Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Stranger, pause and look;
  From the dust of ages
Lift this little book,
  Turn the tattered pages,
Read me, do not let me die!
  Search the fading letters, finding
  Steadfast in the broken binding
All that once was I!
     --The Poet and His Book, Edna St. Vincent Millay

* * *

Once upon a time, there was a little girl who lived with her father in a wooden cottage at the very end of the river. Most days, she was a contented child, golden-haired and bright-eyed and laughing, but on the days when the winds blew warm spices from the north and the leaves on the trees whispered to her their secrets and the river brought her murmuring songs from beyond the Waking Sea, she knew that she wanted to see the wide world and those who lived in it. But the girl's mother had died in childbirth and she was her father's only companion, and so for sixteen years she lived with him in their little cottage, for she did not wish for him to be lonely.

Spring came, and the girl's father grew ill and died. The leaves of the trees watched the girl who was not so little anymore as she dug the grave by herself, for there was no one to help her. Then, when she was finished burying her father, she gathered all the food and water from the wooden cottage and packed it and closed the door behind her. "Goodbye," she said to the leaves on the trees; "goodbye," she said to the sighing winds; "goodbye," she said to the river. "I'm going to see the world."

"Help the first soul you see on your path," said the river, for it traveled far and knew many things, "and less harm may come to you than otherwise."

The girl thanked the river, because her father had taught her to be polite to all who spoke to her, and then she set forth. Days passed, and the leaves still whispered their secrets and the winds still sighed and the river still murmured of wondrous things, but there was no one to hear it, because the little girl was gone.

* * *

Fenris hates magic.

Most of the time it's nothing more than fact of his life, a simple thing easily ignored like blinking, like breathing—but there are some times that it bursts forward in full fury, when he remembers very vividly how very much he dislikes it. Right now, with Hawke thrusting a thick, ancient book that actually smells like magic between him and his wineglass—well. It's one of those times.

"Look at this," she crows, sliding between him and Varric on the bench without bothering with the extravagance of a greeting. The book thumps heavily onto the table as she sits, and she hardly notices her careless elbow knocking the cards of their two-handed game of Wicked Grace entirely astray. Corff shouts something from the bar and she waves a hand in response.

"It reeks of magic," Fenris grumbles, pushing the book away from his wineglass with one finger. For a second something—tugs at the lyrium in his hand and he snatches it back, startled—but before he can examine the book more closely, Varric has pulled it towards him with the perusing air of a connoisseur, apparently undisturbed by its contents, magical or otherwise. Isabela and Merrill join the table on the other side, Isabela already holding two sloshing tankards in each hand that she distributes among everyone save Fenris, who already nurses a glass of mediocre wine. The Hanged Man is noisy tonight, bustling with the drunk and despondent, and the commotion is loud enough that they have to strain to hear each other over it.

"Old," says Varric, tipping the book this way and that, peering at the wear on the corners of the faded scarlet binding. The book is as long as Varric's forearm and at least two inches thick, and the gilding on the title has worn away so much it is almost unreadable. He thumbs through the pages carefully without cracking the book open wide enough to read it; Hawke looks over his shoulder like a giddy child, strands of her dark hair falling loose around her face. "Very old, by the look of this vellum. At least Storm Age, maybe as old as Steel."

"6:20 Steel," says Hawke, unable to contain herself any longer; Varric's eyebrow pops up in surprise as he hands it back. "Give or take ten years."

Merrill is practically bouncing in her seat. "Tell them what it is, Hawke!"

"Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked," Fenris says, reading the title sideways in Hawke's hands. "A Series of Cott—of Cautionary Tales." He straightens just in time to catch the look on Hawke's face, mingled surprise and pride, and then she grins at him with a private warmth that makes his stomach flip. Isabela scoffs loud enough that a few nearby patrons glance in her direction, and Fenris's tentative complacency vanishes under the more comfortable weight of irritation.

"Oh, please." She slams back a long swallow of rum, shrugging at Hawke's pointed look. "If you two get any more transparent, even I'm going to feel embarrassed."

Fenris bristles at Varric's snort and Hawke rolls her eyes. Isabela laughs at him again, not unkindly, and toasts them both before taking another drink. Hawke's hand darts across the table like lightning and tips Isabela's tankard further into the air with two fingers, pressing it closer to her mouth; Isabela sputters only a moment before her eyes light in challenge at Hawke's grin, and with a wave of her free hand, she polishes off the rest of the rum as if it had been her own idea. The empty tankard slams to the table with a hollow thunk and Isabela tosses her head in a storm of pride and alcohol. "Do your worst, Champion."

"I concede!" Hawke cries, sitting back with a wry grin of defeat, and signals for Norah to bring Isabela another drink. "To the victor the spoils, Captain."

Isabela laughs again, bowing to the applause of Merrill and Varric, but before Fenris can voice his disapprobation, Hawke has wrapped her hand around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. It's not the first time she's been so demonstrative in front of the others—and yet, it still surprises him enough to abruptly deflate his annoyance, and the grin she gives him tells him that had been precisely her intention. "Ah, love, don't be so surprised," she says, and winks as she flips Norah a coin. "Right on with the title, by the way."

She straightens as Varric asks her a question about the book, her arm falling away from his shoulders, and Fenris refuses to allow himself to miss its warmth. Hawke has always been free with her affections, freer still since they'd formed this—something between them, and he does not pretend that it is something he can easily comprehend. Her fingers brush so casually over his shoulders in the Lowtown bazaar and she does not understand why the touch is a luxury; she wraps her arms around his neck from behind as he reads for nothing more than the pleasure of it, and she does not realize why he savors every moment. A freeman's province, he thinks with only a hint of bitterness, to be so open with one's feelings, so wholly unconcerned with reprisal. So unafraid to show weakness.

Hawke laughs aloud and Fenris jolts—the wine must be stronger than he realized to have so turned his thoughts, and with effort, he forces his attention back to the conversation.

"It's fairy tales!" Merrill cries, leaning over the table to be heard. The tip of her kerchief drops into her untouched tankard and Isabela fishes it out with a fork. "Really old ones, too, old enough that my people have nearly identical stories." A dreamy smile spreads over her face. "'The River-Walker,' 'The Lady and the Wolf'—oh, I haven't heard these since I was a da'len. Do read one, Hawke."

"These are children's stories?" Fenris asks cautiously. He cannot shake his lingering mistrust of the book and how it pulled at his markings, but Hawke seems so delighted that he finds himself unwilling to dampen her enthusiasm.

"Yes!" Her fingers stroke over the battered red cover. "Gathered from all over Ferelden centuries ago. We used to have a copy back in Lothering before Bethany buried it in our front yard, though ours was much more recent than this." Hawke smiles at the book, clearly lost in a memory, and Fenris wonders how that feels, to be fond of one's childhood.

She seems content to leave the tale at that, as she always does when she speaks of her family, but Varric looks like a hound that's scented blood. "I hear a story in this."

"Potential blackmail, you mean."

Varric steadies himself on the table as the raucous drunks one table over roar with laughter and hearty back-slapping, their wild gestures nearly knocking him over, then waves a dismissive hand. "Semantics. Spill, Hawke."

She grins and makes a gesture of concession. Fenris finds himself watching her hand without meaning to; the long fingers dancing through the air as she speaks, curling around her mug, touching the edges of the book's pages. "It's not really that intriguing, honestly. The twins were—oh, let me think. Eight? Nine? And Bethany had a little pet silverfish that she'd caught with my father. She loved that fish. She named it Tiger, I think, because she thought it was clever." Hawke smiles again, the distant one that tells Fenris that there are some parts of her heart that he will never see, would not understand if he did see, and his hand twitches around his wineglass. "When it died, Carver told her she ought to bury it with something pretty so it wouldn't feel alone."

She takes a sip from her mug, leaning back in her chair, and pulls a face. "Oh, that's vile. Anyway, I think Carver meant for her to pick some flowers or something, trying to be kind in his own rough sort of way, but instead Bethany went for the prettiest thing in the house, which was this old book with all its illustrations." Hawke laughs, and the amusement in her voice nearly hides the lingering grief. "She didn't tell anyone she'd done it until weeks later—well after Mother had nearly torn her hair out looking for it, of course—and by then Lothering was knee-deep in mud as it is every spring and the book was ruined. The end."

Varric sighs. "How disappointingly charming."

"And hardly material for a best-seller." Hawke shrugs, flicking a forgotten Wicked Grace card at his chest hair. "Sorry. I'll try to come up with something more appropriate for your literary skullduggery in the next one."

Isabela gasps in mock affront. "How dare you impugn his authorial honor?" She wags a chastising flagon in Hawke's face.

Varric throws a salute in her direction. "My lady, always rising to my defense. I'll have to dedicate the next part of Firestorm of Love to you."

Merrill claps. "Oh, I like that one! At least, I think—is that the one with the Fereldan apostate and her elvhen lov—"

Hawke chokes and Merrill breaks herself off at the sudden fit of coughing. "Oh my goodness, lethallan! Are you all right? You really should chew your food before you swallow, only I suppose ale's not really food, is it—"

"Dwarf," growls Fenris, allowing a not-inconsiderable amount of irritation bleed into his tone. "I was under the impression that we had an understanding."

"Literary skullduggery, as our dear heroine so quaintly phrased it, sometimes has its price." Varric shrugs, utterly unrepentant, and helpfully pounds Hawke's back between coughs. "You're just the one paying this time. I refuse to apologize for telling a good story, elf."

"Then I will refuse to apologize for ransacking your suite," Fenris says with easy nonchalance, and pushes to his feet. Varric scrambles for Bianca, sputtering a protest—Fenris can only make out the words, "my notes!"—but before he can extricate himself from the table and make good on his threat, Hawke snags his belt with one hand and tugs him back to the bench. Her face is flushing pink, and he's not sure if it's from the coughing fit or embarrassment; nevertheless, he allows himself to be pulled and resettles on the bench with a glower. Isabela looks thoroughly delighted at the whole thing.

"Why don't we," Hawke says, sounding a little strangled and refusing to meet Fenris's eyes, "just get back to this book here on the table? And not talk about any other books? At all? Is that okay? I think I'd like to do that."

"Your wish, milady," Varric says, somehow sweeping a half-bow from a sitting position. Fenris looks away, still irked, but Hawke's hand alights on his knee under the table, and he sighs, touching her wrist briefly in acquiescence. Varric pulls Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked back towards him. "Where did you find this thing anyway, Hawke? I doubt Darktown had this hidden between the Antivan brandy and moldy scarves."

"Black Emporium, actually." Fenris stiffens and opens his mouth—that place is dangerous, no matter the useful artifacts they've found there before, and Hawke ought to know better than to traipse through it so casually—but under the table, her fingers trace intent circles on the inside of Fenris's knee and his protest dies unvoiced. The tavern, already overwarm, suddenly seems stifling, and Fenris forces himself not to loosen his collar as Hawke props her head on her free hand, the barest hint of a smile twitching the corners of her mouth. "Merrill found it hiding behind that sword that always giggles when you touch the hilt. Xenon said it was the original, though I don't think even he could manage to get his bony hands on that."

"See if it's got the one about the Antivan shoemaker," Isabela offers, and looks put-out at the surprised looks she gets from Merrill and Hawke. "Pirates were little girls once, too," she says, crossing her arms over her decidedly un-childlike chest. "Besides, it looks old enough to me. Xenon's an antiquarian. He…antiquaries."

Merrill leans forward on her elbows, her kerchief missing her mug this time. "It's all the same where it came from, don't you think? The magic's in the stories, not how old they are. Just read one, Hawke!"

Hawke shakes her head, smiling, but she's already cracking the cover open. The title page is heavily embellished with roses and ivy, a riotous mass of vines that wind around the text and still carry traces of their original colorful dye; Hawke brushes them with her fingers only a moment before she turns the pages to the first tale. "Oh, I love this one. 'The Mabari Prince.'"

The words seem to loose something into the air, a curling blue flicker that prickles suddenly at the back of Fenris's head. He remembers that peculiar pulling in his fingers—something is wrong with this book, something magical and dangerous, and he needs to get it as far from Hawke as he can. "Hawke," he starts, but she doesn't notice the uneasy warning in his voice as he reaches for the book.

"Just a moment, Fenris," she says, twitching it away from him, but he reaches over her hands—he has to get that book—

"Hawke," he says, again, urgent—

"Once upon a time—" Hawke reads, and the world stops.

* * *

The girl traveled north for many days. She rested when she grew weary and walked when she was not, and all too soon her pack grew light until she had only a crust of bread and a swallow of water left. Before she could leave the path to forage, though, she heard the terrible baying of an animal in pain, and when she rounded the bend she saw a mabari hound, its fur black all over and unmarked with kaddis, trapped in a hunter's wolf trap. It howled with agony and snarled at her when she approached, but the girl remembered the river's advice and though she was terrified of the enormous beast, she knelt and worked the animal free of the trap. No sooner had she freed it, however, than it clawed her leg with sharp nails and fled deep into the woods. The girl wept, for harm had come to her after all, but soon enough she wiped her eyes and set out in search of a stream to clean the wounds.

That night, as she huddled beside her tiny campfire, bright eyes gleamed at her from the brush. Her heart leapt to her throat and she sought her dagger with a trembling hand, but the eyes drew closer, and when the terrible shadow emerged into the light it was no hungry wolf ready to devour her but her mabari instead, and dangling from his great jaws was a brace of hare. He laid the hares at her feet and gently licked his marks on her leg, and then he crouched at her side as she ate and guarded her until she slept.

* * *

What strikes Fenris is that it is one of the most spectacularly un-spectacular pieces of magic he's ever seen. There are no brilliant flashes of light that blind him, no great claps of thunder and lightning, no earth-shaking rumbles to terrify the drunkards and knock the clinking bottles from their shelves. Instead, time just—slows,one silent second stretching like winter-cold syrup into the next—and then just like that it snaps back into place and the discordant roar of The Hanged Man rushes over them again. Fenris can't quite breathe.

Hawke is gone.

Hawke is gone, and in her place is a little girl of no more than six, her dark hair pulled back in the same low tail Hawke wears, her face still turned to the book still lying open before her. Her bright blue eyes are the same as Hawke's eyes, only wide with astonishment, and worse a fear that Fenris cannot remember ever seeing on Hawke's face. The Champion's robes nearly swallow this girl alive; the furred ruff is impossibly large on her, sliding off one shoulder to reveal the simple dark shirt Hawke wears under her coat falling past this girl's bare knees, and the gloves that had fit her dancing hands so well now nearly drown her arms entirely. There's a quiet thump under the table as one of Hawke's boots falls over—boots that this child's feet can no longer reach—and then the little girl looks up at Fenris where he sits beside her, his hand still outstretched towards the book's pages, his heartbeat quickening in his chest.

"Hawke?" he says, because—it is—and Varric covers his face with a hand. Merrill looks thoroughly dumbstruck; Isabela seems torn between a worried kind of surprise and outright glee.

