Chapter Text
For a moment, they both froze.
Hawke, washed and dressed, mostly sober, head pounding, mood dark. Anders at his back, ready to bully him the moment it seemed he was going to slip back into the state he’d found him in.
Fenris, armed and armored, pale, stone-faced, shoulders curled, followed closely by Isabela as he came down the Hanged Man’s main hall into the dining room. The familiar space around them seemed suddenly alien and unfamiliar, the noise of the tavern, the smoky lights, the smell of Corff’s infamous “meat” stew surprise shifting and fuzzing and fading around him, until there was only Hawke, and there was only Fenris, and there was only that moment, amber eyes clashed with green, pang of hurt, of guilt, of love.
“Forget him, he’s not worth it,” Anders said, and tried without success to drag him back as Hawke began to move, striding forward with sudden energy, with purpose. Hawke had been – he had been too caught up in it, in the euphoria of the moment, the happiness, the love, yes, the lust. He had missed something. He had gone too far.
This is too fast. I cannot do this.
Hawke had to apologize. He’d get on his knees, beg Fenris to forgive him, whatever it took. His eyes burned, his heart ached. He had missed – something. Wracking his memories, he couldn’t even find when the moment had come and gone, only that there must have been some warning, somewhere, and he had missed it.
It was right that there would be witnesses. Anders and Isabela, Varric over at the usual table, pen poised over his open notes, reading glasses slipped down the bridge of his nose as he turned his attention on them. Hawke had to be held accountable for what he had done.
He stopped short when he saw Fenris brace himself to face him, when he noticed the way he rolled his shoulders, the way he did when he was being brave. The effort it took the elf to meet his eyes.
“Fenris,” Hawke began, his voice choked. He began to take another step forward. Fenris stiffened.
And then Hawke saw the flash of red, bright as blood, still wrapped ‘round the elf’s wrist.
He reached for him, and stopped himself just short of touching. His hand hovered, useless, just above Fenris’s arm and Fenris only looked at him, not stepping away or drawing his blade, just – waiting.
“Will you take it back now?” Fenris asked, voice and gaze steady. “It is your right.”
“Fenris.”
It felt like a gut punch, that bit of red. It felt like the ground beneath him cracking, crumbling, falling away. Everything shifted, shuddered, snapped back into place.
It’s too much, Fenris had said. This is too fast.
Fenris struggled with eye contact, but he watched Hawke, and he waited. Beneath the cool veneer, he looked as rough as Hawke felt. Pale, dark circles under his eyes. Miserable.
“Oookay,” Varric said. Hawke hadn’t noticed him rise from the table and come to join them, but he was at Hawke’s side now. “What’s going on here, Big Guy?”
“We…” Hawke began, and couldn’t find words. “We were coming for breakfast,” he said. He sounded lost. He kept searching Fenris’s face, kept waiting for the elf to look at him, waiting to see - something. Some sign. Something to help him understand.
“We were too,” Isabela said. Hawke didn’t look at her, couldn’t pull his eyes from Fenris.
“Great,” Varric said. “That sounds great. Let’s have breakfast – my treat. Let’s go sit down, Big Guy. Blondie? You want to call Nora over?”
Somehow, they corralled them to the table. Isabela took the seat beside Hawke, the one that Fenris and Anders always squabbled over, and Anders sat across from Hawke without a word. Fenris hesitated before he took the seat usually reserved for Sebastian. With so few at the table, it left him isolated, with empty chairs all around him. Even after sitting, he looked as if the first loud sound would send him into flight. He would no longer look at Hawke. He was too far away.
Breakfast came. Anders must have ordered when he went to talk to Nora, because Hawke never spoke to her. He didn’t want the food. He wanted to talk to Fenris. He saw Varric look at Isabela in question, saw her shake her head. Fenris wouldn’t look at any of them now.
Fenris only moved the food around his plate for a moment before abruptly standing.
“I should go,” he said, his head down, his hands clenched.
“You don’t have to, Fenris,” Hawke said. The elf didn’t look at him, didn’t speak. Before Hawke could offer to go instead, he turned and left.
