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Fenris has never heard her sound like this before.
He grips his sword, muscles ready, lyrium on the verge of flickering through his skin and blood. Hawke runs ahead of him, her steps clumsy, careless, fast.
“Mother?” she cries into the echoing dark, and her voice wounds him, high and frantic and lost.
He wants to do something. Wants to take her and hold her, wants to tell her she can do this. She can be strong. He fears she has to be, no matter what they find. The twist of his stomach tells him it will be nothing good.
But he doesn’t reach out to touch her. The red cloth, starting to get a little tattered around the edges, fits so well against his gauntlet. He could reach out with this hand, see the contrast of the red against her dark robes, lay his palm on her shoulder. He could tell her to look into his face, tell her to breathe. He could find the words.
He doesn’t.
He hates himself as she runs ragged, her breaths sharp and panting, her terror barely, barely contained.
Then there’s a room and a man and a woman in white, demons and foul things dripping with the taint of the man’s blood magic. Hawke almost falls to the other mage, but Fenris is at her side, greatsword cleaving, muscles straining, his teeth digging so hard into his lip he tastes his own blood. He will not let her fall. The mage dies, and for all his cruelty he’s just a little man crumpled in his robes, the cloth ground into the dust.
The woman moves forward, and Fenris realizes the full extent of what’s happened, the bits and pieces they found on the way. He sees the red gash on Leandra’s neck, her bloodless face, everywhere the stitches.
Hawke cradles all that remains of her mother, her arms tender and soft, shaking as she blames herself. Fenris watches as Leandra shudders, as she stills. Hawke bows her head and pulls her mother closer to her, and she weeps.
He has never heard her sound like this, either.
He does not hesitate now. He crouches in the dirt beside her, reaches out. Just a little touch, here, on her shoulder, red cloth rich as blood against the dark of her robes. He holds it there. I am here.
Hawke wishes she was in the Fade.
Not because she has any desire to visit the Fade tonight. It’s only that she wishes this was the Fade because then maybe Leandra would still be at home in the waking world, sitting in her chair by the fire, curled up with one of Varric’s stories.
But her body’s broken and cold and Hawke knows this is not the Fade. Some things are too terrible for the Fade.
She tears at her fingernails. She tried to bathe when she got home, before Gamlen found her. But she could not scrub the dirt and blood completely away. It’s still there, a dull reddish brown deep beneath her nails. She clenches her hand at her side, feels the blood pooling at her fingertips. If she only reached a little further – No. Blood magic did this. It can’t undo it.
She huddles in her fine clothes, cold despite the fire flickering in her bedroom. There’s a chill that no magic can warm and it fills every part of her. She wonders if she’ll freeze to death. It does not sound so bad.
There’s a movement she can see in the corner of her eye, too large to be a simple shadow. She glances up.
It’s Fenris, and she’s grateful and empty both. He speaks. “I don’t know what to say, but I am here.”
“You are,” she says. She sounds like rusted metal, not herself. The emptiness wells within her, a full and awful presence, worse than any spirit.
Fenris stands close to her, but not too close. It’s his way. She can tell he looks at her, but she keeps her gaze dropped to the floor.
“Was this my fault?” A whisper. She trembles, wraps her arms around herself. She cannot bear to look at him. The emptiness gnaws.
“You did not kill her, Hawke. You and I both know this,” Fenris says gruffly. She nods. It makes sense. But it doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t soothe anything, doesn’t change anything. She might as well be talking to the wall.
Yet it’s him who’s here, and she remembers the way they kissed, the way they both had wanted more than he could give.
Hawke lifts her head. Stares at him, hard. He doesn’t look good, but she knows she looks worse. Shadows under his eyes. A bruise he’ll refuse to have Anders look at. Bit of blood still in his hair.
“I – I need –” She swallows, stumbles over the words. “Will you stay?” she asks hoarsely. “Not like before –” She tries to keep the tears from her eyes. “I just don’t think I can… be alone, tonight.” She stares at her dirty fingernails, picks at them until her finger bleeds, waiting for his answer.
She feels the weight of him settling onto the bed beside her, sees his toes next to hers on the carpet. A ludicrous thing to notice, but then again nothing works right anymore and everything’s wrong, so what is it to notice the toes before she notices the man?
His hands are doing something beside her, fumbling with catches. She sees him pull off his gloves, unbuckle his breastplate, lay the heavy metal down on the floor.
He touches her shoulder again, his hand light without the weight of his gauntlet. He turns her, slowly, so that she faces him, and in his eyes she sees grief and worry and pain. It makes her feel a little better, that she is not the only one who hurts.
“I will stay,” he says softly, “if that is what you need of me.”
And when he wraps his arms around her, simply holds her while she feels, the emptiness gets a little smaller, a little more familiar. She rests her head against his chest, and she breathes, trying to remember how.
Fenris wakes up first. There’s a soft scent, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s Hawke’s hair, only inches from his face, spilled out on the pillow. His chest knots. He thinks back to that night months before, and for a moment, he lets himself indulge in memory.
But he is not here now to kiss her. His undershirt clings to him, wrinkled from sleep. They both still wear the clothing of the night before. He is only here because she needed not to be alone.
He props himself up on one elbow, studying her face. Even now she looks tired, careworn. The knot in his chest tightens.
To be so close, and yet –
His lips thin, and he swallows, knowing what he should not do. Yet before he can stop himself, he leans forward. He brushes a kiss against her forehead, not allowing himself to linger, and then he rolls away, closing his eyes.
He lays there a long time, listening to her breathe. Her breaths are even now, her fear and her grief pushed back at least a little, at least for now.
Fenris listens to her breathing and the beat of his own heart, and thinks of a thousand different things that he could tell her. Fine words, angry words, words of vengeance, words of empathy. They clamor around him. None of them are right. He still does not know what to say.
Eventually, she wakes up; and when she rolls over to see him still laying there beside her, she says, almost hopefully, “You’re here.”
He looks at her, with her eyes still swollen from crying, dark hair mussed, face drawn. She is so real and raw in this moment, and her grief cuts him to the quick.
“I am here,” he agrees, but does not add, I wish that I could stay.