"Please," Varric says, his voice strangled through his glove, "tell me that a magic book did not just turn our Champion into a tiny—"

"—adorable—"

"—adorable—thank you, Isabela—version of herself."

Merrill covers her open mouth with her fingertips. "This just seems so…unlikely, don't you think? What a peculiar book."

Fenris barely registers the wildly inappropriate levity. Hawke is—Hawke is a child and he doesn't know how, doesn't know why—he stares at the wide-eyed girl as if she can somehow explain it, as if Hawke's voice might suddenly burst forth in exasperated amusement and tell him to stop staring and help her into her abruptly-oversized boots. But in the child's face he sees only a mirroring of his own blank apprehension, and helpless, he again says, "Hawke."

The girl sucks in a trembling little breath, and then she twists in a single movement like a startled bird and before Fenris can move, she has leapt from the bench and darted off into the crowd.

He hears a gasp behind him, hears Merrill cry, "Hawke!" but Fenris is already after her. The drunks one table over stumble into his way; Hawke weaves between their legs as only a child can and disappears from his sight, and from the far side of the room Fenris hears a man shout, "No children at the bar!" There's a sound of a scuffle and the drunks laugh uproariously, and then the man shouts again and Fenris stops hesitating—he drops his shoulder and rams through the crowd in a single powerful motion, heedless of the cries of protest he leaves in his wake, breaking through just in time to see the shadow of Hawke's too-large coat vanish through The Hanged Man's doors.

She is on the streets, alone. He allows himself a single vicious curse, and then he is through the doors after her.

Fenris hates magic.

* * *

When morning found her, the girl gathered her few possessions and scuffed out her dying embers. The mabari watched her carefully, and when she turned back to the road, he trotted along behind her as if he belonged there. "No," said the girl. "Don't follow me. I haven't enough for two, and you will need far more than I could provide."

The dog sat back on his haunches dutifully, but as soon as the girl took a step, he fell apace again. Twice more she tried to stay him; twice more the dog followed after her as soon as her back was turned. At last, the girl spun, arms akimbo, and stared him in the eye—an easy task, for she was not a tall girl, and the mabari's head stood higher than her waist. "Fine," she said, "come if you wish. I cannot give you much, but I can build a fire and keep you warm at night, and if you will fetch your own dinner and mine, I will do what I can to make our travels easier. But," she added firmly, gesturing at her bandaged leg, "no more of this, if you please. I've neither the strength of your kind nor bandages to spare, and no patience for a disobedient pup."

The dog whined low in his throat, all contrition and abject obedience, but the moment the girl patted his head in comfort, his tongue lolled out in a dog's smile.

"Oh, have a little decency," the girl said, laughing, and he managed a moment of sheepish delight before bounding down the road ahead of her, barking loud enough to shake the crows from the pines.

And so the girl made her first friend.

* * *

The nights are cool in Kirkwall, the winds from the sea pulling the worst of the heat from the city, and on any other night not even the hot metal stink of the foundries lacing the Lowtown air would be enough to make the evening less pleasant.

This is not any other night.

Fenris skids around a corner, one hand on the hilt of his sword and his eyes scanning the streets for any hint of a little girl. It is ludicrous that a child that small can move so quickly—but there is no sign of her anywhere and Fenris curses again. Lowtown has never seemed so dangerous before; it has always been disreputable, but now every shadowed corner hides a naked blade and every sideways glance thrown his direction threatens a knife between his ribs, and he still cannot find Hawke. He darts past a narrow street that twists off into the darkness, barely sparing it a glance—and then he stops. There's something on the ground there that looks familiar, and he draws his sword as he approaches, his eyes flicking to the empty, darkened windows overlooking the alley.

It's Hawke's coat. Fenris snags it without letting go of his blade; the shoulder is torn along the seam and the fur is sodden and limp with gutter water, and when his fist clenches around it, dirty rivulets trickle down between his fingers. He will not think of what this means for Hawke, alone in a filthy Lowtown street, coatless and barefoot and terrified. All that matters is that he is on the right track, and he peers down the alley for another sign of her passage.

The night air cracks open with a child's shriek.

Fenris is in a dead run before the echoes even begin to die away. His heart leaps to his throat and lodges there, making his breath come thin and quick in the night air, but his speed does not falter as he races down the alley. Shutters slam closed as he passes; Lowtown residents know when it is safer to let the streets lie unnoticed, and the blind eye they turn to his naked blade tells him he may expect neither aid nor interference tonight. He cuts around the sharp turn at the end of the alley and a pair of voices suddenly grows audible, bouncing off the high stone walls in an eerie reverberation. Fenris speeds up and the coat drops from his hand, forgotten.

"Shut your mouth, girl!" A man's voice, young, thick with drink and irritation.

"Ah, leave off," slurs a second man, more intoxicated than the first. "'S only a dog-lord's child. Prob'ly lost."

"She keeps getting in my bloody way—get off,brat!" There's a sudden smack of skin on skin and the girl cries out. Fenris emerges from the alley just in time to see Hawke ricochet into the stone wall behind her, one small hand clutched to her cheek; her foot comes down wrong on a piece of rubble and she staggers sideways, nearly going head over heels down the long flight of stairs that leads to the docks.

Fenris chokes on the sudden swell of his fury. His markings light white fire in the dark streets and a wordless snarl tears from his throat, but he is still too far away and the two men in shining templar armor fail to notice him. One reaches down for Hawke—her oversized gauntlets are gone, a distant part of him notices, and she is clad only in the thin dark shirt that hangs past her knees—and Fenris doesn't know if the templar means to help her or harm her but either way the sight of his hand clamped around her arm sets a roaring in his ears and if he doesn't release her this instant he will reach into his chest and rip out his heart—

And then Hawke's hands burst into flame.

The man stumbles back with a shouted oath, ripping off his suddenly-smoldering glove and cradling the scalded fingers close to his chest. The glove lands at Hawke's bare feet and burns there, a tiny light as damning as any pyre could ever be. Fenris sees the recognition dawn in the men's eyes, sees their hands flash to their swords, sees their mouths open in shocked condemnation.

Mage.

Fenris knows it does not matter that she is a child. It does not matter that the fire is already dying away from her fingers with a plaintive sputter, that her face is as frightened and surprised as theirs; it does not matter that they know nothing of this girl, not even her name. Hawke is a mage-child, an apostate, and they are templars made to break her.

He will not allow it.

The taller templar, the one who'd grabbed Hawke's arm, is the first one to free his sword. His cheeks are flushed with alcohol, but there is no unsteadiness in his movements as he takes two deliberate steps towards Hawke, her child's body flattened against the wall, her blue eyes wide in terror. "Come here, girl," he says, voice stern. Hawke doesn't move save to press closer against the wall, and the templar's eyebrows draw down in a scowl. "Move!" he shouts, his hand reaching out for her arm again—and then he makes a choking noise and falls silent, because a lambent ghost has slipped from the shadows to stand between him and his target, and a gauntleted hand has wrapped tightly around his throat. His sword drops with a ringing clang to the cobbled street.

"I would suggest," Fenris says, "that you find yourselves elsewhere. Quickly." He increases the pressure ever-so-slightly on the man's windpipe and feels him try to gulp; he grips Fenris's wrist in both hands and strains, trying to shift the weight, but Fenris is still squeezing, still glowing, immobile in his anger. The other templar sways once on his feet, confused, before his face hardens and he raises his sword again.

"Th' brat's a mage-child," he snaps, stumbling over every other word; Fenris recognizes the drunken voice of the man who'd struck Hawke. "She's going—going to the Gallows tonight. 'S standing orders for apostates."

"Not this one." He does not want to kill them. It's not the act itself he hesitates over—he's killed enough men in his time to have quelled that pang—but he cannot forget Hawke crouched behind him, still and silent and terrified. He adjusts his one-handed grip on his sword, troubled; he does not wish to frighten her further, and yet he cannot keep the vicious threat from his voice when he squeezes the man's throat again and growls, "Get out."

"We're not going anywhere without that girl," the other templar snarls. The one in Fenris's grasp tries to shake his head, his eyes so wide Fenris can see the whites around them, and for a moment he dares to think they might escape unscathed after all—and then the other man snorts in derision. "Coward, Tomas!" he spits, and raises his sword to charge. Fenris tenses, the muscles of his shoulders bunching as he brings his own sword to bear. The man in his hand chokes and goes limp; he hardly notices, his mind tearing through battle plans and tactics faster than his conscious thought can track them—stay away from the stairs, keep his back to the wall and watch out for that rubble, and whatever happens he must protect Hawke—the other templar closes the distance, his face flushed with the promise of a fight—

And then he stops mid-step, his eyes rolling back in his head, and crumples to the ground in a sudden clanking heap.

Aveline stands over his body in the middle of the street, the knobbed hilt of her longsword still hanging in the air where the man's head had been. She glances down at the figure at her feet dismissively, her captain's armor gleaming in the moonlight, then turns a more piercing gaze on Fenris and the man he still holds at arm's length.

"Fenris," she says evenly, though he can hear the tempered steel edging her tone. "There's a stack of paperwork a foot high on my desk. I hope you're not about to add an arrest warrant to it."

"No," he says, abruptly aware that the man's face is beginning to gray at the edges, and he allows the unconscious templar to trickle through his fingers to the ground. The man slumps over with a sigh and Fenris realizes—it's over. Hawke is safe. Relief sweeps over him, nearly swallowing him whole, and he half-turns from Aveline to hide his face as he sheaths his sword at his back. With the rush of battle fading fast, he can no longer ignore his bone-deep weariness and the aches in his arm from supporting the dead weight of the templar so long; he is grateful his gauntlets mask his hands' trembling. "Thank you for your assistance."

She makes a noncommittal noise, nudging the man's body with the toe of her boot. He groans but doesn't wake, and Aveline sheaths her own sword before crossing her arms over her chest. "Assaulting templars in the middle of the night doesn't seem your style, Fenris. Mind telling me what you're up to?"

Vishante kaffas—Fenris looks away again, feeling rather pinned by her gaze. "It's…complicated."

"I'll take the short version."

Her voice brooks no argument, but Fenris hesitates a moment longer. It's not that he doubts her—Aveline is one of the most trustworthy people he knows—but this story would stretch even her limits of belief, and Hawke has already been under enough stress tonight—

Aveline raises her eyebrows expectantly, and Fenris sighs, stepping aside.

"A girl?" Aveline's arms fall away from her chest as she sees what Fenris has been guarding so closely. Hawke is crouched in a corner behind him, wedged so far into the rubble and discarded crates that they can barely see her, and it is not until she raises her white, tear-stained face from her arms and stares at them that Aveline realizes why the templars were there. "A mage girl? You're rescuing apostates now?"

Fenris shakes his head sharply as Aveline steps over the body of the second man. "Not any girl," he starts, then falls silent. He cannot think of a way to explain without sounding like a lunatic. "There was an accident."

Leather creaks as Aveline crouches beside Fenris, holding her hand out to the girl like a woman coaxing a nervous stray. "What do you mean, accident? Come out, child. We won't hurt you."

Her bright blue eyes dart from Aveline's hand to Fenris's face, seeking some reassurance he does not know to give; for a long moment, he thinks she will press herself further away from them or worse, bolt again, but then Aveline smiles at her, gently, and Hawke bites her lip and edges her way out from her hiding place.

"There we go," Aveline says, keeping her voice soft as she approaches. Fenris watches Hawke give her a tremulous smile through her tears and ignores the pricking at the back of his head that whispers, useless. Aveline needs to know.

"There was an accident," he repeats. Aveline glances up at him. "Hawke purchased a book from that antiquarian at the Emporium. A children's book." She blinks, uncomprehending, and Fenris struggles onward as Hawke takes another tentative step towards the guard captain. "The book was ensorcelled. Hawke became—enchanted."

"Enchanted?" She sounds surprised and a little worried, but her attention is distracted as Hawke finally stops at her knees. "Maker, look at you. Are you all right?"

She nods shyly and allows Aveline to dust her off, straightening her tunic and wiping the dirt and tears from her face in a motherly, business-like fashion. She brushes the hair from the girl's eyes, tucking it behind her ears—and then she pauses, her fingers suddenly uncertain, and Fenris knows what stills her.

Hawke's tired blue eyes gaze at her from a child's face. Hawke's dark hair hangs loose around her shoulders, disheveled and dusty and unmistakable, and Fenris sees the comprehension dawn in Aveline's eyes.

"You're joking," she breathes. Her hand still hovers in the air as if she's forgotten about it, and Hawke stares back at her in confusion. "I—what is your name, child?"

The little girl draws herself up, pushing her shoulders back and clenching her fists. "My name is Marian Hawke," she says in a high, clear voice. "And I want to go home."

* * *

Many days passed. The girl and her mabari, who had quickly ceased to respond to anything but "Pup," soon fell into their own comforting routine. The mornings they would spend walking, keeping to the road that led the girl ever farther from her home, and when the noontime sun grew hot, they would take their lunch under the shade of the forest. Sometimes they napped, the dog throwing his heavy weight across her legs with a contented sigh, but when the skies cooled again, they returned to the road. In the evenings, when the stars just began to peep out shyly from behind their clouds, the mabari called Pup often bounded away into the forest when some unfortunate creature's movement caught his ears. The girl would take these minutes to start the night's fire and unroll her blankets, and when the dog returned to her with a fat grouse or a rabbit held gently in his giant jaws, she would thank him prettily and make much of his hunting.

So did two weeks pass in unexpected contentment.

Then, one day, when the girl had begun to quite despair of ever reaching the world she hoped to see, they crested a hill at the edge of the trees and found a city laid out before them, spilling down the hillside like an enormous colorful quilt. In truth, it was little more than large town, tucked as it was between a wild forest and the rising hills, but the girl found it the most wondrous thing she had ever seen. Her exhaustion forgotten, she raced down the hill, laughing in excitement, and her hound loped along beside her with his own happy barks echoing off the hills.

The sights and smells of the town were overwhelming to the girl, who adored every moment of it. The market flooded her nose with rich spices and the delicious smells of baking pastries, and the worked metal bracelets and brightly-dyed cottons draped over the merchants' arms dazzled her eyes. The streets seemed full of people jostling and laughing and shouting at each other, and though she delighted to hear them, the girl was glad of the enormous mabari at her side. A kindly baker saw her eyeing his raspberry tarts, and because he had a soft spot for dogs, he slipped her the fattest one and a meaty bone for her companion with a wink. At the end of one street, she found a group of children playing with a ball and a rope; she had never seen such games before and the children saw her interest, and though she was long enough out of childhood to blush at their invitation, she still readily accepted and was soon enough laughing with the rest of them.

Dusk fell, and when the mabari called Pup put his cold wet nose into her hand, the girl realized that they ought to be moving on. She thanked the children for their kindness, laughing as the bobbing lanterns of their parents collected them for the evening, and declined their offers of a room for the night. She had left her home intending to see the world; now she had seen this part of it, and she knew that lingering too long in a pleasant town might stop her travels forever. She left the town with a light step and a lighter heart, Pup capering at her side like a particularly playful shadow.