Hawke was staring after him so long that he actually jumped when Isabela, unusually serious, squeezed his arm.
“It’s not you,” she said, which didn’t make sense at all. “Thanks for doing everything you did.”
Anders was reaching across the table to claim ownership of Fenris’s untouched food. “It’s just dick,” he said dismissively.
“Ok,” Varric threw down his fork. “Is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?”
--
Hawke had been in love with Fenris since the first moment he laid eyes on him. Or, if that first, initial shock of attraction had been anything less than love, every moment they had spent together in the years since – every glance, every touch, every quiet night, their heads together, their voices low and relaxed, mingling over the crack of the fire, the warm burn of bourbon – had caused love to blossom and grow so completely that there was no seam with which to distinguish between infatuation and love.
Hawke hadn’t realized it, hadn’t let himself examine it, however powerful the urge to be near the elf, however complete his desire to touch, to kiss, to hold the man. Not until Fenris himself had pushed the relationship forward. He had thought their friendship would be enough, until the day he kissed him, and knew his life could never be the same.
Hawke had been in love with Fenris since the first moment he laid eyes on him. Several days ago, they had slept together.
And then Fenris had left.
This is too fast, Fenris had said. And, I can’t.
Hawke had never felt happier than he had, that night with Fenris in his arms. One thing in his life had finally gone right. One moment of contentment, of peace, of freedom from the weight which bore him down. Fenris, in his bed, smiling and soft and teasing. Fenris, relaxed and safe and warm.
But Hawke must have missed something. He must have pushed too hard, been too eager. There must have been some sign that he should stop that he had missed, and now it was over. All of it. The flirting, the teasing, the kissing.
Anders and Isabela didn’t know enough to tell Varric more than the basics. Fenris and Hawke had slept together. It didn’t work out. It was over.
It was over.
Hawke was too sober for the conversation. He failed to supply the details that Varric tried to pry from him. He answered questions in grunts and monosyllables, until Varric gave up, and reluctantly changed the subject.
His friends came with him, when Hawke decided it was time to leave. The heavy smoke from the foundry dulled the light outside, but it still felt too bright, too warm. Hawke didn’t miss the concerned looks his friends gave each other, the curious whispers they traded behind his back.
“Good riddance, I say,” Anders said, and Hawke didn’t have the energy to be angry.
“Fenris is the same,” Isabela said, which didn’t help, which, in fact, only made it worse. They meandered slowly through the Lowtown market, past ramshackle booths made of scraps, and merchants hawking their wares, and the sharp smell of roasting rat. Dull-eyed street whores claiming their corner for the day. Tatter-clothed orphans darting between shoppers, quick clever fingers looking for an easy purse. Yawning guardsmen, inattentive and bored. All of it had a dull quality to it, dreamlike and overly familiar, easy to ignore over everything in his head. Hawke had never felt this particular degree of pain before. It had a different weight than the death of a loved one, or the sting of failure when his family was in danger.
Hawke had never been happier than when he held Fenris in his arms. Now, Fenris would not look at him.
Fenris still wore his favor.
“ – just overwhelmed,” Isabela was saying. Her voice was dim, uncharacteristically serious. “He had some kind of a dream – didn’t really catch what he meant. Threw him for a loop though, poor sod.” She glanced at Hawke. He could feel her gaze against his back. Varric’s too. “He just needs time,” she said. Hawke stopped listening. He clenched his jaw until it ached.
Hawke should have known something was wrong. Fenris had told him he had doubts about deepening their relationship. Hawke shouldn’t have allowed it to happen. He shouldn’t have been so happy, so eager, so thoughtless.
Hawke’s chest ached.
He heard the whistle, felt the jarring force of impact, moments before it occurred to him that he had just been struck with an arrow – the shaft stood erect from his shoulder, still trembling from force of impact. A longbowman’s shot, powerful enough to swing him around. His fingers numbing, he dropped his staff.
“We’re under attack!” Varric called, swinging Bianca from his back.
“In broad daylight?”
“You want to take it up with them, Blondie?” the dwarf rammed a bolt home, and held Bianca steady as the assailants materialized from their hiding places along the Lowtown street. “Rivaini and I will cover you. See what you can do about the Big Guy.”
