Chapter Text
Fenris is awoken by a slap to the face.
Not terribly hard, but it does the job, and he takes a long, deep breath. He has the nagging feeling something bad has happened.
“Oi. Knife-ear.”
His eyes flick upward.
Crouched before him, in the sputtering torchlight that splashes through the open door—the thickset man with the pocked face and bushy eyebrows. The one with whom he met tonight (last night? he’s inside now, with no way to tell the time) on the promise of information about a certain elven woman from Tevinter…
That isn’t what he got, of course. What he got was assaulted, someone leaping on him as he faced this man. He dispatched the first attacker but there must have been another. The wound still burns in his lower back where the throwing knife struck him.
The next he remembers is…this, whatever it is.
A small, empty room without windows. His armor is gone, although they’ve left his clothes. The stone floor is cool against his bare arm. Dully he realizes his wrists are shackled. He could slip those. Not that he should. There are men with clubs here. They would be on him as soon as his lyrium began to glow.
“Right then,” the man says. “You picked a fight with the wrong people. So now you get to pay the price.”
Picked a fight with the wrong people? What is he talking about? Fenris reserves that for later. The only important thing now is figuring out how to escape.
“Here’s what’s going to happen: you fight. People watch. They place bets.” He jabs a thumb into his chest. “We rake in the profits.”
Fighting for sport. Fenris’s lip curls a little. It was popular in Tevinter. Apparently present in Kirkwall, too.
And now he’s been dragged into it, because he was careless and inattentive and let himself be taken.
“Don’t worry,” the man tells him. “That poison should be wearing off sometime soon. When we put you out there you’ll be ready to hold your own.”
Fenris grunts and struggles to sit up. The men with clubs stiffen. He offers them only a sullen glare. “I’m not going to fight for you.”
His captor raises one bushy eyebrow. “You’re going in the ring no matter what.”
“Fine. If your audience will be entertained by seeing an elf beaten into the ground without a single punch thrown in return—not far-fetched, it must be said—then by all means put me in your ring. But I’m not going to fight.”
The man taps his chin. “All right. Here’s the situation: it’s mid-morning. You don’t fight ’til tonight. How about no food or water? You want water, you have to win ten bouts. Food costs fifteen.”
Fenris stares. He can’t be serious. “Fifteen bouts?”
“All in a row, don’t worry. Shouldn’t take too long.”
Absurd. “You can’t expect me to win fifteen bouts in a row.”
A shrug. “Most of our fighters are amateurs. You’re not.”
So he is known. Not altogether surprising. He’s been in Kirkwall five years and makes his living by fighting. Once more he scans the room—the flick of his gaze enough to make the gathered thugs tense, clubs at the ready. Known indeed. They’re afraid of him. He would prefer overconfidence; easier to escape that way.
“See you tonight, knife-ear.” The man rises and jerks his head. He and his entourage parade from the room, closing the door behind him. Fenris is plunged into darkness, but for the wan torchlight that filters beneath the crack in the door.
No idea where he is (underground, he can guess that much—not the least bit helpful). No idea how many watch him beyond those men with the clubs. He does have some idea of what they’ll do if his escape attempt fails. Chains, a locked door, depriving him of food and water—hardly scratching the surface. There is plenty more they could take from him. And the caution with which he’s been treated does not bode well for his success.
He needs more information, which he won’t get locked up here. And he isn’t like Hawke, he can’t stay invisible in a building full of people. If he breaks out to learn more he’ll be caught and punished.
So he’ll just have to do his reconnaissance tonight when they take him out to fight. Ideally he’ll find an opening before they throw him into this “ring.” If not…he’ll end the night beaten and bruised no matter how many bouts he wins, so he should strive for fifteen. He will need the food to bolster his strength.
Fenris shifts back against the wall, his shackles clanking. Berating himself is a waste of time yet he does it anyway. He should have sensed something was wrong at that meeting, but he was too desperate, after two years of nothing, for information about his sister. About Varania.
Fenris exhales. He will make up the mistake by learning from it. He has taken to letting his guard down since settling in Kirkwall.
But there are enemies everywhere. He must begin to remember that once again.
——
He tries not to spend too much time cursing his carelessness as he waits, although it’s difficult to refrain. He is not well-loved in Kirkwall’s underworld—has done many favors for Aveline over the years, and has not been shy about it—yet he still attempts to make deals with them. This betrayal was only a matter of time. He should have asked someone to come with him. Should have asked Hawke.
