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Her nose is broken, again. There's a joke there somewhere, she is sure. She doesn't know quite which way it angles now, but the bump feels considerable. Isabela would have had a good laugh, no doubt, but Isabela isn't here. Hawke is, and Hawke–
“You've looked better,” Varric says, and Hawke snorts.
“Kinder words than I would have chosen, to be sure.”
“For the record, I think the nose suits you,” the dwarf continues, gesturing to his own, rather sizable example. “Although for your own sake I'd suggest taking less hits with your face. You've got an image to preserve, after all.”
“Ha,” Hawke says, but it lures a small smile from the corner of her mouth. “Your doing, that.”
“Perhaps, but think about what it would do for sales if I got to put your face on the cover of the Tale of the Champion?”
She almost smiles. “Before or after the nose, you mean?”
Varric grins. That's something, at least. It's not a laugh, not the way it would have been between the two of them, huddled in front of the fire in another time, another place, and Hawke feels sadness at the fact. There's a weight they share between them now, the knowledge of what they've caused. There's been no pointed fingers, and the Inquisition has made no demands but ask for their support, but Hawke feels it's not enough, it's never enough, it'll never be enough.
“You doing okay?”
She doesn't answer immediately. The walk through the Fade has...unsettled her. It shook something loose, something that was once tight and secure. Steadfast – Hawke has always been steadfast, both feet planted firmly on the earth, but now she feels...something else. It's more than simply being shaken, though her hands don't tremble as she reaches for her mug. It's somewhere inside, like cold hands around the roots of her heart.
Varric doesn't pry, but then Varric doesn't have to, and Hawke doesn't have any words to give right now. The fire crackles, and there are voices coming from the Main Hall. Skyhold is never truly quiet, and once she might have relished in the noise and the general hubbub, but now her thoughts are loud enough on their own and she doesn't have the patience for anything else. She thinks about Stroud, and she thinks about Fenris, and the guilt is split two ways and it aches somewhere behind her ribs, all the things she should have done, said, achieved piling up one atop the other until there's barely room to breathe.
She should have sent word of her whereabouts – any word, hells even a simple note would have sufficed, but she'd done neither. She should have stayed behind in the Fade, she should have destroyed Corypheus when she'd had the chance...She should have done a great many things, but instead she's sitting by the fire, nursing the vague hope that she might come up with a plan to do – something. Anything would be acceptable in her present state, but instead she's hiding with the Inquisition, licking her wounds in the dark.
There's a knock on the door then, an almost hesitant rap-rap, before it opens to admit one of the messengers she's seen running between the Inquisitor's advisors at odd hours of the day. And as expected, it's the perpetually nervous-looking one. Instead of coming inside, he lingers awkwardly in the doorway.
“Looking for Curly?” Varric asks from his chair. “You've got better luck finding him behind his desk than you do down here.”
The messenger looks between them. He reminds Hawke of a skittish horse. “N-no, I–” he stops, looks uncertain. “Serah Hawke, there's–” he glances back towards the Main Hall. “There's a situation in the Hall.”
'There's a situation' translates to many things in Hawke's experience, most involving Isabela or Varric and since the former isn't here and the latter has been at her side for the better part of the afternoon, she's tempted to ask if it's bandits. But considering the state of the man, she suspects her attempted humor would be lost on the messenger, who keeps glancing over his shoulder like he's expecting an onslaught, and something stirs at the back of Hawke's mind. It's the start of a thought, or a hope, though she doesn't dare invest her heart in the latter, but she feels it regardless, the whole, honest weight of it.
Then, a voice from the Hall, muffled through the closed doors separating their little corner of Skyhold from the rest, but familiar, achingly familiar as it cuts through the noise,
“I know she's here, and I demand you tell me where–”
Her breath catches, stills. Her thoughts go quiet, and there's a muted roar in her ears, a waterfall of noise and feeling as the world comes to a sudden, bone-rattling halt.
Then she's out of the chair, and the messenger leaps out of the way to let her pass. Varric is shouting something, it might have been an oath, but she's not listening. The doors yield to the heels of her palms, and then she's in the Main Hall, pushing through a crowd that quickly moves to let her pass. And there–
The Inquisitor meets her eyes, and lifts a hand in casual greeting. “There's your Champion,” she says, in a surprisingly level tone for someone who's been presented with Fenris at his most agitated.
But Hawke's thoughts are cut short as he turns – oh, and how she knows that stance, shoulders rigid beneath his travelling cloak, brash and elegant all at once, so predictably wary in this crowd of strangers, and Hawke–
“Hawke,” Fenris says, and it's enough.
There's a crowd – oh, but then there's always going to be a crowd where she's concerned, isn't there? – but it's been too much lately, too much shit for her to shoulder and deal with, and she forgoes decorum like a pair of old socks as she strides forward. The crowd parts, molds around her like water, murmurs rising up to wrap around her but she's so tired, so perfectly, wonderfully done with it all, she has no incentive to actually give a damn.
He's notoriously allergic to public affection, but it's his nose in the crook of her neck, hands grasping for the shirt at her back, a desperate tremble in the warmth of his palms pressing against her ribs. A breath – a heaving gust of air that speaks more than he'll ever say in words – and she doesn't know who is leaning on who.
Hands on her elbows, then, and he's looking at her, and oh there's anger in those eyes. A bright, unrelenting fury, and it's been years since she's seen him this livid and – and an unbridled sort of joy wells up somewhere deep within her as the furrow between his brows deepens, and she laughs –
It's a bizarre enough reaction to prompt more than a few surprised remarks from the onlookers gathered, but Hawke has never aspired for normalcy, and clings with vigour to this shred of feeling found in this remote corner of the world, between one looming evil and the next.
“You're not supposed to be here,” she says, trembles, fingers finding the grooves of his jerkin beneath the cloak. He appears unharmed, though the trek to Skyhold is no easy feat. “Didn't we agree on that?”
“You agreed,” Fenris says, gruff and unrelenting. “I did no such thing.”
“Well,” Hawke tries, swallows. Smiles. “I should learn to better cover my tracks.”
Fenris looks to be somewhere between grief and utter frustration. “You–”
She kisses him. Impulsively, assertively, the way he usually does, the crowd and her broken nose be damned. Lyrium dances under the skin of his neck, a shiver against her palms, and her split lip stings but he's warm, oh he's warm and alive and she's been cold for so long in this fortress at the top of the world. There's life in him, rough and vibrant and familiar, and when he draws her closer Hawke buries her roots back into the earth.
“I'm sorry,” she says, pleads, Maker but she doesn't know which, but her relief skitters along her veins and when she sags against him he doesn't let her fall.
His eyes linger on her face, as though he's reacquainting himself with the sight of her. She feels raw and exposed, and new, somehow, like she's a different woman than the one who left him to fix her mistakes. She feels them on her face, on her skin and in her broken bones, every wrongdoing she's left in her path, and she wonders if he can see them, too. The grief it cost to leave him behind rests on her brow, in new lines at the corners of her mouth.
A hand against her cheek, his thumb brushes the knobby bridge of her nose. “Again?” he asks, voice rough, but there's forgiveness in that lone word, and Hawke laughs. Her throat feels thick, but the smile comes easily.
“I was hoping it'd knock it back to what it used to look like. Fifth time's the charm, or something like that.”
He snorts – he snorts, and Hawke mends. Not perfectly – never perfectly, because she's been patched up too many times for perfection – but it's something. It's a start, and here on the precipice, so close to the end, she'll take whatever beginning she can fit in her front pocket. It's more than just a broken nose, but it's enough. She can handle this.
It's a start, and – and it's everything.