Work Text:
The thing about Hawke was that she was a notorious trash enthusiast. Over the years, Fenris watched her accumulate a truly astounding amount of garbage: moth-eaten scarves, broken jewelry, Anders, etc. She lived in Hightown, but her favorite outfit was one that she had stripped from the body of a pirate she'd murdered.
Aveline said she understood it, that after you've lost everything, it becomes important to hold onto anything you can, even if its use is not immediately apparent.
Fenris supposed that the reason he couldn't relate was because he didn't know what he had lost.
But this wasn't about him. This was about Hawke sticking her hand indiscriminately into an old sack and flinching at what she found. Fenris was the only one who saw her do it, but the Dalish witch snapped her head in Hawke’s direction.
“Ah, lethallan,” tutted Merrill, speaking softly so that her words did not echo in the cavern. “You’re the one who told me that I ought to be more careful about bleeding everywhere.”
“I will not be scolded by someone who has twice this week extracted broken glass from her foot,” responded Hawke at a normal volume. They had already killed everything in this section of the Sundermount caves, and if anything did hear her and approach, then she would kill that, too.
Hawke discarded the sack and clutched a prize in her bleeding hand. Isabela appeared over her shoulder, seeking treasure, but frowned at the item that Hawke held up for her inspection.
“Congratulations, Hawke! You are the proud new owner of a shitty old knife.”
“Not that shitty. It bit me just fine.”
Hawke wiped the knife somewhat clean on the leg of her trousers before dropping it into her pack. She looked at her bloodied hand, then also wiped that onto her thigh before moving on.
Fenris held himself back from nagging her about cleaning the wound properly. In the four years that they'd known each other, they had become more than associates but were still less than friends. It wasn't his place, Hawke was perfectly capable of taking care of herself.
“Fenris.” Isabela had only said his name, but she was using her meddling voice and Fenris scowled at her preemptively. She had noticed him watching Hawke. “Is that spider giving you trouble?”
Fenris stood by the cooling corpse of the oversized spider that he was meant to be checking for loot. This was perhaps another symptom of Hawke’s thriftiness, that she thought it was worth the trouble to gut a dead spider on the chance that it might have swallowed a few coins along with the meat of its victims.
“No,” he said flatly, betraying none of the awkwardness he felt as Hawke glanced in his direction. He doubled down on the scowling when Merrill also stole a look, smiling knowingly in a way that baffled him.
Hawke’s collection of trash could be sorted into three categories: things to be used, things to be sold, and things to be returned. Before she reclaimed the Hightown estate, the old scarves that Hawke found were passed along to her mother, who would painstakingly clean them, unravel the yarn, and rework it into something else. They either couldn't afford or didn't want to spend money on dye, so by the time winter rolled around, Hawke and her temperamental brother both wore sweaters in a kaleidoscope of mismatched colors.
The scraps of junk that Hawke collected could often be sold piecemeal. From the broken jewelry, small gems could be extracted and the metal melted down. The glass of a bottle could be sold even if the contaminated alcohol it held was now closer in taxonomy to poison.
Fenris did not see the value in ‘things to be returned.’ At first, he thought that Hawke might be buying goodwill; paying in advance for future unknown favors. However, he was forced to discard this theory when it turned out that they often never saw the people they helped again.
The blade that Hawke had found in Sundermount was narrow and pointed, with one of the sides being serrated. It was also very dull. She cleaned and sharpened it while they crowded Varric’s suite at the Hanged Man later that evening, giving her hands something to do while they drank. The removal of gunk caked onto the handle revealed Dalish carvings, and she passed it to Merrill.
“Someone in your clan lose this?” As Hawke pulled her hand back, Anders caught her wrist and flipped it palm up.
“Hawke! You haven't cleaned this?”
“It’s only a scratch.” Hawke batted her eyes in a flirtation so overt that it became comedic. “And you're so much better than me at the healing thing.”
Fenris made a derisive sound. At first, he had been certain that Hawke’s overtures of romantic intent had been orchestrated solely to vex her brother, but Carver was with the Templars now and Hawke continued her advances. She flirted shamelessly with all of them and, if Isabela was to be believed, Hawke was interested in doing much more than that if one was bold enough to take her up on it. Even Aveline was not fully immune to Hawke’s attentions, though she rolled her eyes and smiled sympathetically at Fenris as Anders fumbled for a reply.
“My magic can only do so much if you've spent half a day with blood poisoning.”
Anders glanced at the door to the suite to make sure that Nora hadn't returned to check in on them, then he held Hawke’s hand in both of his own. There was a soft glow as the cut sealed shut, leaving behind a faint crust of dried blood. Fenris looked away, disliking both the intimacy of the act and the way his scars prickled at the surge of magic.
Merrill hummed thoughtfully as she examined the knife. “Not likely one of my clan. See how they've carved their name into the handle?”