Fenris shuts his eyes for a moment. Hawke. Almost three years since he fled the estate in the middle of the night and they’re even closer now than they were then. He trusts Hawke completely, which is something he’s never had with anyone. But he welcomes the feeling. No doubt their friends wonder why they aren’t together yet; at this point it seems a formality.
Fenris asks it of himself now, as he waits. Why aren’t they together yet?
He gazes down at his cuffed wrists and searches for an answer.
Eventually his focus shifts to more practical things, such as escape. Always he runs into the barrier of no information. So instead he waits for hours in the dark, watching torchlight skim over the stone floor, and tries not to think of what’s about to happen to him. He does not mind being hurt when the cause is just. But this is not just. He doesn’t deserve this.
But again, he was careless and foolish and should have known better than to meet a new contact alone. Fenris grimaces and pushes the thought from his mind with effort.
There is a sound at the door. The lock clicks. It is time.
His escort is generous and well-armed. The man from earlier leads them. They still carry clubs. Blunt weapons. They don’t want him dead. There are hundreds in Kirkwall who would pay to see him beaten, after all the times he’s been hired to fight off smugglers or thieves or volunteered to help the city guard. He’s going to make his captors rich.
He shuffles down the hall. His stomach growls. As doors and cross-corridors slip by he looks for exits, clues to the layout of this place. There are more thugs. What is this place? It’s certainly well-staffed. He spots a staircase. That will be a good place to start.
When he has a chance, that is. He doesn’t have one now. Too many guards. It will have to wait. He swallows. It doesn’t help much. His throat is dry, very dry, and his head pounds from the thirst.
Ten bouts for water. Fifteen for food. Forced to obey orders in exchange for basic needs. Danarius used the tactic early on, though he tapered it off eventually, when obedience became to Fenris a default mode of being rather than an act that required persuasion.
He hates it. He remembers those days well, the implication that he did not deserve food or water without earning them first. A sick feeling, to be told at every turn that he was lesser—and how could he refute it? He had no memories that said otherwise, and Danarius was so attentive, so patient, would never deceive him.
What infuriates him is not that he should have known better. He was little more than a child and should not have had to know better. It was the realization that came later, after his escape, of how he was manipulated into becoming an agent of his own breaking—and purely for Danarius’s pleasure. For his amusement.
It took him a long time to digest that. The humiliation came first, and he thought that was all there was; but somewhere along the way the anger came to him too, and he owes everything to the anger, he thinks. Almost everything. The rest he owes to Hawke and Aveline and the others.
Who aren’t here right now. And the anger denied because he cannot fight back, or he risks punishment. So all that’s left is the humiliation. Ten bouts for water. Fifteen for food. He stares at his chained hands and swallows again.
Then his escort stops. A short trip. Fenris halts with them before a thick wooden door. Beyond, the murmur of conversation. The man in front knocks twice.
Another minute. Fenris curls his toes into the stone. Unarmed fighting. He doesn’t have much chance to use these forms, but he practices them often with Hawke. The man unlocks his shackles. Fenris rubs his wrists and rotates his ankles.
He doesn’t want to walk out there. He doesn’t want to serve as an evening’s entertainment for a crowd of angry people. He doesn’t want to be forced to fight until he’s too injured to stand back up. Yet it seems he must do these things anyway.
Is it always going to be like this? Is there something about him that demands abuse? That invites subjugation?
The door swings open.
An expansive room with a high ceiling, the center of attention a canvas-floored ring caged by grimy iron bars. Around it people are crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, perhaps ten deep on the floor before the stands rise up—the stands? what is this place?—for a dozen rows. And above a shadowed balcony, jam-packed with yet more spectators. Enormous braziers hang from the ceiling and torches ring the iron bars.
His escort pushes ahead, parting the crowd and clearing a narrow path. He is shoved forward and stumbles over the stone, advancing with reluctance. As soon as he steps out of the door the crowd erupts. The noise is deafening, enough to make him cringe. Someone spits in his face as he goes, and a second person a few feet later. He wonders vaguely how he has offended them.
Wooden stairs. He ascends, ducks through the open gate. It clangs shut behind him, sealing him in the ring. The canvas floor has been cleaned, but it’s still spotted with old blood, splashes of dingy brown scattered across its surface. He reaches out, unsteady, and grasps one of the bars. Caged again. What is in him that provokes this treatment? That makes others want to control and hurt him?