* * *

This is how Varric finds them. Aveline stands close to Fenris, her head bent as he explains in a quick undertone what has happened tonight, while Hawke leans on Aveline's leg in drooping exhaustion, her small hand clutching Aveline's so hard her knuckles are white. All three of them look up as he enters the square and Fenris goes for his swordhilt defensively before recognition sinks in. A bundle of cloth and metal lies heaped in Varric's arms; Fenris recognizes Hawke's coat and the rest of her armor, shed like errant leaves in her flight.

"Found it scattered all over the district," Varric says, nudging Bianca back into place with an elbow and nodding at Aveline. "I take it you've been caught up on our little situation."

"I have." She begins to say something else, but even as she does, men begin shouting a few streets over and the sound of a distant scuffle carries through the dark Lowtown night. "But I think we should discuss it elsewhere."

Fenris concurs. Hawke is nearly asleep on her feet, her head bobbing against her hand where it joins Aveline's, and her fatigue is creeping closer to the rest of them in the aftermath of battle. "The Hawke estate," he suggests. "For now. Perhaps her bed will feel familiar." He hears the doubt in his own voice, but Varric and Aveline have no better suggestions; after a glance at Hawke's bare feet, Aveline bends over and hefts Hawke onto her hip. She wraps her arms around the woman's neck and immediately falls asleep.

Fenris finds himself staring at those arms as they hurry through the narrow streets. It feels as though he is in a dream—he knows those arms, knows the skin pale from too many hours indoors at her spellbooks, knows the cluster of faint freckles dusting the inside of her wrist—but now they are the arms of a girl and not a woman. They look so weak now, the muscles earned from hard living gone, the fingers short and uncallused and fragile, and they might as well be the arms of a stranger for how familiar they seem. Hawke shifts her head on Aveline's shoulder without waking as they cross into Hightown, letting out a tiny sigh, a child's sigh, and Fenris looks away.

They arrive at Hawke's door unscathed—relatively speaking—and after a brief, tense wait, Bodahn opens the door in his nightshirt.

"Messere Hawke is away at the moment," he says with a jaw-cracking yawn.

"I know," Fenris says grimly, and they enter.

The story comes more quickly now. Fenris is growing practiced at telling it, especially with Varric's addendums clarifying the salient points, and by the time they finish, both Sandal and Orana have joined them in the great hall before the dying fire in the hearth. Orana, wrapped in a heavy, well-worked shawl that Fenris suspects was a gift from Hawke, sorts through the ignominious heap of clothing and armor dumped by Varric in one of the armchairs as they speak. Aveline deposits Hawke in the other and straightens, putting both hands on her back and stretching; Bodahn drapes an old quilt over Hawke's shoulders, and she pulls it closer in her sleep.

Without meaning to, Fenris finds himself leaning over the back of the chair to study her face. He can see parts of his Hawke, if he looks hard enough—her sharp cheekbones, softened and rounded in youth; her eyelashes, impossibly small dark smudges against her tear-reddened cheeks; her mouth, a trifle wide for her face as a grown woman, but always curved up in a smile. It is still wide now, but the corners are pulled down hard enough to line her skin, and he frowns himself to see it.

"So. Now what?" Aveline, voice pitched low, says what everyone is thinking. "There has to be some way to fix this."

The sentiment is obvious, but Fenris is fervent in his agreement. This is a catastrophe, and it all started with that idiotic magical— "The book," he says sharply, accidentally rousing Hawke for a moment. Varric puts up a quieting hand as he crosses to the mostly-sorted pile of Hawke's effects; a moment later he drags a familiar, square-shaped bundle from the heap, and Fenris realizes that her coat has been wrapped around Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked to guard against stray contact.

Varric sees his expression and gives him a wry smile. "I don't know about you, but one accidental kid is more than enough for me." He sets the book, still wrapped, on the armrest of Hawke's chair, then scrubs his hand over his face. "She said she got it at the Black Emporium. We'll have to talk to Xenon about it."

"Tomorrow," Aveline says, voice firm. "There's nothing more to be done tonight."

It grates terribly—anything is preferable to just sitting and waiting like this, but Fenris knows Aveline is right. It is well past midnight and they are all tired and though he hates to admit it, it probably won't harm Hawke overmuch to spend one night as a little girl.

"First light, then," says Fenris, tamping down his exhaustion with sheer will. "We can meet here." He is not looking forward to the Emporium, with its invisible statues and screaming boxes and proprietors who should have long since been dust, but if anyone knows how to reverse this spell, it is Xenon. Magic or not, he will have answers.

Aveline throws Varric a sidelong glance, and he feels a sudden sense of foreboding that has nothing to do with magic. Varric shrugs as he turns to Fenris, trying for nonchalance. "We think you should stay here, elf."

"I…should stay here." He can't have heard that right.

"To take care of Hawke, he means."

It feels as though this conversation is rapidly spinning away from him. Fenris blinks. Perhaps in his fatigue he is misunderstanding. "You want me to take care of—a little girl?"

"Not any girl," Aveline reminds him, repeating back his own words. "Hawke.You know one of us ought to stay here and watch over her until this is fixed."

His gauntlets are sharp weights on his wrists, his sword heavy at his back—and they wish to trust him with Hawke's safekeeping? Have they been affected by this spell as well? "Perhaps one of the others would be…more suited."

Aveline gives him a level look. "And who would you choose, Fenris? Her uncle? or Merrill? Would you take Anders away from his clinic, or have her stay in Darktown while he works?"

Fenris hesitates, glancing at her. Who else, indeed? He cannot ask Aveline to abandon her duties, not with her husband and her city and an entire guard looking to her for orders; Varric, likewise, is too valuable where he is. He's certain Merrill would have her on the path to blood magic before the day was out, whether she meant it or not, and her uncle would just as likely squander his time and her money as care for the child. He likes Isabela well enough, but she practically lives at a bar, and the abomination—out of the question, he thinks with a snort.

No. It must be him.

They must see the acceptance on his face, because Varric grins and Orana drops a small curtsey. "We'll help you, messere," she says, pulling her shawl around her more securely as she offers him a tentative smile.

Bodahn nods and claps Sandal on the back, the tassel on his nightcap swinging wildly. "Of course we will!"

Fenris doesn't quite know what to say. He settles for a brusque nod which seems to satisfy them; Orana gathers up Hawke's clothes and carries them away, while Bodahn and his son head for their quarters. Varric carefully exchanges Hawke's coat for an abandoned blanket, rewrapping the book without touching it, and drapes the coat over the arm of the chair as he heads for the door. Aveline pauses as she passes Fenris—perhaps suspecting how out of his depth he is here—and she puts a comforting hand on his arm.

"Don't worry," she says, smiling gently. "Who else would guard her better?"

He shakes his head, wordless, and she releases him to follow Varric out the door. Fenris watches them go and then, feeling rather like an interloper playing host, locks the front door behind them. He is dazed with a day too full of impossible magic and stupid with tiredness and he nearly trips on his own feet as he turns back to the great hall.

Hawke is awake. Her eyes are barely open, but she is peeking at him over the armrest of the chair, the quilt drawn up to her chin. "Hello," she murmurs, her voice thick with sleep. "Is my family here yet? Is Mother coming?"

Venhedis. He should not be here—he is the last person suited to be here—he cannot answer these questions with gentle words and comforting touches. Her mother is not coming, will never come; any of the others would have been better—and yet, he is the one who stands in front of her, and he forces himself to shake his head. "Not tonight," he manages, and crosses the room to her side with stilted steps. "They cannot be here right now. Tonight you will stay with…me, if that's…all right. You will be safe," he adds as an afterthought.

Hawke stares up at him, her eyes wide. She looks as if she is about to cry and Fenris feels the first stirrings of panic—if she cries, he will chase down Aveline, her duties and his pride be damned—but just as her eyes start to water in earnest, Orana comes bustling back into the room.

"Oh, mistress," she tuts, sounding more confident than Fenris has ever heard her. "None of that now, if you please. It's well past your bedtime, I think."

"I want to go home," Hawke nearly wails, but she allows herself to be gathered up in Orana's arms and carried upstairs. Fenris follows just behind, unsure of his place here but loath to be separated from Hawke again.

"I know, mistress. I know," Orana says, her voice soft as she pats Hawke's hair, and even as he watches, Hawke's eyes droop closed again. Fenris opens the door to Hawke's bedroom and allows Orana to pass in ahead of him.

There's a sudden sound of nails skittering on wood and Fenris winces—the dog. He'd completely forgotten about Hawke's massive mabari, and as Toby scrambles towards Orana and his mistress with a happy bark, Fenris prepares to attempt to drag the dog away before it knocks them both over. But Fenris underestimates the mabari's intelligence—the dog hesitates as it nears Orana, who stands steady and calm as he approaches, and then he stops still and carefully noses Hawke's bare foot.

She giggles sleepily and curls her toes away; Toby noses her again, letting out a soft whine, and then Orana scoots him out of the way with a foot. She sets Hawke down on the edge of the bed—her feet dangle nearly a foot off the ground, Fenris notices—and in the warm yellow light of the banked fire, she prepares the room for the few remaining night hours. The dog sits at Hawke's feet and drapes his head over her lap with a heavy huff and Hawke smiles, the first smile Fenris has seen since The Hanged Man a lifetime ago, and pets Toby between the ears until his eyes close. Orana catches his eye as she passes with her arms full of towels and nods a smile at the two of them. Fenris can't bring himself to return it, but she seems to understand.

She seems so…capable. He is not needed here, Fenris realizes, as Orana trots around the room, producing a nightgown from one drawer and a child's doll from another; he simply stands by the carved headboard, as helpful as a statue. In a trice Hawke is being tucked into bed, her hair neatly braided and out of the way, the doll clutched in her arms. Toby lies curled beside her on the floor. Orana bends over and pecks her on the forehead, then makes her way out of the room with a soft "good night," and just like that, Fenris is alone with Hawke. She stares up at him with wide eyes from her pillow, her hair like a ribbon of ink across the fabric, and waits for something that he, a man who knows nothing—nothing—of children, cannot give.

He is useless.

Barely suppressing a noise of bitter frustration, Fenris spins on his heel, preparing to follow Orana from the room. There is a guest room downstairs—he doubts it's been prepared for an extended stay, but he hardly needs such amenities—and if worse comes to worst, there are always the armchairs—

He glances back at her from the door, and he stops.

She is watching him leave her, her eyes wide in her face, pale skin made paler by her hair and the moonlight falling through her window. She is silent, and her eyes are dry, but there is a look in them that he recognizes, a look that he has seen from her before, in this very room—it is sorrow, and a calm acceptance, and a wild, naked loneliness that tears through his chest more cleanly than a blade ever could. He cannot abandon her again.

His feet move of their own volition, carrying him back to her side before he realizes what is happening. Hawke wiggles away from the edge of the bed, giving him room; he perches on top of the covers uneasily, feeling her slight weight shift behind him, half-ruing this decision already but unwilling to yield to his fears. It is easier to feign normality when his back is turned to her, at least in the beginning, but as the silent night stretches onward and her breathing evens, Fenris begins nodding towards sleep himself. Hawke rolls over behind him and he starts to rise, preparing to find his own bed, but—

Fingers wrap around his hand.

Sheer surprise stops him rather than any actual restraining force. He looks down, uncomprehending—but yes, they're still there: tiny, fragile fingers wrapped around his silver gauntlet. He turns, staring at Hawke; her eyes are nearly closed and her cheeks are still flushed with unhappiness, but her hands are sure. She is not intimidated at all by his armor, by the spines on his fingers, by his sword. He tries to pull away, but she tugs again.

He is dreaming. This is the only possible explanation for a child so unafraid of him. "As you wish." He gently pries her fingers loose from his gauntlet and pulls them both off; she watches with drowsy interest as he flips the hidden catches and drops them on her writing desk, then leans his chestpiece against the wall; even as he reseats himself on the side of the bed she grabs his hand again. The feeling of her skin on his is shocking—he remembers all too well the touch of her fingers as a woman—but this seems to be enough for the Hawke he has now, and she curls into her pillow and closes her eyes. After a moment, Toby rolls over onto Fenris's foot and lets out a comfortable sigh.

Fenris stares into the dark for a long time, Hawke's tiny hand in his, and wonders what exactly he's supposed to do now.

* * *

Chapter Text

One night, the girl awoke from a dream. The fire was burning low, the woods around them silent, and at first she did not know what had awoken her. Then she saw Pup standing at her feet, his hackles raised and his black fur prickling and his long white teeth bared in a fierce, silent snarl, and the girl felt her heart begin to race. A twig snapped just beyond the pool of her little fire and she searched out her dagger with hands that shook, and then, with no more warning than the sound of a breath, they were upon them.

Wolves.

The first rush of terror rose up in the girl like a cresting wave, and then, just as quickly, it was lost in the wilder call of battle. Her hands grew steady and she turned the dagger on the wolf that paced opposite her, its green eyes gleaming in her dying firelight. The other two sprang upon Pup, deeming him the greater threat, and their growls and yips and the crashing brush were the only sounds the girl could hear above her thudding heart. She feinted with the dagger and the wolf flinched before letting out a low, threatening growl that rumbled in her chest; she saw its nails dig into the dirt as it bunched itself, and then it sprang.

The girl flung herself to the side, nearly losing her footing on a mossy stone, but she was not quick enough. She felt the score of its teeth on her arm and the hot wash of blood between her fingers; still, the girl did not flinch as she brought the dagger to bear again. The wolf licked its lips, tasting her blood, and snarled again. It took a step towards her, heavily favoring a leg, and she saw that her dagger had not entirely missed its mark after all; a long gash split its fur along its ribs to trail down one foreleg. The girl did not hesitate to press her advantage, taught long ago by her father the dangers of misplaced compassion, and when the wolf stumbled and nearly fell, she leapt forward with a cry and buried the dagger in its neck. It let out a terrible howl, tried to turn away from the agony of the wound, and collapsed.

The girl crept forward a step, prepared to flee if the wolf roused, but as she neared, she heard only quick, panting whines that cut her heart. The wolf looked up at her with clouded eyes that bore no more threat, its lips curled in pain, and when the girl was certain that its life could not be saved, she pulled her dagger free to cut its throat in mercy.

So did the girl take her first life.

A step sounded behind her and she whirled on her knees, but the figure that limped towards her was her mabari, head hanging low and bleeding from a dozen wounds. The bodies of the two wolves he had slain lay by her fire, bent and limp; the girl could see now that though Pup was a third again their size that they had fought with the strength of five, for the wolves were gaunt and bony, made desperate by starvation, and her heart twisted in her chest. She reached out to the hound and he came to her, resting his enormous head on her breast and shaking with exhaustion and pain. The girl twined her fingers into his black fur and wept.