--
Carver Hawke was not in a good mood, and he was not happy to find Merrill waiting for him in the Gallows courtyard. She was fresh and pretty in a spring green dress, and she had a lunch basket slung over one arm, and she smiled at him with all the brightness and warmth of the sun itself. He had never been so furious to see someone he loved so much.
“Hello Carver Hawke!” she called as he approached. “Oh, but isn’t it a beautify – ow! Carver, that’s too rough!”
Through sheer force of will alone, Carver made himself loosen his grip on her upper arm, but he refused to slow his momentum, propelling her out of the Gallows as quickly as he could – preferably before any of his fellows took notice of her.
“How many times do I have to tell you never to come here?” he demanded, low.
“Oh, don’t be so silly. Hawke brings me here all the time,” she said. “My but your face is red! What is it? What is it? Did they change the law? It isn’t a crime now for a strapping young templar lad to let his special lady friend bring him lunch, is it? Human laws are so silly, I have trouble keeping up.”
She was being cute, and that was unbearable. Carver didn’t answer. He couldn’t even bring himself to breathe – not until they had passed under the Gallows’ gates, between the towering rows of bent-backed slave statues, caught forever in cruel depiction of their anguish. The heavy rotten fish stink of the Gallows docks that had first greeted Carver’s arrival in Kirkwall was a welcome relief to him now.
“You never introduce me to your friends, Carver. Do you not want them to meet me? I brought enough food for - !”
“Of course I don’t want them to meet you!” Carver snapped. “Did you rent a skiff to come here? Which is it?”
Merrill didn’t answer except to point. Carver’s mood went further south at the sight of the little boat, which looked as if it was held together by twine and wishes. She had probably overpaid for it, too. Merrill was surprised when he got into it with her.
“I’m going to give the dockmaster a piece of my mind,” he said.
“Oh, I really wish you wouldn’t!”
“What – he thinks he can take advantage of you just because you’re…” Carver faltered, words like naïve and easy target sticking to his tongue at the expression on her face.
“Oh, but I don’t like you when you’re grumpy,” Merrill said at last. She looked away and crossed her arms and did not offer to help him row. He didn’t let himself wonder if she had used magic on her crossing to the Gallows. It would only make things worse.
“I’m not grumpy,” Carver grumbled, grumpily. Even he knew he was lying. He said, “I’ve had a bad day,” as a kind of an apology. Merrill didn’t acknowledge him.
Carver would never learn to get used to, much less enjoy, how much warmer the Free Marches were than good sensible Ferelden. Lately they had seen a spree of positively sweltering weather. Carver had spent the night tossing and turning in his own sweat, only to be woken two hours before bells to run double drills in full armor. Another group of apostates had escaped.
The cherry on top had come when Meredith herself arrived to give his unit a personal dressing down. She had singled out Carver in particular for being so far behind on the quota she had set for him. In fact, Carver was making negative progress; some of the recent escapees had been mages he himself had brought in. Even better, there was some evidence that one of them might have been a plant who had let herself get caught on purpose for the sole purpose of helping others get out.
“If you’re having a bad day,” Merrill said at last, voice curt, “Then you should be more appreciative when someone cares about you enough to come along and try to make that day better.”
Carver found himself staring at her thin bare arms, at the network of white scars that crisscrossed her sweet flesh. Some of the older templars would recognize the signs of extensive long-term use of blood magic in a heartbeat.
“I know,” Carver answered quietly. “I’m sorry.”
Merrill softened, like she always softened when she was right and Carver was an idiot. She uncrossed her arms and leaned back a little, closing her eyes as she let the sea breeze stir her hair. She really did look pretty today. Carver was about to tell her so, before she spoke.
“If you dislike your job so much, then why do you still do it?” she asked. “Don’t tell me it’s pride. Your brother wouldn’t rub it in if you came back.”
“It’s not that easy, Merrill.”
“Why not?” she asked.
“People can’t just quit the Order. The lyrium…”
“Don’t you think your friends would help you through that?”
