. "Indeed it is. But I stand ready at your side regardless."
"I'm grateful," she somehow does manage to say. "I always have been."
Fenris looks at her with familiar incomprehension and uncertainty in his eyes. He makes no effort to banish it, but he does reach out to draw her close and kiss her.
As always, his touch is the one thing she can lose herself in without fear.
* * *
Hawke sleeps at his side afterwards, and he tries his best to follow her. Finding comfort in her arms instead of merely pain and longing is still a new thing to him, and he cannot begin to tell her how much he treasures it.
Fenris presses his cheek against hers and holds one palm to her chest to feel the beat of her heart. "I promise," he murmurs to her. The phrase is strange on his tongue; a promise is a choice, a bond he's making himself. "I will let no harm come to you, from the spirits you call or anything else."
She stirs. He feels his own heartbeat speed up in alarm at the thought that she might be awake after all, that she might have heard him say that.
But her eyelids only flutter without opening, and when she sighs her distant acceptance of his offer it is from a dream.
He hopes it is a good dream, but he knows he cannot offer her that.
Fandom: Dragon Age
Pairing: Marian Hawke/Fenris
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2,191
Notes: Assumes a mage Hawke and follows "Best Served Cold."
Summary: In the wake of failed conspiracy, Hawke and Fenris do their usual slapdash job of explaining themselves to each other and find comfort even so.
When he wakes up on the cliffs of the Wounded Coast, Fenris can still feel the rush of his blood betraying him, the echo of his own body turning against him. It's not a completely unfamiliar sensation, but it's one he hasn't suffered in a long time now. And this time, he knows, he let Hawke down by allowing it.
In the midst of the dead and defeated conspirators, blood mage and traitor templar alike, he murmurs apologies to her for his weakness as she steps aside from the others to confront him. He fought, but it was not enough. Her stricken look when all he has to offer her is regret tells him everything he needs to know.
He would stay and watch her back now, if he could; shadow her every step of the way back to Kirkwall in the aftermath of the failed plot against Meredith (how could they, how could anyone have thought politicking against some meaningless authority was worth harming Hawke?). But she isn't alone here. Isabela is with her, Aveline is with her, Anders is there. And Fenris does not trust himself not to show weakness around them now.
He inclines his head to Hawke as she settles in to check the survivors and regroup her own companions. "I'll return alone. I will see you in Hightown, I hope." And he turns to walk the route back to the city. He lets his thoughts narrow to the reality of putting one foot in front of the other, avoiding rocks and debris on the path, keeping his body upright and his posture guarded. In this way, he stays in control until he's well out of sight of the others.
Only then does he slump, shaking, against a twisted tree. Fenris examines his own trembling fingers and curses himself in silence. Hawke has given him nothing but support and kindness and even, terrifyingly and unfathomably, love over these past six years. He has never had anything to give her in return but his hatred and his poorly hidden weakness, and so he has tried to be strong at least on the outside to begin to make up for it, to be of some use to her. His fall today stripped even that attempt from him.
Why does she still keep him even so? It's a question he can't answer. He can barely begin to understand his own feelings for her. Some days lately he has caught himself acknowledging in silence that perhaps her magic isn't so terrible after all, and he can't tell whether being able to think that is freedom or a betrayal. There are many things he can't decide for himself. He only knows, as he finally stills the trembling and moves to continue back to Kirkwall, that he needs what she gives him, even if he cannot return enough to her in kind.
And there is one other thing he knows, this one a plain fact. Even were he not aching from his injuries, the memories stirred up by the blood mages' attack would not let him sleep tonight.
* * *
Hawke sets the letters down at her desk. She can normally tend to Champion business with a smile and a flourish of a quill (though unfortunately the smile is less effective in writing than it is in person), but tonight is not a good one. She hasn't seen Fenris since returning from the Wounded Coast, and every time she tries to focus on some task at hand, his shamed voice lowering in apology rings in her ears again. Her gut clenches every time.
But what can she do? It's late, and it's best she not disturb his sleep, she tells herself. But even as she thinks that, she straightens to look out the window toward his mansion. The firelight flickering in its dusty windows gives the lie to her excuse.
Enough. They're past the point of pretending they can say nothing to each other and get away with it. Three years of that were agony enough.
She puts on her robes and takes up her staff--an heirloom from her father, an ornamental thing designed to pass as a fashionable walking stick. Something from the days when she needed to pretend. Now she's the only mage in the city politically powerful enough to walk unmolested no matter what she shows--and still not powerful enough to do anything for the mages, the people less protected by status.
Still not powerful enough to protect those dear to her. Some days she feels like giving up on that.
But not tonight. Tonight, she leaves her estate and makes her way to Fenris's mansion. So long as he allows her in, she will not let him suffer alone after what happened today.
When she knocks on his door he does not answer. She hesitates, then; she won't force her way in if he can't bring himself to see her. But she tries the knob, and it opens freely. So, with only faint pangs of unease, she lets herself in. Hawke walks past the broken statues still toppled, the cobwebbed corners, to the only room of the house he actually lives in and bothers keeping even halfway clean. Her footsteps leave prints in the dust, as always.
His voice reaches her just before she steps into the room. "Hawke. There was no need to trouble yourself."
She feints away from the implications there. "I saw the light in your windows. You aren't sleeping."
His chuckle is weaker than usual. "Perceptive. I should have put out the fire; I had no wish to concern you."