* * *

She's watching him sleep again.

Fenris scowls without opening his eyes and rolls away from her, trying to ignore a painful crick in his neck—venhedis, she knows he hates it when she does that. He always feels exposed when she watches him without his knowing it, defenseless somehow against her, but all his remonstrations seem to have no effect other than causing her to do it more often. Sunlight pours through the curtains onto his closed eyelids, pulling him that much farther from sleep; it must be well past dawn, he thinks muzzily, and something pricks him, faintly, something about first light—

Two fingers close sharply around the pointed tip of his ear.

Fenris jerks upright, drowsiness vanished in an instant, and the fingers slide away from his ear with the sound of a child's giggle.

A what?

Suddenly, the events of the night before come crashing down on him. He remembers the book, The Hanged Man, the bizarre sensation of time slowing—he remembers the templars and Aveline and Varric, and a small hand holding his. Fenris glances down to his side, ignoring the twinge in his neck, where a little girl with mussed hair and a mischievous grin kneels on top of the covers, her little pinching fingers still outstretched towards his head.

"Sun's up," she says cheerfully, and bounds off the bed.

Hawke. Fenris swings his legs over the side of the bed, putting a cautious hand to his abused ear. He'd fallen asleep on top of the covers the night before, his head propped awkwardly on the headboard; he'd had a faint idea that the morning would bring an end to whatever enchantment still possessed Hawke, but as he watches her fall across Toby's back, kissing the slobbering dog right on the muzzle, Fenris cannot deny that at least she looks happy.

And then he snorts. Happy for a six-year-old, anyway. He pushes himself to his feet, rubbing the last vestiges of pain from his neck, and Hawke flops over onto her back next to the dog to stare up at him, her rumpled nightdress spreading around her. "Good morning, Hawke," he offers, because it seems like the right thing to say, but she pulls a face.

"Don't call me that," she says, sticking out her tongue. "That's what the farmers call Papa when they trade." She shuffles around on her back until she's looking at him squarely upside-down, and then she grins. "What's your name?"

"Fenris," he says shortly. It had been too much to hope for that she might remember him, he knows this, and yet the sudden ache in his chest is undeniable. "What would you prefer to be called, then?"

"My name is Marian, Fenrisss." She rolls the name around on her tongue, testing it. It seems to pass muster, for a moment later she bounces to her feet. "Fenris, I'm hungry!"

As if on cue, the faint scent of eggs and bacon wafts into the room. Fenris opens the door, allowing in the sounds of the stirring household, and Hawke—Marian—races through it with a shout of victory. Toby tears after her, barking furiously, and a moment later Fenris hears the violent thumping of six feet down the stairs. He puts a hand to his still-tender ear, sighing.

This is going to be a long day.

And he is right. His companions do not arrive until nearly noon, and by that time, he has untangled twelve ribbons from Toby's fur, put out an accidental mage-fire set in scrap pages of Anders's manifesto, and twice removed Marian from the top shelf of one of her bookcases. The second time he pulls her down she wraps her arms around his neck and refuses to let go; he gives a half-hearted tug, but she giggles and firms her grip, and Fenris gives up. A knock sounds as the door as Orana calls up for lunch; Sandal is nowhere to be found, and when Fenris remembers that Bodahn is out somewhere fetching supplies for Hawke's new condition, he sighs, descending the stairs with a child-shaped necklace, and answers the door himself.

It is indeed Varric and Aveline, and Merrill stands behind them. Aveline is red-faced with barely-suppressed frustration, and even Varric looks a trifle irked, but both of their faces ease as they see Hawke's precarious perch.

"I remember you," Marian says with delight.

Aveline smiles as Fenris steps back, allowing them to enter. "Fenris. Little Hawke."

"My name is Marian," she says with great dignity, as if she is not dangling off Fenris's neck with her feet knocking at his knees. "It's very nice to meet you."

Fenris manages not to roll his eyes as he makes the introductions, and then he gently disentangles her from his neck and sends her off to the kitchens. Pinching his nose to ward off a sudden headache, he turns back to the three of them. "What news?"

"Nothing good," Aveline says, her grimace returning, and any lightheartedness Fenris feels vanishes completely. "It took us all morning to track down that bloody Emporium. You'd think we'd never been there before for how hard it was to find again."

Merrill cocks her head, birdlike. "You know, I think we only found it because Xenon allowed us to. He seemed very concerned we were there for a refund."

"So you found nothing." Fenris's heart sinks before he can stop it. He hadn't realized until this moment how much he had been depending on them to find a solution. He cannot imagine having to watch Hawke—no. He will not think about it now.

"Not exactly nothing..." Varric hems, scratching his chest uneasily, and then he throws both hands in the air at Fenris's look. "Well, shit, elf, I honestly don't know. That bag of bones said something on our way out that made me think, but I don't have the faintest idea as to what it means."

"Anything might help."

"He said, 'the story doesn't end until you've read it, you know.' But with great rattling gasps thrown in every other word, naturally. It's obviously got something to do with that book, but…" he trails off, shaking his head. "Look, I know it sounds useless, but that's what he said. Just—keep it in mind."

Fenris shakes his head, glancing back towards the kitchens where he can faintly hear Hawke laughing. "I will."

"Speaking of," adds Varric, and the humor returns to his voice. "How's it going, playing babysitter?"

A scowl slides across Fenris's face, but before he can answer, Marian has sprung from the shadows with a slice of bread in one hand and a fistful of strawberry jam in the other. "I’m a holy terror!" she announces proudly, and, sizing up the group, latches onto Merrill as the most likely playmate. She seizes Merrill's wrist without a second thought, ignoring her faint noise of sticky surprise, and tugs on her arm. "Will you come see Toby, please?" she asks her, as if Merrill is not trapped, wide-eyed, by her jam-covered fingers, and a moment later they have disappeared around the corner.

"A holy terror, huh."

Fenris resists the urge to cover his eyes. "I don't know where she heard it. But it is…apt."

Varric pats his arm, then gives him a look that is almost sincere. "Don't worry, elf. We'll find something."

"I'll come again later," Aveline promises; a crash sounds from the next room over, and she winces. "If the place is still standing."

Fenris ushers them out the door with little ceremony and follows after Hawke and Merrill, not at all surprised to find it is not the six-year-old who needs rescuing. Once Merrill has been extracted from the snarl of blankets, barking dog, and an inexplicable pair of poorly-patched trousers and sent safely on her way as well, Fenris deposits a thoroughly sticky Marian in the kitchen and flees, leaving her to the mercy of Orana's scrubbing cloth.

* * *

The girl and her mabari stayed at the camp for three days while she tended their wounds. Her own injury was not terrible; the wolf's teeth had torn cleanly, and though her arm would scar, it caused her much less concern than the wounds that marred Pup's fur. She cleaned the places their claws and teeth had torn him as best she could, but the gashes in his shoulders went through the muscle, and often the mabari could not rise from the ground without her assistance. Fear took hold of her heart more cleanly than it ever had in her life, and soon the girl did not sleep for fear her friend might die without her constant care.

At the end of the third day, when Pup had slipped into an uneasy sleep by the fire, the girl saw a lantern between the trees. It moved with a sure purpose directly towards their camp, but she was already long-accustomed to fear and felt no more concern at its appearance in the night than she might have a swift-flying owl. Soon, it broached the clearing and she saw the woman who bore it. Her bound hair was white and her face lined, but her back was straight and strong under her well-faded cloak, and the girl found that could not guess her age. There were rumors in these lands of a witch who haunted the wilds, but this woman seemed as human as she and little threat besides, and the girl nodded her head in greeting.

"Good evening, ser," she offered, placing a hand on Pup's great head.

"I saw your fire," said the woman. Her voice bore the narrow edge of a peculiar, hidden humor. "Might you share a bit of your light with an old woman?"

"Of course," she said. "I have little enough to offer, but that I can give freely."

The woman stepped closer to the fire, and the girl saw that her eyebrow was arched in consideration. "Have you," the woman said thoughtfully. "Then, I wonder if you have a coin to spare. 'Tis cold enough, these nights, and I wish to purchase a better cloak."

Privately, the girl thought that the woman looked like no beggar, but she answered her truthfully. "I have no coin, serah. All that I have was given me before I left home."

"Indeed," said the woman, as if she had known her answer already. "Then a crust of bread, perhaps, or a swallow of water. I have traveled far today."

"I'm afraid I do not have that to offer, either," the girl said regretfully, and this was true as well. Her last bit of water she'd used to clean the wounds in her mabari's shoulders, and with him unable to hunt, there had been little to eat besides the berries she could find near their camp. "I am sorry."

The woman stepped even closer, and suddenly the girl had the thought that her eyes were not a woman's eyes but a dragon's, yellow and piercing, and her breath froze in her chest. "I believe you are," the woman said in a murmur that resounded in the trees, and then she turned her head away and the spell was broken. "How unusual. It is not often I find myself with such…fascinating companions." She threw the girl an impenetrable look, then her eyes turned to Pup, and he whined low in his throat without moving.

"Your hound, then," she said at last. "Lend him to me, so that I may walk safely through these woods."

The girl shook her head, wondering at the woman's requests. "Nay, I cannot. He is badly wounded, as you can see, but even if he were not, he is not mine to offer. He travels with me of his own choice."

Bending, the woman looked into the hound's face; she studied him for a long moment, Pup meeting her eyes without flinching, and then she straightened and put a thoughtful hand to her lips. "You travel in interesting company, girl," she said at last, "but you speak the truth. A rarity, these days, and rarer still in this forest."

She turned away and drew her cloak over her shoulders. "I give you a boon in return, for the gift of that truth, and for sharing the warmth of your fire." Her eyes met the girl's over her shoulder, and again she felt that clear gaze like an arrow in her heart. "Be careful, girl," she said with a thin smile. "There are wolves in the world."

The girl nodded, breathless, and the woman turned her head; suddenly, Pup leapt to his feet with all the strength of his namesake behind him, and the girl was astonished to see his wounds had closed. More than closed, they had healed as if they'd never been, and he pranced around her in joy. "The boon," the girl whispered, realizing what she had given her, but when she looked for her again, the woman was gone.

* * *

"Look at you! You look fantastic, sweet thing."

"Thank you very much."

"Oh, and she blushes. Doesn't she look like a princess, Fenris?"

Marian looks like a wedding cake.

"Hmm," he offers. And then, when the cake looks like it might be about to cry, Fenris hastens to add, "It's…very nice."

This seems to satisfy her, if her sudden smile is any indication, and she turns back to the pile of dress-up clothes Isabela has scrounged up from Maker-knows-where. It is so difficult to reconcile the Hawke he knows—knew—knows with this little girl festooned in ruffles; his Hawke has always favored the practical over the pretty, always spent her coin on the plain utility of battle-ready robes without the slightest glance at the finery near it and never seemed to mind. This girl, though, who coos over a trimmed bit of silk and is wearing four wide lacy petticoats of varying sizes over her blue day dress at once, he barely recognizes. He leans back in his chair as Marian uncovers a pretty little circlet made of silver ribbon and woven reeds and nearly vibrates in joy.

Isabela drapes a green knitted scarf over her head like a veil; Marian giggles and adds a long necklace made of enormous cockle shells that falls to Isabela's waist. They sift through the heap of fabric on the floor together, pulling a piece here and there and pointing out others with little method Fenris can see—but then, a moment later, both of them turn to him with identical gleaming grins and fistfuls of gauze and glitter, and Fenris realizes he's been had.

He freezes like a hare caught in a trap, and then he gathers himself and makes the noblest sacrifice he can. "Perhaps the dog wishes to play," he says with strained disinterest, and pretends he cannot see the wounded look Toby gives him when Marian descends upon the mabari in a cloud of pink georgette. Isabela smirks at him—her quirked eyebrow tells him that he is not yet safe, not by a long shot—but she allows him to escape unscathed and unadorned, at least for the moment, and he is content with what small victories he can manage.

"Catch him! He's getting away!" Isabela cries, feigning despair as Toby muscles past her towards the door and freedom. Hawke throws her arms around his neck—they barely reach all the way around—and shrieks with laughter as the dog covers her face in slobbery kisses. Isabela pounces with her gauze, and after a minute more of playful growling, the dog cedes defeat to his mistress.

Hawke emerges long enough to snatch up a feathered cap, and Toby lets out a huffing, indignant sigh from somewhere under the pile. A small, amused laugh escapes Fenris—he has had precious little to smile about, these last few days, but her childish enthusiasm is infectious, and even the thought of Marian cornering him with crêpe seems hardly daunting at all.

Then his gaze lands on the innocuous square bundle still lying wrapped on the mantle, and Fenris's amusement vanishes. It has been three days since Hawke's enchantment and they are still no closer to a solution. The Black Emporium has proved frustratingly elusive since that first morning, though Fenris suspects that any further advice Xenon offered would prove equally useless, and Varric is exhausting his supply of owed favors. Soon enough, they will be out of avenues. Fenris has no idea what he will do then.

He hardly knows what he's doing now. Barely aware of Hawke and Isabela still giggling on the floor, Fenris stands and approaches the hearth, plucking the book from its hiding place. The mid-morning light is better by the window and he picks his way through the detritus of decade-old fashion to reach it, carefully sliding the tatty old blanket from the book's cover as he does so.

The leather is just as he remembers, the red dye faded and discolored, the gilt nearly worn away from the raised lettering. Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked, he reads again, grimacing as he angles the book towards the light. The innate condemnation of magic is close enough to his own sentiments that it unsettles him. He glances back to make sure Hawke is still occupied with the dog, then flicks the book open with a fingernail; he doesn't know what he expects, really—a flash of light? a booming voice? –but nothing happens all the same. The lush illustrations of the title page stare back up at him innocently, the age-faded roses and vines twining through the letters like a trellis. The ink is still sharp after all these years, though, so crisp that Fenris can clearly see the hours of painstaking labor that must have gone into the image. It is lovely, intricate work, and he wishes he'd never set eyes on it.

Then, before he can talk himself out of it, Fenris flips to the tale that started this whole atrocious mess: The Mabari Prince. He doesn't allow himself to read any part of the story—and never in his life did he imagine Hawke's lessons could ever pose such a specific danger to him—but there is a full-page painting inset opposite the story's title, and this he studies in close detail.

It features a short, smiling young woman clad in a simple grey gown, her long blonde hair bound up behind her; she stands next to a mabari so massive its head rises above her waist, but her hand rests upon its back without fear. The hound is black, its fur colored so darkly that it seems to blend into the shadows of the thick forest painted behind them. It would look vicious if not for the peculiar intelligence in its eyes and the lovely woman beside it. Fenris bends closer to study the painting—there is something about it that draws him in, and he understands now why Hawke's sister might have thought this the prettiest thing in the house—and he doesn't realize his hand is flat on the page until Hawke is tugging it out of the way. "What is it?" she asks.