His throat is dry. He’s hungry. Hasn’t eaten in…a full day, by now. He can fight when he’s hungry as well as ever, but not as long. Which will be a problem here.
Ten bouts for water. Fifteen for food.
He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to be alone, doesn’t want to get hurt. His fingers tighten around the rough iron. He’s only been gone a day. No one will be looking for him yet. Will they make him fight again tomorrow?
His first opponent pushes through the crowd.
A short, stocky human whose swollen lump of a nose speaks testimony to the depth of his past experience here. He steps through the gate into the ring, and the crowd cheers for him. As he raises his arm Fenris spots a mark—a brand just off his shoulder, a circle studded with spikes.
Fenris knows that symbol. He saw a tattoo of it on the back of Hawke’s shoulder, years ago; Hawke would only say it was a “stupid mistake,” and he laughed it off and changed the subject. The next time Fenris saw his back it was gone, removed as if by magic (and it likely was).
So why is it here?
No time to think about it. The man is charging.
He broadcasts the punch, and Fenris slips outside of it, anticipating a follow-up. The man swivels, and Fenris circles back again, the low jab falling short of him. Venhedis. He can’t spend the entire fight dodging. He has to win. That’s the only way to earn food and water.
So Fenris moves away, drawing another blow that overextends past his face. Too easy. Fenris wraps his arm around the other man’s, locking it up—
—finds a foot hooking behind his heel and yanking. Not so easy after all. Fenris tries to regain his balance but his foot is still captured, and he goes down, his back thumping into the canvas. The man’s arm slides out of his grasp, which isn’t altogether a bad thing, since he needs that hand to drag himself away—not quite fast enough, the man straddling his right thigh and pinning him there.
Lessons from Hawke come to him, and immediately he shields his head as his opponent’s fists start coming down. The cheering is louder now. This will not do. He has to win. So he wraps his trapped foot around his opponent’s ankle and uses it as leverage to lift his hip off the canvas, into the man’s body. The man stops attacking and leans down, caging Fenris against the floor of the ring. Fenris reaches low with his left hand, trapping the man’s arm and capturing his belt. With his right hand he finds the man’s knee and grabs his trouser leg.
Then he rocks upward. Not enough force to free himself. But he doesn’t need that much. The man pushes back, intent on maintaining control. There. Fenris slips the hook and plants his right foot, lifts hard with his hips, and uses the momentum to heave his opponent through the air and off to the side.
The man thumps down on his back, and Fenris scrambles on top of him, raining down a flurry of blows before the man has a chance to recover and raise a guard. Blood smears over his knuckles. His own? Probably, some of it. The man is dazed early, and his hands flail, weak and undirected. Fenris, without anything else to do, keeps punching him. How long does he have to do this before they call the bout?
At last the creak of the gate, and someone shouting for him to stop. He rises and steps away, rubbing his hands absently. That hurt. It’ll get worse before the end, of course. His hands will be destroyed by the time this is over.
One victory. Fourteen to go. Fenris finds his breath coming a little fast, and he inhales through his nose, exhales slowly. He will need to preserve his energy. A pair of guards come in to the ring and drag his opponent away. After they go through the gate a lean elf comes through, his long hair tied back in a severe ponytail. Fenris readies himself.
He wins. He wins that fight, and the next. Three. The word forming on his lips as he grasps the iron bars. One-fifth of the way there. His next opponent comes through, an older man with a scraggly gray beard. They all have the same style—close to the same style, and not dissimilar from Hawke’s. But that doesn’t make things much easier. It’s quick and improvisational, hard to predict or counter. The best Fenris can do is survive and look for holes of which to take advantage.
His opponents don’t care much for defense. They leave plenty of holes. After all, they don’t have to worry about fighting any more bouts. So Fenris can connect with a few blows, when he needs to. But of course they’re ready to leap on him as soon as he takes a chance. The fifth slips in a clever lock and almost manages to pop his shoulder out of his socket; he pays for his escape with a broken rib (hears the snap when the strike lands) but his shoulder remains intact. By the seventh Fenris decides he is tired, and he’s too slow in moving his foot away when his opponent stomps at it. His opponent is twice his size. The foot is smashed. Fenris retaliates, and it’s only luck that his fist catches just the right spot, whipping the man’s enormous head to the side and knocking him unconscious.
The guards wake the man and haul him off. Fenris limps to the side and examines his hands. His knuckles are bloody, and the backs of his hands are bruised and swollen. Those are probably broken too. “Seven,” he murmurs to himself.