“Right,” Carver said. “Leopold Hawke, nursing me through withdrawals. I like the thought of that!” Leo would despise a show of weakness like that, just like he would despise Carver for quitting – never mind how much he had hated Carver joining the templars in the first place. He was their father made over, after all. You made a commitment, you keep to it. You earn yourself a punishment, you take it. Carver was just as much a man as either of them. He would show it, too, even if no one ever recognized it.
Anyway, it was different, being a templar instead of Hawke’s little brother. Men treated him with respect. Mother bragged about him to his friends. Sometimes, he even got the chance to do the right thing, all on his own, without his brother’s voice in his head telling him how he was doing it wrong.
“Drop it, all right, Merrill?”
Carver did not give the dockmaster a piece of his mind when they reached their destination. Merrill still had the lunch basket slung over her arm, but she did not invite Carver to find a quiet place to eat together, or even to come back to her little home with her. She pushed it into his hands, and told him that she hoped his day got better, and she walked away.
Carver still had a few hours free before his next shift, but no desire to spend it around anyone. Templars had their own, dedicated boat transport to and from the Gallows, and when Carver got back, all of the exhaustion of his day crashed down onto him at once. He returned to the barracks, dodging questions about the cute elf some of his friends had seen him whisk away. He gave his friend Todric the lunch basket, stripped out of his armor, and threw himself into his bunk without bothering to wash up.
Eyes burning, limbs heavy, Carver was almost asleep when he heard the soft scuff of a shoe, and felt just the slightest stirring of air somewhere above his head. He opened his eyes to the flash of silver, and jerked away, and the knife stabbed deep into his pillow, puncturing the mattress underneath.
It stuck somewhere in the springs, which was all that allowed Carver time to scramble from the bunk before the assailant got it free. His body moved quicker than his thoughts, hardly registering the image of a dwarf in dark leathers throwing himself at him with a snarl as he turned to the next bunk, grabbed the shield hanging there, and thrust it at the dwarf. It caught the fellow in the throat, his momentum carrying him into it. His eyes, strange and cloudy and familiar in a way that nagged at Carver’s unhelpful mind, bulged in surprise as he gagged. Carver swung the shield around and bashed it once, twice, three times into the would-be assassin’s skull. When the dwarf fell, he didn’t get up.
Carver heard the creak of the door and he turned, arm lifting. A bolt from a clumsily constructed crossbow glanced off the edge of the shield, and a second assailant cursed and began to reload, even as a third threw himself Carver’s way.
--
Carver knew he made a sight, running through the streets, wild-eyed, hair on end, covered in blood. It was a wonder he wasn’t stopped by the Hightown guard.
There would be an investigation. Carver’s mind was fuzzy on the details of the aftermath of the attack – one of his roommates coming in to find him standing over the bodies of three Carta assassins. He knew Meredith had been there at some point, furious, demanding to know how they had smuggled themselves in and what they had wanted, how Carver was involved.
He knew he had been put on temporary suspension.
It didn’t matter. Carver should have stuck around for questioning, but the moment the wrong back was turned he had left, and no one had thought to stop him in time.
He had to find Leo.
Worry gripped him, hounded his every step. His strides ate up the Hightown streets, only his destination in mind, and it was lucky he found the mansion’s door unlocked because he would have probably broken it down had he found it barred. As if was, it bounced violently off the opposite wall as he threw it open.
The entrance hall was empty, but that didn’t have to mean anything. Carver had started here because it was the easiest place to track his brother down. He’d been praying he wasn’t at the Hanged Man, or out on the coast, or doing any number of his asinine jobs – and yes, there was his brother’s stave, leaning in its corner against the wall. Relief flooded him.
“Leo!”
Carver tried the bedroom first, flying up the stairs, then halfway back down before he heard something in the study.
“Leo!” Carver threw open the door. “Leo, assassins are - !”
He stopped at the sight that greeted him – his brother, shirtless and stoic and pale in his chair by the fire, the abomination Anders standing over him, knife in hand and tongue caught between his teeth as he carefully extracted a barbed arrowhead from Leo’s shoulder.
At the desk, Varric said, dryly, “We know, Junior. Have a seat.”