"What a fun way to spend an evening," she says as she steps past the threshold. He isn't at the table as usual, but crouching before the fire. And yet she is still unable to bring herself to voice why she came. "Sitting alone in the dark. You could give all the bumps in the night names! How about 'Creaky' and 'Little Crackles'?"
"Without you, I would not have the creativity to manage it," he says. She's sure it's meant to be a joke, but he fails at his attempt to smile as he says it.
There are too many things she should say to him, too many things she should apologize for. What of her fool decision to bring Anders to the Wounded Coast that day? He was the last person Fenris needed to see at the time, and if Fenris had lashed out, both of them could have been hurt. But though Hawke is a good healer now herself, she couldn't be certain her skills alone would be enough to tend to whatever she found there, and she would not have been able to live with herself if they hadn't been. Of course, in the end, no healing was needed at all. Fenris was fine. For certain values of "fine."
And she let him walk back alone! What could she possibly say to make up for that?
He interrupts her thoughts of self-recrimination by rising to his feet. He moves with the same lean litheness as always, the same taut control that makes her hunger to take the burden of his pain from him even though she knows trying would only make it worse. But she realizes with another twist of guilt as she watches him now that he's dragging one leg and shielding his chest gingerly.
"You're hurt," she says. "How did I not see it before?"
"I didn't want to worry you," he says, a mirror of her guilt flashing into his eyes instead.
"Maybe I enjoy worrying about you," she says. "Maybe you should have figured that out by now." Six years ago, he made her angry and confused and not a little sad with his incessant accusations and suspicions and expressions of hate; now there's so much else to be frustrated, bewildered, and distressed with him for. Where does she begin?
He bows his head. "If you wish to heal me, then do it."
"I wish for a pet griffin, but they're extinct," she says. "Do you want me to heal you, Fenris?"
He straightens up a little, but his gaze is still averted. "I won't burden you with my desires tonight. Not after I have failed you already."
Hawke nearly chokes. It's usually almost effortless for her to halt the sting of tears when they threaten her composure, but right now it's actually hard. "That wasn't an answer."
"Do with me as you will," he says with grave and perfect calm. "I am yours."
Her stomach turns, and her throat tightens.
In another life, she takes him by the shoulders and tells him right there never to say that to her again, because she doesn't want to own him, only to love him. In that other life, he struggles to hold his head up straight and meet her gaze but finally tells her that he'll try to love her back as an equal.
In this life, his armor has spikes at the shoulders, so she can't grasp him like that anyway. The words all go unsaid. Instead, she grasps her staff in one hand, holds out the other, and feels the energy flow into her from the Fade, and those spirits she's called to watch over her work, through some secret place and back out through her fingers to surround him and mend his damaged flesh, or at least what of it can be mended. As the light fades, she settles her staff across her back again, closes her eyes, and offers up her promise as always.
When she opens her eyes again he is watching her keenly. It is, she realizes, the first time she's healed him outside of battle. There's a question on his lips, but he hesitates to voice it. "What is it?" she asks.
"You looked as though you were saying something for a moment," he says.
Hawke hesitates. Telling Fenris about the decisions and sacrifices that went into her taking up this sort of healing does not seem like the best of ideas. But he wants to know. Now of all times she will not deny him that. "I was," she says. "I call spirits to help me heal, now. They won't help me if I don't promise them every time that I will only use what they offer to heal and revive, and hold fast to that promise."
Predictably, his face falls into a scowl. "You owe them no such promise."
"They're the ones providing the power," she says. "I'd owe them dragon bones if they asked for that. I'm rather glad they don't. Think of the trouble!"
That doesn't help. He's still scowling. "You owe it to the people around you who would be harmed if those things came through the Veil. You owe it to yourself, Hawke. Why do you consort with such entities? You are too strong to need their so-called help."
She planned on telling him, she really did. He deserves it. But the flood of memories and motivations is as overwhelming and inexpressible as always. Her hand on the knife on Carver's throat. Mother dying in her arms. The desperate conviction that she must lose no one else, or she would lose herself too. Any risk to herself was worth the power to protect the few people she had left, she believed then, and she believes it now. But how can she tell him she would do anything to keep him safe when he doesn't even understand how she cares for him in the first place?
"Choosing the path of a spirit healer was my decision," she tells him. "And what you think of it is yours."
He sighs. "Indeed it is. But I stand ready at your side regardless."
"I'm grateful," she somehow does manage to say. "I always have been."
Fenris looks at her with familiar incomprehension and uncertainty in his eyes. He makes no effort to banish it, but he does reach out to draw her close and kiss her.
As always, his touch is the one thing she can lose herself in without fear.
* * *
Hawke sleeps at his side afterwards, and he tries his best to follow her. Finding comfort in her arms instead of merely pain and longing is still a new thing to him, and he cannot begin to tell her how much he treasures it.
Fenris presses his cheek against hers and holds one palm to her chest to feel the beat of her heart. "I promise," he murmurs to her. The phrase is strange on his tongue; a promise is a choice, a bond he's making himself. "I will let no harm come to you, from the spirits you call or anything else."
She stirs. He feels his own heartbeat speed up in alarm at the thought that she might be awake after all, that she might have heard him say that.
But her eyelids only flutter without opening, and when she sighs her distant acceptance of his offer it is from a dream.
He hopes it is a good dream, but he knows he cannot offer her that.