Fenris recoils, wrenching the book away from her so violently that she cries out. "Don't touch that!" he shouts and Hawke takes another step backwards; too late he realizes at whom he shouts, but before he can soften his anxious anger, she sets her jaw and summons a temper of her own.

"You were touching it," she says mulishly, her fists clenched at her sides, and in this moment she looks more like his Hawke than she has in days. The thought surprises him, but the one that follows stuns him—he had been touching it. Is touching it now, his fingers clenched around the leather cover in a vise-grip that makes his knuckles ache. And he feels nothing. No pull of latent magic, no sense of warning—nothing. It is, for the moment, nothing more than a book of fairy tales.

Fenris looks back to Marian, who still stands upset and stiff, and his grip on the cover eases, though his heart still pounds in his chest. "You're right," he says, his voice gentler now that it is back under his control, and he crouches to meet her eyes squarely, needing her to understand. "But this book—it's dangerous. I do not want you to touch it without me present. Is this clear?"

Marian turns her head away for a moment, sullen, and Fenris sees Isabela on her knees in the forgotten pile of clothing behind the girl, paused in the act of rising. She watches him with calm, appraising eyes; he wonders what she sees, if she knows he is as out-of-place as he feels, if she thinks Hawke's care might be better left to another. He wonders if she was rising to stop Hawke or to stop him.

Then Hawke shifts, bringing her gaze just level with his chin, and grudgingly says, "Yes, ser."

Ser—called ser, by Hawke—Fenris feels his jaw clench, but behind Hawke, Isabela shakes her head sharply, and he relents. "I—apologize, if I frightened you."

"I'm sorry," Marian mumbles, raising her gaze to his at last, and now he sees the pricking tears in her eyes, the faint trembling of her lips. He has frightened her, frightened her badly, and without thinking he sets the book behind him and half-opens his arms in invitation.

It is not a gesture that comes naturally to him, and the startled stare that Marian gives him lasts just long enough to spur his self-conscious retreat—but before he can move, she flings herself bodily into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck so tightly his tattoos sting at the touch. His hand finds her hair by habit, stroking down the length of it as she cries into his neck, and something inside him aches at its familiarity. Isabela rises to her feet at last, one hand on Toby's head, her face inscrutable. Fenris ignores her.

This is the first time he has held Hawke since she changed.

It is more difficult than he expects to release her when she backs away at last. She will not meet his eyes, embarrassed; her nose is running and she swipes at it with the back of her hand. Isabela gently knocks on her head, and when Marian looks up, she drops a blue handkerchief embroidered with the initials E.C. on her face.

"I think that's quite enough of that, don't you?" she asks, smiling to soften it, and Hawke nods under the handkerchief. "Good." Marian allows her to clean her face, and when she is finished, Isabela replaces the silver circlet on Marian's head at a jaunty angle. "Feel better, sweet thing?"

Hawke nods again, giving her a watery smile, and Isabela tucks the handkerchief into one of Hawke's lacy petticoats. "Can we…" Hawke starts, shyer than Fenris has ever seen her, "can we play rebels and Orlesians?"

Isabela grins and sweeps her an elegant bow. "One Orlesian at your service, madam."

"I want to be Loghain," Marian says, lighting up, and Isabela produces a painted wooden sword from the depths of the dress-up pile that she offers the girl with great aplomb. "And Toby can be Maric."

The mabari tries to look kingly. Fenris tries not to smile.

"Ah, but wait," Isabela says, and there is an undercurrent of deep satisfaction in her voice that tells Fenris this is his repayment from earlier. "If the dog is Maric, then who's Fenris going to be?"

Marian frowns, thinking; Fenris tries to hide that he is doing the same. He is not overly conversant in Fereldan history, thanks to Tevinter's cultured disdain for the muddy country, and it takes him a moment to sift through his knowledge of the Hero of River Dane.

Isabela must see the instant recognition dawns on him because her grin broadens enough to split her cheeks; Fenris puts both hands up in warning, but Marian gives him a winning smile and holds out her dainty circlet expectantly.

"I am not Rowan," Fenris says firmly, and Isabela throws back her head and laughs.

* * *

Summer gave way to autumn, and with it came cooler weather and longer nights. Soon enough, the girl and her mabari slept huddled under her single blanket as close to the fire as they dared, and she knew that before long they would have to seek shelter. Still, they passed without stopping through town after town and city after city, for the girl longed to see as much of the world as she could before winter fell upon them, and the joy she felt at each new place they visited kept her moving as long as she dared.

At last, when the girl awoke one morning to find a thin sheet of frost on the blanket she shared with Pup, she knew that their days of wandering the endless forests were drawing to a close. That evening, when they came across the next city lying across the road, they slipped in through the enormous iron gates as they closed and sought the nearest inn. But the girl was not prepared for what she saw: the city was grand, even at dusk, far grander than anything she had ever seen, and it took her many minutes to accustom herself to the high arched walls, the intricate stonework lacing the archways over the streets, the wooden doors polished and gleaming with the coolness of twilight and the warmer glow of evening lanterns. Men and women in fine clothes passed each other with smiles and friendly greetings while the girl and her dog stood in the shadows and marveled.

She found herself drawing closer to the mabari called Pup, resting her hand on his back for comfort, for in all this grandeur she suddenly became aware of her own lack of it. Her dress was simply cut, made of homespun grey wool and travel-stained from months of living out of doors; her leather shoes were torn and hurriedly mended, the laces snapped more than once and stiff with age. Her golden hair, grown longer than her waist, was clean enough, but tangled and bound with a leather thong in a hasty knot at the back of her head, for it often got in her way when she prepared the camps at night, and in the midst of all this finery she knew she did not belong.

Eventually, night fell in earnest, and when the girl mustered the courage to ask a stranger for directions, she was pointed to an inn at the end of a dimly-lit street. There they turned her away, for though the innkeeper might soften his heart for a lone girl with no money, he would not extend his hospitality to dogs as large as Pup. He told her of another place several streets away with fewer restrictions on their guests but warned her against it, for it lay in a disreputable part of town and she had no sword to protect her. But the girl was not afraid, and because she would not be parted from her friend, they set off into the night.

The roads twisted and turned and grew narrower, and the lamplights fewer and far between, and soon the girl lost her way in the dark. One road began to look like another and none of them led her the right way, and when at last she could wander no more, she stopped at a crossroads in indecision. A man of the neighborhood saw her confusion and came to help; he was tall and fair-haired and had an easy smile, and she liked him at once. He bowed to her courteously, a shuttered lantern in one hand and his cloak draped over the other, and when she told him her destination, he laughed kindly.

"Poor woman!" he said. "That place lies behind you. You must have passed it in the dark." She looked back, dismayed, but he bowed again and offered her his arm. "Let me escort you, lady. These streets are not safe to wander at night."

She blushed and accepted; no man had ever offered her his arm before, and she grew aware again of her worn clothing. Pup trotted at her side, looking ill-pleased by the young man but forbearing, as of yet, to chase off their only guide. The roads turned around them and she lost all sense of direction, but her companion charmed her with the tale of a prince of this very city, lost nearly two years ago to great magic, and she ignored Pup's growing unease beside her.

At last, though, when they turned down an alley that had no exit, the girl realized that something was terribly amiss. "I had thought we went to the inn," she said.

"Aye," her companion said easily enough, but when she tried to draw away he caught her arm in his hand and would not release her.

Pup snarled and coiled to leap, but in an instant the fair man's lantern had crashed to the ground, and that same hand bore a knife that he brought to the girl's throat. "Nay, down," he said with that same gentle voice, and the mabari bared his teeth but did not move. "Now," the man said, "your coin, and your cloak, and you will live."

"I have neither," the girl cried, holding out her hands in entreaty. "I came to this city with nothing more than you see!"

"What?" cried the man, and she felt his hand on her back and then her waist, seeking a coin-purse that did not exist. The edge of the knife skated over her skin as he searched and Pup bristled with rage, but he did not dare to move; at last, the man thrust her from him with a shout of frustration and she fell upon Pup's neck. The mabari leapt from her arms with a spitting howl but she called him back, not wishing to be left alone in the street, and they watched together as the man with the fair hair fled into the night.

The girl did not know how long she knelt there, but soon came along the night's watchman, an older man in silver armor who found her embracing her dog in the road. He brought her to her feet and gave her his cloak, and when her hands no longer shook he took her to the home of his sister and her husband, a wealthy merchant, who gave her and Pup a room of their own with a blazing fire in the hearth and clean clothes for her to sleep in. The girl nearly wept in gratitude at the sight of it, and the woman, who had a new-married daughter of her own, pitied her obvious misfortune.

"You must regret coming here," the woman said, mending the newest tear in the girl's grey gown by the fire.

"Nay," said the girl, surprising her benefactor. Though the lesson was hard-learned, she did not begrudge the knowledge, for the girl had wanted to see the world and everything in it, even those things that were not easy. She knew now that just as there was light there was also darkness, even in the grandest of cities, and that even fair men might bear evil in their hearts. "And a beast might have the kindest heart of all," she added, ruffling Pup's ears, and he rested his great head on her knee.

* * *

Someone is in his room.

Fenris comes awake smoothly and instantly, careful to keep his eyes closed and his breathing steady. It is a skill he has cultivated over a decade of servitude and flight and it has kept him alive more than once; now, his far hand slides free of the covers in a surreptitious movement, the muscles of his wrist flexing, and he gathers himself in the coiling swell of anticipation—

"Fenris?"

Marian's voice. Marian's voice, tiny and terrified, and the explosive relief of tension takes his breath away.

Fenris sits up, rolling up his overlong sleeves with only the slightest shaking of his hands. The clothes are Carver's castoffs, pulled out of a forgotten drawer by Orana the day after his arrival, and they are comfortable enough to sleep in for how poorly they fit. Marian stands at the foot of his bed in the guest room, a pale ghost in the moonlight spilling through the window; her eyes are so wide that he can see the whites all the way around them. "What's wrong?"

Her fingers twist into her nightgown. "There's something in my room," she whispers, her voice choked with anxiety.

"A nightmare?" he asks, but he is already throwing back the covers. He glances at the sky as he stands; the moon is waning, the sky not yet beginning to lighten, and he guesses there are still two hours before dawn.

Hawke's dark braid swings wildly as she shakes her head, her arms reaching up in open supplication, and Fenris lifts her to his hip in a gesture that has become almost natural over the last week. "I heard voices," she tells him, her face buried in his neck.

His heart sinks as they start up the stairs, his bare feet silenced by the carpeted runner. He can think of very few reasons a mage-child might hear voices in the middle of the night, and none of them are comforting. "What did they say?"

Marian only squeezes him tighter.

The door to her room is still open from her escape to his bedside, and Fenris eases it open with a foot. The room is as empty as he'd expected, her rumpled bedclothes the only sign of a disturbance; Toby lies sprawled by the fire like a log, snoring gently, and that in itself is enough to confirm that there have been no unwelcome guests in Hawke's room this night.

No physical ones, anyway, Fenris thinks, and his lip curls in distaste.

He hears the padding of soft feet behind him and turns to see Orana in the hall, a candle in her hand and her knitted shawl pulled closely over her shoulders to ward off the evening air. "I heard voices," she says, rubbing her face tiredly. "Is something wrong?"

"No," says Fenris, and then he sighs. "Yes." Orana blinks in sleepy confusion, and he turns away as he tamps down his personal feelings. "Find a messenger first thing in the morning. We'll need to send for the—for Anders."

"Yes, messere," she murmurs. Fenris hears her yawn as she heads back down the stairs. Marian still clings to him in silence as he closes the door behind them, though he can feel sporadic shudders rippling down her back, and rather than attempt to return her to sleep, Fenris knocks a few of her pillows to the floor and eases down to sit against the bedpost nearest the fire. He keeps Marian in his arms, as much for his comfort as her own; Toby twitches without waking when the fire pops behind him.

They are silent for a long time. In truth, Fenris thinks she has fallen asleep in his arms when her shaking slows and her dark head nestles under his chin like a tired sparrow.

At last she stirs, and when she speaks Fenris can feel her breath on his neck. "You don't like magic."

He will not lie to her. "No."

She sighs, long and slow, and turns her face further into his chest. "Papa says it's dangerous. He says demons will be able to talk to me when I dream because I'm a mage."

"Your father is right."

"Do you think I'm hearing demons?"

He does not know what to say, so he settles for silence—which proves to be answer enough all the same.

Marian makes a noise of deep unhappiness. Then, so soft he can barely hear it—"I hate my magic."

Fenris, stunned to silence, says nothing. It seems inconceivable that this could be true—Hawke, who breathes magic, who lets it spill from her hands like watered light—Hawke, who has championed mages as long as he's known her and longer, fierce in the face of his open disdain—hates magic? Impossible. "You do not mean that."

"I won't ever be normal."

Ah. "No," he says again; he knows what she will be, and he cannot pretend otherwise. Still, he is astonished—never before has he imagined Hawke so conflicted by something so crucial to her identity; never before has he seen her doubt what she is. He does not know if this is his Hawke, the Hawke she is supposed to be merely hidden in a child's body and stripped of her recent memories, or if this is truly Hawke as she was in Lothering, when she was Marian, before she began to know loss. Worse, he does not know which he hopes for more.

Marian burrows further into his chest and rests there, quiet. The stars are fading in the purpling sky, the moon slipping behind clouds just blushing with dawn before she speaks again.

"I have a brother and sister. They're twins. They're really little." She pauses for a moment, then continues. "Bethany's nice, but Carver cries all the time. Papa says at least he's got strong lungs, but he's too loud. I don't like it."

Fenris nods. Hawke rarely speaks of her siblings, even to him. He wonders if her sorrow still stops her, or if she simply treasures those memories too dearly to cheapen them with words, but he cannot deny that he is eager to hear more of them if only for the better understanding it would give him of Hawke. Toby rolls over by the fire, snuffling in his sleep.

"Mother says I'm supposed to protect them because I'm the oldest. Is it…" she trails off, swallows, tries again. "Is it okay to protect them with magic?"

His arms tighten around her involuntarily. This question he cannot answer, not honestly—his first instinct is to decry her magic as usual, to fall back to his history in Tevinter and all its attendant atrocities like he has for the last six years. But this is a child he holds, not the woman who argues with him, who saw him first as an equal. Not the woman who can hold him back.

Perhaps it is this last that makes him pause. Hawke, after all, has never misused her magic in the years he has known her. Even when the temptation was greatest: when her brother fell to the taint in the Deep Roads and she could do nothing but let the Wardens take him, even when he watched helplessly as her whole world narrowed to a vase of white lilies and a forgotten foundry in Lowtown, never did she once seek out a demon's aid nor turn to blood magic. This alone might have been enough, but there is so much more to it than that; there is something that runs deeper in him than the strength of her grief and the streak of his own fear, something at once wildly complex and terrifying in its simplicity.

He trusts her.