He isn’t even halfway.
Eight. Nine. Tired. It hurts to put weight on his foot. Can’t move as well anymore. He’s taken a few hits to the nose, but this time he feels the break, and blood cascades down over his lips. Hard to breathe. Doesn’t matter. He has to keep going. The cheering is ceaseless, winnowed down to a constant stream, a hollow rushing in his ears. Vaguely he wonders if they’re cheering for him by now, or just for his defeat. Another shot to his ribs, which he accepts, letting it rotate his body. He jams his shoulder into the woman’s chest and shoves her off her feet.
Fenris wins that fight too. Nine. One more and then—something. What was it? Water.
He has to keep going.
His tenth opponent is Rivaini, his skin scattered with scars. A career fighter, and not just in the ring. He’s got the brand too, as several of the others have (as Hawke had), the spiked circle just to the left of his breastbone. Fenris curls his broken hands into fists.
They engage.
This one’s had some training. Fenris recognizes the pieces of Antivan forms, warped both by Rivaini adaptations and the tricks he must have picked up in the Marches. That might have posed a difficulty to his other opponents, but for Fenris it is a relief. He knows these forms. In Tevinter he was a shield wall for his master, trained to counter martial forms from Antiva, Nevarra, Orlais, and places further.
They fall into a rhythm. Fenris slips into his Tevinter forms, which appear to be familiar to his opponent as well. Their clashes are explosive and discrete; they will strike at each other for a few seconds and then break apart, circling. Fenris is breathing hard, his badly bruised chest aching with each inhalation. His broken foot hurts each time he puts weight on it. Might this be the fight he loses?
No. He has to keep going. He has to win.
Another engagement. Fenris diverts a blow, blocks the next, throws an elbow at the man’s nose. It doesn’t connect, and they separate once more, Fenris limping around the edge of the ring. Ah. There’s an idea. When he arrived in Kirkwall he relied purely on his forms in battle; that might work here, but he is tired and that makes him slow, perhaps too slow for someone who knows his training. Fighting at Hawke’s side for five years has changed his tactics some. He still relies on his forms, true; he simply augments them with a few less conventional tricks.
The man approaches. Fenris allows him to close. He suspects he’ll pay for this, but he needs to prioritize saving his strength over avoiding injury. Dodge, counter, divert. Fenris feints—one he used before, that was recognized then just like it is now. The man strikes out.
Fenris takes the open palm in his chest—pain—and lets it shove him back. When he goes to set his stance again he stutters on the broken foot, and his opponent darts in to take advantage.
Good. Fenris swivels on the bad foot, and his kick lands flat against the man’s temple.
He crumples, unconscious before he hits the ground. Fenris kneels, tightening his jaw. Too much weight on bones that couldn’t support it. Something broke or tore, something further. Venhedis. But he’s won again, and that’s all that matters. The next fighter is already coming through the gate. Fenris takes a deep breath, wincing, his heart thumping from the exertion, and rises.
Eleven. Twelve. He’s exhausted. He only just gets away from blows in time, and takes some he wouldn’t have taken if his body still had the strength to move as it should. Their fists flatten bruises into his chest, sides, and stomach, their feet thumping into his legs. His face is battered and bloody by now. His hands are well and truly broken, but he can still get them to curl into fists, which is all they need to do. Each bout is less of a fight than a period of him weathering his opponent’s strikes until they leave an opening into which he pours every scrap of energy he has left. It shouldn’t work as long as it does; but the lyrium glows faintly, burning his skin, and feeds him just enough strength to get by.
Thirteen. He wonders how many of his ribs are broken. Fourteen. “Fourteen,” he whispers to himself through swollen lips, sagging back against the bars. Just one more and he’ll hit fifteen. That seems important for some reason. The woman isn’t rousing after the uppercut he gave her, so the guards have to ferry her away. There’s blood all over the mat. Much of it is his. His nose is still bleeding, and his mouth has been cut to ribbons on the edges of his teeth.
It doesn’t matter. He has to keep going. He pants for breath, blood bubbling as it drips down the back of his throat.
The hollow rushing in his ears surges. The crowd, cheering. Fenris blinks, refocuses.
Two people come through the gate.
Fenris shuts his eyes briefly. Two at once. It’s impossible. He won’t win. With great effort he pushes himself off the bars and stands. A man and a woman. They look like siblings. Fenris coughs, spits out blood.
They drift to either side of him. Fenris wavers, hobbling on the bad foot. He has to try. He needs to win.