“Indicative of a lack of respect for art?” asked Varric. He was approaching a deadline for his publisher and was unusually quiet as he scribbled into one of his leather-bound journals. Fenris had asked him once why he didn't prefer to write in solitude, but Varric had shrugged and said that it was easier to create with inspiration close at hand.
“Well, yes! But specifically a lack of respect for Dalish culture.” Merrill gave the knife back to Hawke. “As you might say, Varric, I would bet my left ass cheek that this belongs to a newcomer in the alienage.”
“Kitten, I don't know if Varric is the best teacher to be instructing you in Kirkwall’s colloquialisms,” said Isabela, but she had smiled widely at the way Merrill said ‘ass cheek.’
“As the perpetrator of Kirkwall’s modern language, I take offense to that,” said Varric.
“Merrill, have you met any new neighbors recently?” asked Hawke.
“You know I don't know my neighbors.”
“I know. Sounds like it's time to play Welcome Committee in the alienage.”
It was relatively easy for Hawke to go around the alienage calling out the name carved into the knife. The elf named Faj was highly suspicious but ultimately grateful to have it back, and that was the end of that.
It was nonsense. It was a waste of time. Fenris couldn't understand it and he broached the subject while he and Hawke were drinking wine on the roof of his borrowed home a few nights later: “Why bother?”
“Why not?”
Hawke was lying on her back with her arms folded behind her head. They were both out of their armor and most of the way through their second bottle of wine. She looked away from the stars to meet his disdainful expression with her own guileless one, slightly flushed with inebriation. When they'd first met, Fenris thought it was all an elaborate mask, that Hawke was simply another deceitful mage with a hidden agenda. In truth, she really was just a kid who’d grown up in the sticks of Ferelden. Although Hawke had a knack for lying, it was a skill borne from the need to protect herself and her sister. Besides, Fenris had learned the tell that gave her away and she wasn't doing it right now.
“Fenris, you know what it's like to lose everything,” said Hawke, as though this were a sufficient enough explanation.
Fenris nearly confessed everything right then and there: he didn't know what he had lost, he didn't know anything about his past. But if knowledge was power, then he would be admitting his own powerlessness. He would leave himself open to manipulation, he would be putting himself at the mercy of yet another mage. He would be inviting Hawke to place her boot upon his throat and trusting her not to choke him.
It frightened him how much he wanted to trust her.
Fenris put the wine bottle to his lips and took a long swallow. “Explain it as if I do not.”
“Okaaay,” said Hawke. She pushed herself up and extended a hand. Fenris wordlessly passed her the bottle and she thought for a moment as she drank. “How about this? When you spend all of your time just trying to survive, it doesn't feel like anything really belongs to you, except for your grief.”
This much made sense and Fenris nodded.
“The few things that I carried here from Ferelden are precious to me. They're mementos of a life that I can never return to, but they're also proof of that life. Bethany–” Hawke faltered here, words failing her the way they always did when she spoke of her sister “–we had to sell her staff to barter passage on the ship to Kirkwall. It was the only thing that I…it still had her blood on it…”
Hawke made a soft, sad sound and Fenris was alarmed to find that she was crying.
“Sorry,” she said, wiping at her eyes and forcing a smile. “Guess I'm a weepy drunk tonight.”
Fenris did not know what to say. Before he could think too hard about it, he chose to mimic what he'd seen Varric do and patted Hawke's back. He wasn't prepared for the way she crumpled as soon as he touched her, curling her body towards him and leaning her head on Fenris’ shoulder. Hawke had stopped crying, but she sighed and seemed to further deflate.
They sat that way for a while, looking out over the rooftops of Hightown. It was so quiet that Fenris thought he could make out the distant sounds of the sea.
“I don't care what anyone else says about you, Fenris,” said Hawke, with a touch of her familiar wry humor, “you're a good friend.”
Fenris let out a startled laugh. “You really are drunk.”
“I am, but I mean it. I like having you around. I like knowing you.”
Fenris nearly wished that she was lying. He didn't always know how to react when confronted with Hawke’s unfiltered honesty. Luckily, she sensed his discomfort and brought the conversation to a place where he had better footing.
“If you don't believe me, then we should make it official. I'll get us some friendship bracelets.”
“Unlike yourself, I am not in the habit of acquiring impractical items,” said Fenris.
“I suppose not,” agreed Hawke.
“I still don't completely understand why you choose to play the role of Kirkwall’s lost-and-found agent.”
“Then think of it this way: people like stuff!”
Fenris had no intention of collecting anything, but he was victim to the natural accumulation of a life lived in the same place for several years. Although the manor that he resided in did not belong to him, he did have a bedroom that he considered his own and it was decorated with things that people had given him.
There was a pack of playing cards from Varric, an armchair that had been brought by Isabela after she complained that he didn't have anything nice to sit on, and a leather traveling pack that had been ‘forgotten’ by Donnic and he had not requested its return.
And several months later when Fenris stumbled out of Hawke’s bedroom late one night, he took with him a length of red ribbon that he kept tied around his wrist.