Even now, he trusts her. It might be a mistake—Marian is not truly Hawke, after all, and a child's inconstancy might undo them all—but he closes his eyes and makes a conscious decision to preserve that trust. He does not fear her—he cannot fear her, not after everything they have been through—but maybe he can ease her fear of herself. "Magic is a dangerous thing," he says, and the muscles in his jaw work as he continues. "It is a tool that carries a great risk to everyone who would wield it, more dangerous than any sword, and you will face that danger all of your life."

She tenses, but he ducks his head, tipping her chin up with two fingers until he can meet Hawke's eyes. The morning sun shafts through the clouds as dawn breaks in earnest, chasing away the last of the night's shadows. "But if there is anyone in this world that I would trust to carry that danger safely, it would be you."

It is the only answer he can give. But as Marian smiles, her watery eyes bright, he thinks that perhaps it is enough.

* * *

Chapter Text

The next morning, the sun broke clear and warm through the clouds, and the girl and her Pup went on their way with many thanks to the family that had again offered her a room for the night. Her dress was cleaned and mended and her hair properly combed for the first time in months, and with the knowledge that dinner and a real bed awaited her at the end of the day, the girl felt herself rather equal to any surprises the day might bring her.

Though she had thought it impossible, the city was even grander in the daylight; indeed, her first glimpse of the white stone walls shimmering in the sunlight made her clutch at Pup's shoulder in delight. Long ago, the city had been built on the banks of a great river, and as the ages passed, it grew in size and splendor on either side of the waters until it reached the very edges of the hills it bordered, the very same hills that had brought her here. The sight of the river brought tears to her eyes, for its swift-flowing waters laughed and gleamed in the sun like her river from home, and she found herself wondering if the river ever wondered of her.

More than one head turned at the golden-haired young woman standing so still at the bridge's edge, a woman who wept and smiled and waved down at the perplexed ferrymen who passed beneath her, her short stature at odds with the most enormous black mabari sprawled at her side in perfect unconcern. Soon enough, though, she composed herself and roused her companion, and as they descended the other side of the bridge, she was astonished to see the silver spires of a castle rising from the hills. It sat atop a rise at the edge of the city so that its white towers might be seen far in any direction, a beacon to call its weary warriors home, and the girl felt a strong desire to see it more closely. They made their way nearer and nearer to that great palace, though Pup grew unhappier with every step, and when eventually they reached the silver gates that guarded the outer walls, he sat on his haunches and refused to go a step farther.

"What ails you, Pup?" the girl asked, bending to cup the dog's face in her hands, but he would not meet her eyes. She pulled gently at his ears and tweaked his nose, thinking perhaps he was playing, but when he still would not move, she stepped back with a sigh. "Have it your own way," she said, and turned to see what she could of the castle through the gates.

"Even the beasts know," said a voice contemplatively. The girl looked behind her to see a pair of old men seated across the way who had apparently noticed her struggles with Pup.

"Aye," said the other, nodding his head. "Two years ago today it happened, and not a word in the while of the Black Prince."

The girl was intrigued, remembering the charming words of the fair thief, and she joined the elders at their table. "I am new to this city," she said, "and I do not know this story. Who is the Black Prince?"

"The eldest son of the king," the first man told her, knocking his pipe against his knee. "Two years ago today he was cursed to wander the world, friendless, and not a single messenger the queen has sent in search of him has found even a trace of the prince."

The girl checked over her shoulder, making certain that her mabari was still sitting by the gate; when he threw her a longsuffering look and slumped to the ground with a huff, she laughed and turned back to her companions. "Cursed? Why?"

"For failing to protect his people." The second man nodded again, his long, whiskery beard drooping on the table. "The Black Prince, who was well-loved by his father the king, was given charge of the building of a dam in the southern mountains of the realm. But he thought that the task was beneath him, and he did not do his duty and oversee the work properly. The dam was poorly built, so when the spring thaws came and the rivers flooded their banks, the dam did not hold."

"Aye," said the first. "It burst like so much kindling, flooding the town that lay beneath it with little warning. No lives were lost, but the people's homes and their farmlands were destroyed, and the king sent the Black Prince to the town to make amends." He puffed on his pipe and blew a meditative smoke ring, then leaned forward with a gleam in his eye. "But the prince did not know that a powerful mage lived in the town. The mage watched the prince riding in on his fine horse, with his silver buckles and glittering crown and his hunting dogs baying at his side, and he saw that the prince still did not see that the responsibility for the destruction of the town was his."

"That he had failed in his duty to protect his people!" cried the second man, slapping his knee for emphasis. "The town was of little consequence to any but those who lived there, but the mage saw that a man who would not protect the weak would be neither a good king nor a strong one, and he knew that no words would reach the distant ears of the prince. So he called on the wildness of his magic and cursed the prince."

The girl's mind spun. "Was the mage ever caught?"

"Nay, girl, though enough of the townspeople saw the magic as it happened. Vanished into thin air, he did, and never was he seen again in these lands. Worse, with the prince's brother and sister barely scraping a score of years between them, the king must fear for his throne as much as he does for his lost son."

The first man leaned back in his chair, nodding at a tale well-told. "Cursed to wander the world, never returning home until he learned to protect those in his care. That is the curse of the Black Prince."

"I thank you," said the girl, and when she stood to leave, the castle completely forgotten in the light of this new tale, her mabari trotted happily after her.

* * *

Anders arrives shortly after eighth bell. His face is creased with fatigue and his feathers a bit disheveled, but his eyes are clear as he drops his bag stuffed with medical supplies to the carpet with a thump. "Where's Hawke?" he asks without preamble. "I came as soon as I could."

Fenris folds his arms over his chest, irked and not bothering to hide it. "I'm glad you saw the need to hurry. She is in the study. Where she's been for the last hour, waiting for you."

"A man's eye was destroyed in a mining accident. Interrupting that sort of healing might have left him permanently blinded. But no, by all means continue insulting the mage you asked for help—it's politic."

Fenris jerks his head to the side, stung. Venhedis, this mage –but, though it galls him to admit it, Anders is right. Hawke needs help that he cannot give, and she is worth more than this wound to his pride. "Thank you. For coming," he grits out. It still feels like chewing nails.

Anders gives him a thin smile. "I didn't come for you."

Hawke is indeed in the study, curled up in one of the armchairs by the window and dozing lightly. Orana has done her dark hair in two braids that hang down over her shoulders, the red ribbons on their ends matching her dress, and somehow, Fenris thinks, they make her look even younger. Anders crosses to her side without hesitation; he crouches and touches her head softly to wake her, and a sudden surge of protective jealousy nearly swallows Fenris where he stands near the fire. He bites it back as Hawke stirs to wakefulness, shocked at its intensity.

"Hi there," says Anders as Hawke sits up, his voice kind. Neither of them misses the way her eyes go first to Fenris, as if making sure he is there, but Anders's gentle smile does not flicker in the slightest. "My name is Anders. Fenris says you're starting to hear whispers when you sleep. Is that right?" Marian nods uncertainly, and suddenly Fenris sees why Anders had not hesitated to come.

He is excellent with children.

In a matter of seconds, he has Marian entirely at ease. He makes a joke of checking her pulse and she giggles; he pretends to be startled by her reflexes and she laughs outright. In Anders's presence Marian looks at last the child she is, unaffected by the cares that Fenris has unwittingly laid on her shoulders. Beside the fire, he stands forgotten, a dark blot on the light of their gaiety. Eventually, Anders sits back on his heels and pats Hawke's knee. "Healthy as a horse," he says with satisfaction. The smile she gives him is all cheeky adoration, and he tweaks one of her braids. "Now, we can move on. Do you know how to make fire yet?"

Now they remember Fenris; Marian's eyes fly to his in indecision, but this is why Anders is here, after all, and Fenris, tersely, says, "Go ahead."

She turns back to Anders and his encouraging smile. Doubtfully she raises one hand between them and looks at it hard; a moment later, a tiny flame licks up the inside of her thumb. When it reaches the thumbnail, it jumps through the air to the tip of her forefinger, and then to the next, and in two breaths, her whole hand is alight.

"Excellent," Anders says, sounding genuinely impressed. He reaches out both hands and covers her palm to put out the fire—

"No!" Marian cries out, and yanks her hand away sharply. Fenris is halfway across the room before the little flames wink into nothingness, but even as they vanish she reaches out for Anders's hand again, startling them all. "Did I burn you?" she asks, her voice very small as she turns his hand from side to side.

Ah. Not fear, then—concern. Concern for the abomination, even now. Fenris doesn't know why he's surprised, and as Anders folds his long fingers around Marian's hand, he looks away.

"I'm all right," Anders says, and the warmth in his voice settles in Fenris's gut like ice.

The tests continue without further interruption, either magical or otherwise. Anders has Marian make sparks, snow, and stone in quick succession and is pleased when she struggles only with stone; a small, glittering barrier around his palm takes her nearly fifteen minutes to break through, but when at last she punctures it like so much netting, he nods in satisfaction. Time seems to pass by too quickly as they turn from one skill to another, and when the bells eventually chime half past nine, Anders blinks like a man emerging from deep water.

"Already?" he murmurs, pushing himself to his feet with the movements of someone much older than he is. Hawke droops in the armchair in exhaustion, her fingers still twitching faintly in her lap, but perks up enough to give him a tired smile when he rests a hand absently on her head. "You did a wonderful job, Marian. Thank you for sticking with me so long."

He turns to Fenris, jerking his head in the direction of the entrance hall, and Fenris unfolds himself from the wall to follow him from the room. He glances back, just once, to see Marian turn her head towards the window and a city still strange to her, pale save the flush of exertion on her cheeks, her dark braids falling over the shoulders of her red dress. With her feet drawn up under her and her back suddenly straight, she looks, now, like what she is—a little girl, lost in a world she does not truly understand. Alone.

Fenris tears his eyes away with effort. Anders leads them to the foyer, then stops, placing his bag on a bench to double-check the arrangement of its contents. "Well?" Fenris asks, managing to keep most of his impatience from his voice. The sooner the abomination is gone, the better.

Anders shrugs, tying the bag closed. "As far as I can tell, she's a perfectly normal six-year-old. And that includes her magic—she's a little advanced for her age, but it's nothing so notable as to attract the attention of demons."

"The voices she heard."

"Were probably nothing more than your standard-issue Fade spirits. I don't know where her magic is right now, but as she is, demons will hardly notice her. She might as well be invisible."

He sounds tired but calm, and even through their mutual dislike, Fenris knows he would not lie about Marian's safety. He closes his eyes briefly, not bothering to conceal the gratitude he feels towards Anders at this moment. "Then she is safe."

"She's a mage," Anders snaps. "She'll never be safe."

Fenris's goodwill dissipates at the familiar, aggrieved tones. "We will manage," he says stiffly, and takes a meaningful step towards the front door.

Anders stands his ground and scowls. "Of course you will. You'll hide an untrained apostate from the templars; you'll make sure that she learns how to use her magic properly. Because that's what you're known for."

"I will do what is needed." He hears the insulted edge creeping into his voice, but Anders takes no notice of his affront and moves even closer.

"What is needed," Anders repeats, eyes narrowed, and then he scoffs so loudly Fenris feels his breath on his neck. "Yes, Hawke needs you now, Maker alone knows why, and at least while you're in this city I can be sure you're teaching her what she needs to know. At least I can do that for her."

"Be silent—"

"No, Fenris," he snaps again. "Because you don't know what in the Void you're doing, and I'll be damned if I see you ruin Hawke out of your ignorance." It is as if he has reached into Fenris's heart and torn out his deepest fears, exposing them to the ruthless glare of daylight, and he finds himself speechless as Anders continues. "You think you know what she needs. Maybe right now, you do. But what are you going to do, Fenris, when the demons come for her in earnest? When you find yourself running from city to city because she can't control her magic?"

Fenris stares. Anders is furious, moreso than he has seen him in a long time and worse, he cannot say this time that his anger is unjustified. Anders paces in a tight circle, one hand jammed into his hair, and then he spins and jabs Fenris so hard in the breastbone that his markings flare in automatic defense. "You," Anders grits out, "do not understand. It's been ten days since that bloody book enchanted her. Ten days, and you think you can care for a child. Tell me, what happens when it's been a month? Six months? How long will it take before you start to wonder if this magic is permanent, before you stop hoping for a miracle?"

Six months—six months—he hasn't even thought—but Anders continues, merciless. "And what will you do when you realize that she will never be the Hawke you knew?" His voice softens from his near-shouting, but it is no less angry, and his eyes do not break from Fenris's. His hand is white-knuckled at his side. "That she might not ever care for you again?"

He might as well have struck Fenris across the face.

"She will grow up. She will grow up seeing you as the man who became her father, and when she falls in love with someone else, you will be the one she comes to. You will be the one she tells how happy she is with another man. And even if she does, by some idiotic miracle, fall in love with you again—?" Anders shakes his head, but there is no spite in it. Tiredness leaches the anger from his voice, leaving only a quiet pity, and he gives a calm, humorless laugh. "Hawke, eighteen, and you nearing fifty. At least your hair can't go any greyer."

Fenris wrenches his head away at that, unable to bear another instant of the man's too-sympathetic gaze. "Get out."

Anders raises a hand—to do what, Fenris doesn't know—but when it comes too close he shoves it away from him violently. "Get out," he says again, and his voice trembles before he can master it. Anders drops his hand and he sees him hesitate in his peripheral vision, but he still cannot look back and after a moment more, Anders turns and heads for the door.

He pauses with his hand on the knob, his back to Fenris, and speaks without turning. "People like you and me…we don't get happy endings."

And then he opens the door, and is gone.

Fenris stands still for a long time. His hands are clenched at his sides so hard they ache, and yet he still cannot stop their shaking; Anders's words fill his head until there is nothing left, no room for silence or peace or even simple hope. His future stretches out before his feet in a way he has never imagined—always, always it has been at Hawke's side, ever since the day she first gave him leave to stand there, but now—but now—

His breath comes too tight in his chest. He struggles to inhale, his shoulders heaving with the effort of it, but the air presses too close—it is crushing him—he pushes the heel of his hand against his chest where it aches, but it doesn't help, doesn't ease the terrifying sorrow taking root in his heart. Hawke, his Hawke, lost to him forever—Hawke—

He has to move. He has to move. He straightens from where he is bent almost double, his hand still clenched on his chest, and strides forward with such single-minded focus that he nearly knocks over Orana where she stands in the doorway. He has no idea how long she has been standing there—long enough, if the distraught look on her face is any indication—and his hands go out to steady her without thinking, without pausing. The rooms pass in a blur; he knows what he seeks as surely as a ship lost at sea turns to the stars, and when he bursts into the study and sees Hawke's face turn to his, sees her smile, just for him—he knows, and she is in his arms before he realizes he's crossed the room. Marian makes a noise of surprise but doesn't object, and slowly, her arms come around his neck in return, holding him just as tightly as he holds her. Her feet dangle at his hips.

It doesn't matter.