They attack.
Fenris blocks what would put him down and takes the rest. Hard blows thump into his back. This won’t last long. They’re feeling him out right now and not finding much to give them pause. Fenris throws a kick. Slow, pitifully slow. It’s blocked, and the woman steps into a jab, swiveling her hips. Fenris manages to divert it past his head—
A heel smashes into his left knee, buckling it sideways. The man, behind him. The pain is frayed and burning, and the joint shifts and slides. Immediately Fenris knows it’s destroyed. Still he staggers, hopping back, trying to right himself, but the knee collapses and he crashes to the canvas.
A foot whips out at his head. He thinks of blocking it.
Then it takes him in the jaw and he blacks out.
——
Fenris is awoken by a slap to the face.
Quite hard this time. He squints and coughs out some blood-thick saliva. Another hard slap. His head snaps to the side.
“Come on, knife-ear.” The voice distant and tinny in his ears. “Get up.”
Slap. It stings. He tries to say something. Anything. It comes out as a low moan.
Slap. “Come on. Why won’t you get up?”
He can’t get up. The woman is sitting on his hips, but even if it were not so he could not get up. His strength is gone. It’s gone. There’s nothing left.
Slap. His head whips to the side again. The voice a little less tinny now. “That’s it? You done already?”
Yes. Done. The thought rouses in him such a surge of emotion tears spring to his eyes. He doesn’t want to fight anymore. He wants to go home—no, he wants to go to the estate. Wants for Hawke to answer the door, to see him and embrace him softly and kiss his hair and tell him everything’s going to be all right.
Slap. “Think that’s it. He’s not getting up anymore.”
“Please,” Fenris mumbles.
The weight on his hips shifts. He gazes up, bleary. A fist rises in the air, directly above his face.
“All right!” Another voice, booming. “I think he’s had enough!”
The woman rises. Fenris stays where he is, lain out on the canvas. The pain begins to soak into his awareness. He hurts. Everything hurts.
Someone else. The man with the bushy eyebrows, crouching over him. Grabbing the front of his shirt and lifting him up. “Maker. You’re beat to shit.” A broad grin. “The way it should be, you ask me.”
Something surfaces from the haze of pain, a sharp, brilliant glint like a dagger-flash. Anger.
Fenris spits in the man’s face.
The man scrapes the red gob from his cheek and grabs Fenris’s jaw, a snarl peeling his lips back. But it abates a moment later, and he jerks his head at one of his guards. “I think fourteen bouts merits the champion’s mark, don’t you?”
The guard strides away, reaching through the bars. Fenris sees him take something down from one of the braziers that ring the cage. Then the man throws Fenris face-down on the canvas, kneeling on his back and capturing his wrists together. The pressure on Fenris’s battered ribcage is agony, and he gasps, inhaling blood and coughing it up again. There’s a bloom of heat by his face, and he blinks—
A spiked circle, glowing orange with heat. A brand.
Terror surges through him, turning his stomach. He tries to struggle, but his feeble efforts do nothing to budge the weight on his back. A hand pulls his shirt collar down, exposing the back of his shoulder. No. No. He doesn’t want to be marked.
The brand sinks into him.
Skin burning away. Muscle bubbling and melting. Fenris yells into the canvas, no thought spared to preserving his dignity. The pain obliterates everything. The mark. It’ll be seared into him, permanently.
Then the burning is gone, and he breathes in deep, rapid lungfuls of air. Is it over? Are they finished with him?
They try to get him to stand but he can’t support his own weight. So two of them heave his arms around their shoulders and drag him away. His feet trail down the wooden steps and over the stone. Blood drips from his nose and mouth and dots the floor beneath him.
Torches slide by on either side. They take him into a dark room and drop him there. He slumps to the floor. It’s over. For now, at least, it’s over. He curls up.
“Sorry, elf.” Someone crouches in front of him and sets down a wooden bowl. Water sloshes over the lip. “You didn’t make fifteen bouts. Looks like you’ll be going hungry tonight.”
Fenris gazes at the bowl for a moment. He’s exhausted.
He shuts his eyes.
——
The balcony is crammed with people, jostling and shoving to keep their place in line. As they wait to collect their winnings they argue about which was the best bout. The tenth, with Rahiz, someone says. Then the indignant reply, no, the seventh, with Big Bennett!
Hawke isn’t listening. He leans against the railing, gazing at the bloodied canvas, stroking his beard in thought.