Fenris breathes, in and out, the ribbons of Hawke's braids brushing against his arms. Anders is right, and everything he said is true, but—it doesn't matter. Not to him. He has fought all of his life and run all of his life, and until he'd met Hawke he had expected to die doing just that. But she gave him hope, and shelter, and when she helped him slay Danarius she gave him peace—and even more than that, she dared to give him something he never in his life imagined being granted. She gave him herself, unequivocally and without reservation; when he fled, she waited, and when he returned, she was there to greet him with open arms. He can do no less for her now. He wants to do no less.

His arms tighten around Marian as he gathers his fears from that hidden place in his heart. He turns them over, one by one; he sees his despair, and his dread, and his uselessness, and he acknowledges their existence—and then, with a breath, he banishes them. He will not live in fear, not while Marian needs him. And even though there is a part of him, a lonely, desperate thing, that longs for his own Hawke, there is a larger part scored too deep in his soul that knows that he belongs at her side no matter her age, that even if she can no longer care for him the way he does for her, even if she never will again, that this—

This is home.

* * *

That night, the girl and Pup reached the home of the merchant and his wife only moments before the sky tore open in a storm. Thunder rolled low over the rooftops and torrents of lashing rain fell in great sheets, and the girl was grateful beyond words that her hosts were kind enough to give her shelter a second night. Again they ate well, and though cracks of lightning lit the sky as she and Pup climbed the stairs to her room, the girl felt quite content. Within moments of falling into bed, she was asleep.

In the wee hours of the night, the loudest crack of thunder she had ever heard split the air around her and she sat up with a start. Her mabari rolled over on the floor beside her bed, sleepily unimpressed; she was comforted by his presence and allowed herself to drift off again, noting absently that the rain no longer drummed on the roof. Time passed, enough that she found her dreams again, but again she was awoken, this time by an insistent tug on her sleeve and a faint growling she knew for her hound's. She reached out without opening her eyes, hoping to calm him, but when his sharp teeth clamped down hard on her fingers she came fully awake with a yelp. She looked to the mabari, surprised and hurt; he snarled and her eyes widened, her protest dying in her throat.

The house was burning.

Her room was already filling with black smoke, so thick she could barely see the door on the other side. No flames had yet reached her room, but she could see the angry red glow reflected on the houses outside her window and the anxious crowd gathering in the street. A few of them saw her and shouted, but the window was far too narrow for her to fit through, much less her dog, and without a second thought she threw her blanket over both her head and Pup's and fled for the door. The doorknob scalded her fingers when she touched it, but there was little time to nurse her pain, and wrapping the corner of her blanket around her hand, she flung it open.

Here was the fire. It licked at the walls already, curling around the edges of the paintings and spitting sparks when it reached the tapestries. Already the western rooms were afire and the heat blistered her cheeks, but the girl did not hesitate as she led her mabari towards the stairs. The fire was here, too, twisting its way up the carved banister like a golden snake, hissing as the lacquer cracked before it, but there was no other choice, and pulling firmly on her hound's fur, the girl started down the stairs. All around her the walls burned and buckled and belched smoke that stole her breath, but she knew that if they stopped they would perish, and she, more than anything, wished to save her friend.

And then the stairs collapsed beneath her.

The girl cried out as she fell, the next seconds lost in the wild rush of heat and light and the fire roaring in her ears. When at last the world came to rest, the girl lay stunned on her back, one leg twisted beneath her, and a heavy beam from the roof pinned her to the floor, stopped only from crushing her ribs by the shattered remains of the stairs. Gasping, she pushed against the wood, but it was as thick as she was and crafted of solid oak, and she could not move it. She screamed in fury and fear and shoved with all her strength, but the beam shifted not so much as an inch; around her the walls creaked ominously and the heat of the fire pressed against her face and shoulders, and the girl thought suddenly of her dog, lost in the collapse.

And then he was there as if summoned by her thoughts alone, his nose, gone dry with heat, pressing urgently at her face and neck. She gripped his neck in wordless panic and he saw what trapped her; he wrenched his head away and with a growl, he slammed the full weight of his body into the oaken beam. It did not move, and he charged again, using himself as a battering ram, but again it did not move. Again, and again, and again he threw himself at it, snarling and barking and ignoring the flames that crept ever closer until the beam grew bloody with his efforts. A man might have shifted it where the dog could not, but the girl saw that the fire burned far too hot and too close to expect a rescue, and then she knew, with sudden clarity, that soon she would die.

The knowledge settled over her like snowfall, cool and soft and calming, and she reached out a hand to her mabari to still him. He turned to her with teeth bared, raging at her interruption, and then he saw in her eyes the understanding that she would not survive, and a light in his own eyes went out. She pushed at his chest, for the smoke had grown too thick for her to speak, and when he did not move she pushed again, harder, and pointed at the door, willing him to safety. But her mabari would not move no matter how she shoved, whining low in his throat, and though the fire licked now at the very beam that pinned her, though the tears coursing down her cheeks burned away before they could fall, he lay down with his head on her chest as if they were in the forest again, with nothing but the trees and the stars and the silent-winging owls to keep them company.

Somewhere a wall gave way, and with a roar, a swirling tower of flame burst into the room. The girl twined her fingers into the smoldering fur of her dearest friend and met his eyes through the blurring tears in her own. He gave her a dog's smile, his tongue lolling out as if he were laughing, and with a shadow of the playfulness of their first meeting, he licked her cheek to catch a tear as it fell.

Something lit between them.

It was cold, and clear, and the white light it bore held nothing of the livid blaze of the flames that surrounded them. It hovered in the air between them like a star and the girl's heart ached at its beauty, but even as she reached to touch it, it darted to her mabari's chest and alit there. The room burned swiftly around them; this light burned swifter still, coursing over his singed black fur as fast as she could follow it and faster. In its wake the fur rippled and vanished and his legs grew long; it flickered over his spine and she blinked as his back bent and straightened and his face changed its shape. She heard a great crack and he cried out, and even through the roaring of the fire she knew the voice that spoke was human.

A man knelt on the floor beside her.

His head was bowed; he raised a trembling hand to his face, hidden under his thick black hair, and she saw that he wore a dark uniform with silver trimmings that caught the light of the fire still blazing around them. She reached out her fingers to his curled and smoking hair, not daring to believe the visions of a dying woman, but before the girl could touch him he raised his head and he looked at her with a man's face, and with a man's eyes, and she saw that the truth in those eyes had not changed.

She knew him for her Pup.

A flame snapped near them and she flinched, and in a moment the man had leapt to his feet. She saw his arms strain against the oaken beam that pinned her, saw his strong back curve and flex with the effort, and then the beam shifted against her ribs. She pushed against it, breathless with smoke and shock, and felt it give at last; he set his booted feet more squarely beneath him and heaved again, and this time the beam lifted free.

The girl shoved hard against it, forcing herself away from its heavy weight and pulling at her twisted knee with her hands; the moment her bare feet slid free the beam crashed down behind them, and the man who was Pup lifted her in his arms and ran.

* * *

Two weeks.

Two weeks Hawke has been a child, and though he won't admit it, Fenris knows that Varric has almost given up hope. He has exhausted every avenue he has and a few more besides, and still, nothing has come to light; indeed, at their last meeting, Varric had muttered something almost like an apology, and that had unsettled Fenris more than anything since Hawke's original transformation. Now Fenris sits in Hawke's armchair in the study, looking at nothing in particular. A book lies upside-down on the armrest at his elbow, forgotten; he'd plucked something from Hawke's shelf without particular care, seeking only a distraction, but when he'd found himself staring at the same sentence for nearly ten minutes he'd given up and abandoned the pretense.

He snorts to himself. That seems to be a common-enough theme with him, lately, and he leans back in the chair, letting his eyes close for a moment. The future will come as it comes, and he is prepared—as much as he can be, anyway. Fretting further would be ridiculous and purposeless, and he is resolved not to look back again.

The door creaks open, and Fenris opens his eyes to see Marian easing it closed behind her. She is in green today, a dark skirt and vest over a white blouse, and he can see her bare toes sinking into the carpet as she approaches his chair. There is something in her face, something serious and doubting, and he doesn't quite know what to do with it. "Marian."

"Hello, Fenris." Marian hesitates, pushing a stray hair out of her face as she looks at him searchingly, then seems to give up on whatever thought has brought her into the room. Instead, she sidles up to him, leaning both elbows on the armrest next to the book. She nudges the book's cover without a word, and when it does nothing in response, she drops her chin to the armrest between her hands and sighs.

"Is something…the matter?"

She shakes her head and one hand comes forward to pick idly at the sleeve of his jerkin. "You wear this a lot."

"Hmm."

Her finger slides down one seam, bumping along the rougher edges of the leather until she reaches the scrap of red ribbon bound around his wrist. Two weeks she has seen it and paid it no mind, but today it grabs her interest, and Fenris feels almost dizzy as she plucks at it. "You wear this all the time."

"Yes," he says helplessly.

"Why?"

"It's…" It is the most precious thing he owns. It is a reminder of his past and a promise of a future that seems more elusive by the day, and when she touches it with so little recognition it nearly cracks him in two. "It's special to me."

She nods as if she understands and pats the back of his hand; arrested by a thought, Fenris turns his palm over, catching her fingers in his. Her hands are so small. So small. Her fingers barely reach the base of his own, even when she stretches; a single movement, and he could crush her pale hand in his. Fenris closes his eyes, appalled. His hands are the hands of a killer, more often sheathed in steel and caked in blood than not; he has no right to be here, holding the hand of a child. He has no right to be trusted by this child.

But no. He has laid aside those fears. That same hand pats his own again, and he opens his eyes; Marian looks up at him with eyes full of worry, and he offers her a small smile. He will be worthy of that trust.

She smiles back, that smile that she only shows to him. He sees her gaze drop to his wrist again where the ribbon lies knotted; she touches the crimson fabric again, then lets her hand continue down his wrist to the white tattoos that streak his fingers. Marian studies them intently, then looks to the markings on his chin, to his eyes, and to his hair. "I don't know anybody like you," she says at last. She sounds surprised at the realization.

Fenris lets out a near-silent laugh. "I know."

Finally, the tension in the room eases. They sit in silent camaraderie for several seconds before Hawke starts fidgeting again, and Fenris sees the thought that had brought her here on her face again.

"Will you…" she starts, then trails off, looking away.

He can't tell if it's unease or embarrassment, but neither of them fits her particularly well. "Will I…?"

She sucks in a breath, then lets it all out in a whoosh. "I want you to read something to me."

Fenris feels his eyebrows shoot straight into his hairline. Of all the things she might have said, this he had not expected. He does not truly dislike the idea, once he has turned it over in his mind—he has read well enough to satisfy Hawke for years, after all—but he doesn't understand why the request has agitated Marian so badly, and he asks as much.

Her eyes flick up to his and then away again. "Because you won't like it."

"Even so," he says, gesturing for her to continue. She chews on her lip before nodding.

His curiosity thoroughly piqued, he watches as she throws one last tormented look at him, then fetches the little wooden chair from her desk. Understanding does not dawn until the chair has come to rest by the hearth and she is half atop it, and by the time he has extricated himself from the chair and pushed to his feet, Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked has already been pulled safely into her arms. Fenris stands where he is in an agony of indecision—everything in him desperately wants to tear the book away from her, to throw the damned thing into the fire and be done with it once and for all, but he has frightened her like that once before and refuses to do so again; and besides, the thing is done already, and she seems as yet none the worse for it.

Though every inch of his skin is tingling in disquiet, he forces himself to ease back into his seat as Hawke crosses back to him. She holds the book out to him expectantly, then hesitates and draws it back, and he sees by the look on her face that he has not schooled his own quite as well as he'd wished.

"I knew you'd be angry," she mumbles, and begins to turn away.

Fenris takes the book from her hands.

It is a heavy weight on his palm—he forgets, every time, how heavy it is—and once more, the faded lettering on the cover stares up at him innocently. Hawke takes this as silent assent, and in a trice she has clambered into his lap, nearly kneeing his chin in the process. Autumn is well upon Kirkwall and the room is chilly despite the afternoon; there is a thickly-woven blanket thrown over the back of the chair they sit in, feathers embroidered in gold chasing across a deep red background, and Hawke pulls it down over his shoulder to wrap herself in it.

"You wish me to read from this," Fenris says, still not quite believing it. One hand goes out to steady Hawke without thinking as she maneuvers herself more snugly against him.

"The first one."

The Mabari Prince.

"I am—not certain that is wise." A horrendous understatement. He can think of few ideas worse.

She twists in his arms. He thinks at first she is simply readjusting the blanket around herself, but she moves until she faces him and gives him a level look far beyond her years. "You have to read it," she says matter-of-factly, then touches the center of her chest. "I can feel it here."

Magic books, magic feelings—Fenris hates magic, hates more this terrible uncertainty. "How do you know?"

Marian frowns, still touching her chest as she searches for the words. "You have to finish the story," she says at last, and Fenris forgets to breathe.

He's heard that before. Varric's voice—Xenon's words.

The story doesn't end until you've read it.

Can it really be that simple?

He stares at the little girl in his lap, at Hawke's bright blue eyes and black hair, at the too-wide mouth and familiar nose. She meets his eyes without flinching—whatever might come of this, there is no doubt in her face. This is right. This must be right.

Dazed, Fenris opens the book to The Mabari Prince. It feels as though he is in a dream: his hands moving without conscious thought, his fingers numb on the leather cover, the feeling of Hawke again settling against his arms distant and remote. The pages fall open to the painting of the fair-haired girl standing next to the massive mabari; she seems to smile up at him with understanding in her eyes, and the dog's grin is a trifle wider than he remembers it. Marian brushes her fingers against the dog's fur, and she smiles, and before Fenris can convince himself what a blindingly foolish idea this is, he begins to read.

"The Mabari Prince," he says aloud. His voice shakes. Here is where everything went wrong; here is where he lost the thing that mattered most. But he has started already, and—he has to finish the story. "Once upon a time—there was a little girl who lived with her father in a wooden cottage at the very end of the river." He hesitates, waiting for—magic.

Nothing. Time has not slowed, nor has he changed into a child himself. Instead he feels the sudden sense of something easing back into place, a weight too long unbalanced righting itself at last. Marian looks up at him, confused by his pause, and he continues. "Most days, she was a contented child…"

* * *

When the girl opened her eyes, she found herself resting against the chest of the man who was Pup, both of them seated on the edge of a stone fountain in the square. Behind her the house smoldered still, though the worst of the damage seemed to be through; faint rain fell softly but steadily, and men and women in robes and rolled-up sleeves threw bucket after bucket of water on the last glowing embers. Their kindly hosts stood silent before the remains of the home they had shared so easily, and the girl's heart hurt that she could do nothing for them.

Then the girl looked up and found the man who was Pup watching her, his face creased with concern and faint uncertainty; she floated somewhere outside herself, giddy with magic and the fiercer rush of unexpected survival, and without thinking, she brushed the lingering raindrops from his hair before touching the silver clasp at his throat. She swallowed the last of the flames from her voice and said, "You are the Black Prince."

"Aye," he said easily enough, and though his voice was rough with smoke it was warm and deep, and she found that she liked it a great deal.

Blood dipped and smeared just above his collar, where her mabari had flung himself again and again at the wooden beam that trapped her. "And my Pup," she added, her hand curling into a loose fist on his chest.

"Aye," he said again, this time with unhidden anxiety.

Her fist thumped against his shoulder. "You ought to have fled when I told you to go!" she cried, though she made no move to rise from his lap and his arms did not loosen from her waist. "You ought to have saved yourself!"

He caught the fist in his hand and opened it gently to reveal the angry burns stretching across her fingers. His thumb traced the worst of them, and then he brought her hand to his mouth and touched her fingers to his lips. His eyes met hers without blinking.

"I would not leave you," he said.

A thin and trembling thing began to unfurl in her heart. She knew it for what it was, for she saw the same thing alight in his own dark eyes, but she would not yet name something so fragile before she knew if it would live, so instead she smiled and shook her head and curved her shoulders into the rain. "You are very reckless," she said instead. "Here, and with the wolves…"

"So says she, who faced them with nothing but a dagger." His eyes crinkled in good humor. "I have seen men quake with fear at less."

She blushed to say it, but her honesty would let her do no less. "I could not be afraid. I knew that you would protect me."

His smile grew dim and his arms tightened around her. "Had you known me before this, you could not have said such a thing. You know the story?" She nodded and his laugh was painful, a mockery of his own suffering. "Near eighteen months I spent as that dog before I met you, and not once in that time did I spare a thought for anyone but myself."

"Why did the mage choose a mabari, I wonder?" It felt so odd, she thought, discussing such great magic so plainly, but her curiosity could not be denied. Behind them, as the last of the coals died to steam in the gentle rain, the crowd began to scatter, paying little mind to the damp couple.

"The hounds I brought with me," he said, shaking his head. "The mage saw rightly that I valued them more than the homes my carelessness had destroyed, so he gave me their shape in return."

She cocked her head, feeling the heavy weight of her wet, unbound hair sliding across her shoulders. "I see it," she said with a smile, and touched his face. "Here, in the ears, and in the shape of the nose." He caught her hand again and she laughed aloud, cupping her palm around his cheek. "And then I found you in that trap."

He pressed his hand against hers, holding it to his face. "Aye, for I'd been fool enough to let my hunger bait me into it. A whole calf's hind left out as obvious as anything, and I was blinded to the danger until it was too late."

"And then I found you," she finished, but a thought struck her and she straightened with an exclamation. "And you scratched me!"

"You frightened me!" he returned, but the Black Prince had the good grace to look abashed.

The girl slid from his knee, drawing up to her full and entirely unimpressive height, laughing as she gestured to her sodden, smoke-stained dress, her bare feet on the cobbled street, her golden hair singed at the ends and falling loose around her. "I inspire so much terror?"

The smile left his face and took hers with it, and he clasped both her hands in his as he rose from the stone edge of the fountain. "I knew no terror as I did tonight," he said, "when I saw that I had failed to protect you."

He stood a good deal taller than her, his hair and uniform mere shadows against the night, but she saw the grief in his eyes clearly. "You saved me."

"The spell broke."

"Nay, you broke it yourself." She brushed her fingers over his shoulder where it bled, where he had given everything he'd had to protect her, and the glimmer of his smile touched her heart to set the trembling thing within it soaring. "We did not, perhaps," she added, lightening her words, "begin this friendship in gentleness. I trust that in the future, your greetings will be more tender."

"Then allow me to greet you again," said the man who was Pup and the Black Prince at once, his smile growing broad and true, and then he caught her in his arms, and he kissed her.

* * *

Marian leans against him with a sigh as Fenris reads. He tells her of a girl with golden hair and a hound nearly as large as she; he tells her of wolves in the night, of witches with dragon's eyes, of a white-stoned city that spanned a laughing river; he tells her of a cursed prince and a man who did not protect those who needed him. He speaks so long that his throat grows dry, but he will not stop, cannot stop—a key is fitting in a lock, something slow and strong building between them with every word, and he senses that to end it now would shatter into a thousand pieces whatever chance this magic has given them. Marian listens in grave silence, offering nothing, saying nothing, though her eyes stay trained on his face. In the tale a house burns and Marian flinches, and for a moment he thinks that he almost feels the heat of the flames on his own skin; by the time he reaches the end it seems that the pages nearly turn on their own, as if the story itself is frantic to be read. The words leap from the page to his lips and in the room there swells a palpable pressure, insistent the way breathing is insistent, and when he reads the last words aloud he thinks the very air might split from the untamed force of it.

"The end," Fenris says.

Hawke breathes, and the key turns home.

The world splinters with a sudden hard crack that nearly deafens him, and the book bursts outward with light. Before the magic had been silent, subtle in its potency, but this furious explosion is its opposite and more—a distant chime rings silver and the sound fills his chest, his throat; the light grows brighter and sharper, washing the room to pale shadows in its exquisite brilliance. Marian's weight slides from his knees and Fenris reaches out for her blindly, but his hands only brush the twist-wool fringe of her blanket before the pressure crushes him back without mercy.

The magic builds around them in a whirlwind of white fire and Hawke stands at its heart, her shape nothing but a shivering dark space to his dazzled eyes; the chime still resounds in his ears and he cannot breathe under its sheer immensity. The pull of the magic is so strong that his tattoos flare in defense—everything in him rages at his impotence, savage with fear for Hawke, her small shadow standing awash in light as the storm surges to its peak—and then, with the abrupt cresting of a wave at sea—

—it breaks.

For a moment the light burns so bright that Fenris throws his arm over his eyes. The chime dies away at last, and in its wake he hears the faint whisperings of a thousand voices, men and women and children warm and laughing as they murmur the words of old tales. They speak only an instant and then they are gone, taking the last of the pressure with them. The light lingers longer, though it is nothing so bright as it was, and Fenris's heart hammers loud in the sudden silence as he lowers his arm.

Marian kneels on the floor, her back to him and bent so low she is nothing but a heap of crimson blanket and dark hair. Fenris stands, his stomach clenched in anxiety, but before he can reach her the pattern of golden feathers ripples over her shoulders with a breath, the gilded thread glimmering in the light, and Hawke rises to her feet.

Hawke rises.

She is so tall—so tall—how has he forgotten this? The blanket that drowned Marian falls around Hawke's shoulders like a cloak, the feathers drifting down her back that stands steady and straight before him. The binding has come loose on her hair and the black wave of it ripples as she raises her head—and then she turns to him in a sudden sharp motion and it lifts cloudlike around her face. The gold of sunlight catches in her blue eyes, on the curve of her too-wide lips drawn up in a smile, on the sloping arch of her cheekbone.

"Fenris," she says, and knows him.

A thing in his heart that had been broken is made whole again, and he puts a hand to his face, overcome. He cannot find words—there is nothing he can say that can possibly convey the ache of his gladness and the anguish of his unbearable relief; every word crashes together on his tongue at once and in the end, the only thing that escapes him is, "Hawke."

She laughs breathlessly and his heart leaps at the sound. "Fenris," she says again, and again his breath catches in his throat at the sound of his name. "Fenris, I've torn it!"

Her eyes are bright with giddy humor, and so lost is he in her face that he barely hears her words. "Torn—torn what?"

"Everything!" She spreads her arms wide to reveal the child's skirt, the seams split clear past her hips, the green vest hanging by mere threads over a white blouse with the shoulder seams popped cleanly, the fabric barely reaching her waist. She draws the blanket closed again so that the gold feathers hide her safely; she laughs again and he hears the tears choking the edges of it, wild and euphoric and free, and he takes two steps forward and crushes her, blanket and all, against his chest.

Here is where she fits. Here is her hair brushing his forehead and her long-fingered hands curling over his back, his shoulders. Here is her heart beating sparrow-fast against his own and her lips on his cheek, whispering things he cannot make out through the shuddering that swallows them both. Hawke leans back first and oh, it is hard to release her, but she moves only enough to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

It is not enough. He has been without Hawke, his Hawke, for two weeks with no promise of an end, and this is not enough, but even at this faint touch he feels as if he might crack to pieces, and this time when she pulls back he lets her. "I have missed you," Fenris says. The sentiment is woefully inadequate, but she nods as if she understands all the same.

"You too," she says. "I mean, it was different. There was a—a hole." She draws back, gesturing between them. "I knew something was missing, just not—what."

He has so many things to say, so many questions he wishes to ask her, that he cannot decide which topic to broach first. "You were right about the book. That reading the tale would break the enchantment."

Hawke gives him a wry grin. "Nay, you broke it yourself."

Her smile is so bright—it is too much for him, too much for his heart; he feels like a man underground too long, blinded when he emerges at last into the sunlight. He cups her cheek in his hand and she leans into the touch and then, perhaps sensing how near he is to being overwhelmed, she steps back and runs a hand through her hair. "Everything looks so small," she says, breaking the tension as she glances around the room. Her gaze falls on Of Magicks Wilde and Wicked lying forgotten on the floor, still open to the painting of the girl standing next to her mabari.

"You did barely reach my knee," says Fenris as she bends to pick it up, and he is pleased to find his voice is almost normal.

"I wasn't that short." Hawke's thumb brushes over the mabari's black fur again, the other hand holding the deep red fabric of the blanket close around her. "I think the magic's gone now. Well. Save what's in the words themselves, I suppose."

"You suppose."

She gives him an impish smile. "I could always try another one, if you like?"

"No! Put it away." He is rattled by the very idea and Hawke relents when she sees it, tucking the book into its habitual place on the mantle. It seems so—innocuous, there, as if it really might be nothing more than a collection of children's stories, but Fenris decides to consider himself blessed if he never sees the inside of that book again.

Her hand lingers on the mantle, and when she speaks she does not look back at him. "It was nice, though. Having Bethany and my parents again, I mean, even if it was only for a few days. I even missed Carver's bawling." Her voice catches, but she does not weep, and the eyes she turns to him are clear. "I'd like to…maybe I could tell you about them, some time. I think Bethany would have liked you."

He nods, knowing how close she keeps those memories. "I would like that."

She smiles, one less tinged with grief than he remembers, and then her eyes widen in sudden memory. "Fenris! I made you be Rowan!"

She looks both faintly appalled and utterly amused, and when Fenris coughs delicately into his fist, she lets out a burst of laughter so warm it hurts, so bright it chases away every shadow still lingering in his heart. In another life he might have resented the injury to his dignity; now, the corners of his own mouth turn up in shared amusement. The moment passes too soon, but stifled giggles still leak from Hawke as she wipes tears from her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Fenris," she says, managing something very like sincerity, and then she runs a hand over her eyes. "I wonder if Isabela knows I saw her keep the cockle shells."

He can think of nothing to say. Seeing Hawke's face with his own eyes, the muted joy a reflection of his own—he feels as though he drinks in the sight of her, that he cannot look at her enough to sate his thirst.

"Mistress!" The cry comes from the door, and both of them turn to see Orana standing there, her hands over her mouth and her eyes filling with tears. "Mistress, you're—you—"

"I'm—me!" Hawke crosses the room and embraces her, still wrapped in the gold-feathered blanket; a moment later they hear nails skittering on the floor and Hawke nudges Orana just enough out of the way that when Toby comes barreling through the door, Hawke is the only one knocked from her feet. The dog covers her face with enthusiastic slobber, allowing her to rise to her elbows only to shove forward and send her sprawling again. "Toby, stop—stop, you overgrown clod—" She pushes his muzzle away, making a face at the drool on her hand, but she is laughing as she says it. The blanket lies forgotten on the ground and Orana clucks to see Hawke's state of tattered undress, her tears forgotten in the light of Toby's antics. She disappears and returns a moment later with a robe; Fenris helps Hawke to her feet despite the mabari leaping at their legs, and Hawke slips into it gratefully.

"Andraste's left knee," she says, looking down at herself. "I feel almost grown-up again."

Fenris tucks his arms around her waist, unable to muster the slightest sense of concern at the openness of the gesture. Her touch is a luxury, he'd thought once, and he thinks he has more than earned this indulgence. Hawke turns her face up to his with a smile as Orana slips from the room again, saying something about messages as she gives them their privacy. "Hello," Hawke says, quirking an eyebrow. "Come to collect your lady's kiss?"

"My lady's—?"

"He caught her in his arms, and he kissed her," Hawke quotes in a passable imitation of Fenris's voice. "The tale's over, the story's done—all that's left is the kiss and the happily ever after."

Fenris thinks, then, of Anders's words. Fairytale endings are not for people like them, he'd said, and that might yet be true—still, here, with Hawke, his Hawke, in his arms, he cannot help but smile. "Then I suppose I will oblige."

"Oblige—" Hawke says indignantly, but his mouth is already slanting over hers, and in the kiss he gives her everything he has felt since she vanished into herself, every twinge of fear and pang of loss, every instant of tempered joy now set free. She wraps her arms around his neck to meet him just as intensely; her hand fumbles into his hair and he pulls her closer, and for many minutes there is no sound in the room but their mingling breaths. At last they break apart, unsteady on their feet, and she rests her forehead against his for a long time. "Oblige me more often," she says at last, and tugs at the hair on the nape of his neck.

He laughs despite himself. Orana has gone to send messages to their friends; soon enough the room will be full of people and all of them will demand their equal share of Hawke's time. Varric will have a hundred questions, only half of them appropriate; Aveline and Merrill will wring out every detail of Hawke's transformation, eager to see a second childhood through her eyes. Anders will smile and touch Hawke's hands too often, and Isabela will bring enough alcohol to ensure not a single one of them is walking straight by nightfall.

"Happily ever after," Hawke reminds him, smiling as if she knows his thoughts.

Fenris kisses her again. "Such as it is."

Happily ever after. In truth, he doubts they will find it so easily—their lives do not lend themselves to peace and quiet, after all, and Kirkwall will pull them back into its chaos soon enough—but as long as he stands at Hawke's side, he will not count it an impossibility. And as for the future, with its anxious hopes, its uneasy shadows, and even the great uncertainty of magic…well.

He's rather looking forward to it.

* * *

In a land not very far from here, there is a river that flows through a white city. Its waters are clear and sweet, and if you wished, you might follow them as they wend their way through the wild forests and sloping hills, turning ever southward until at last they end near a little cottage all grown over with vining roses. There, if you took the care to listen, you might hear the leaves of the trees whisper to you their rustling secrets, or smell the spices carried far on the wind from distant lands to this hidden place. And, if you listened closely enough, you might even hear in the laughing of the river the story of the wise advice it once gave a girl who lived beside it, and of how that girl married her true love in the spring on the same river's bright and gleaming banks, and of how she, and her Black Prince, whom she ever called Pup, found at last their happily ever after.

 

* * *

 

The End