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Fenris knew well the way his mind found places to rest - grooves worn comfortably where he’d find his thoughts would settle out of habit. It had taken him years of running to unlearn settling into the ones he wore at Danarius’ side - no longer a need for certain patterns of attentiveness. For most of his life, his resting mind would find purchase in a worry for his master’s comfort, safety, appraisal of him at any given moment. He would wake in the night every so often still, feeling like he’d forgotten something and fearing the reprisal of the misstep; even years later the old grooves were waiting to catch him, worn deep by years of being the only thing he knew - the vigilance that had made him treasured property, and kept him alive.
He had learned on the run to rest in a different kind of vigilance - not a comfortable one, but at least one of his own design - a crash course in personal decision-making. Where was he sleeping tonight? Who here might be trusted for a moment? Could Danarius know where he is? Where would he find coin, food, the next ticket out of here? When would he need to move on?
The Deep Roads were a sudden stillness in the necessity of those concerns - not comfortable, of course, by any definition. But he would catch the edge of his mind on one of those thoughts, a sudden anxiety, and trip over it - like stepping in the dark for a last expected stair at the top of the landing, and finding only air and a terrible sick distance before suddenly righting once again on flat ground.
So he kept having to remind himself: Tonight he would be sleeping in camp. None of this brigade could be agents of Danarius; if they were, this was a very poor strategy for his capture. It was unlikely Danarius could have surmised at all that he was here, of all places. Even assuming reconnaissance enough to ferret out the trip, that Hawke had gone, who she was, and that he worked with her... he was a last minute addition to the party and the maps had been secret, known only to his immediate companions. He was, he thought blithely, cutting his sword through darkspawn gristle, a sideways-kind-of safe. If you squinted.
As for coin, he’d find it here, and as for food, they’d brought plenty with them, and the next ticket out of here was where they’d all find it: whenever they got loaded up with treasure and returned.
And as for when he’d need to move on...
He did find himself thinking of Kirkwall often, as they walked. He had been considering picking up and leaving, getting some distance on the city as his last-known location; and slipping away while Hawke was gone would have been easy. But with Carver dropped from the caravan, and his having been invited instead… Well, spending several weeks at her side on this venture, and then disappearing with no word, would be impolite to say the least. He supposed he would need to speak with her about his planned departure at some point. He found he did not look forward to doing so.
Now, though, there were the Deep Roads - this strange reprieve from his usual worries that had made him start to reconsider; he caught himself debating a little with his decision to leave, challenging it as though trying to prod out another possibility.
If she’d trusted him enough to bring him here, and he trusted her enough to accept, would it be quite so terrible to assume her crew might have his back when Danarius’ men came to Kirkwall next? When the expedition finished, he’d be owed a cut of Hawke’s take; it would be more coin than he’d know what to do with, even assuming only minor success. Certainly, he could take it and go, but... If he could lean in a little, dig his heels in, would that be quite so terrible? And with a taste of melancholy, now that they were away, he found he rather missed the comfort of the Hanged Man, the market, the manor. At another moment he could chide himself for having grown complacent but for now, he tested the feeling: he was a man on a trip, who’d soon be back somewhere he knew a little comfort waited to welcome him. A traveler returning. He wouldn't go so far as "returning home". But it was something to think about, as they wound their way through the Deep Roads.
Hawke, for her part, was in rare form.
She was always at her best in combat, and this place had plenty to occupy her. They spent their days (or their best approximation of the day, down here) scouting and clearing the way for the expedition, carving their way through whatever danger lay around the next corner.
Loath as he was to admit it, having two mages along was proving to be a benefit. Anders was always an attentive guardian of their battles, but he and Hawke seemed to have come to some kind of strategic agreement: watching each others’ backs, trading off healing and shields, covering his and Varric’s blind spots and keeping them from getting surrounded.
Fighting brought a particular ruthless delight out in Hawke, and she seemed to welcome the heightened challenge that came with fighting darkspawn; her usual lightning ferocity was necessarily tempered by the care they needed to take. Fenris admired the way she’d taken to a more calculated mode, the way she expertly controlled the flow of the seemingly endless enemy into something manageable for their small party.
By night (their best guess of it, anyway), they would re-join the caravan to camp, and Hawke would slip into a mode more suited to the Hanged Man than to the Deep Roads - light on her feet and eager to cajole the three of them into drink and song. At various points she attempted and failed to pull them into juvenile drinking games, the sort of games that ran on probing personal questions and admissions of sexual indiscretion. All three of them shrugged this off (“I suppose it’s not as good without Bela here”, Hawke admitted), but her spirits seemed higher than he’d often seen them, even so.
Fenris was noticing a lot of things about Hawke, on this trip - things he’d not had the opportunity to see before. Things that prompted, he felt, a normal amount of curiosity, given the circumstances. One night she approached the camp and he was startled to see her face bare for the first time, no streak of red across her nose. When they woke the next day - and every day after - he watched from across camp as she re-painted it, appraising herself carefully in a little pocket-sized mirror she seemed to have brought solely for this purpose.
When she slept, she preferred her side. When she woke, her hair was terrible. She sometimes skipped a luncheon meal, preferring to take light fare along with her on their walks.
Sometimes on those walks, she’d snipe at him, then jostle his shoulder with hers. She was quick to offer a hand to him as they clambered over rocks. When she readied for bed, she set her bedroll near to his; she’d fall asleep (on her side), and he’d study her unpainted face, her brow furrowed with some imagined concern, until his own fitful dreams claimed him.
Fenris was not a fool. He understood these little attentions for what they were. She’d made her attraction to him clear from just about the minute they’d met - and rarely let down her jocular flirtation once since. But up until now, he’d been telling himself that was all that it was: flirtation. A joke. It was an attitude well-suited to nights at the bar, or too much wine into a fireside discussion. It was an attitude he’d seen her slip into with others - Varric, Isabela - even Anders at times, for some unfathomable reason - strangers, marks.
Something about being here felt different. It was hard to write it off as performative, with no audience around to see it. And his hand in hers didn’t feel much like a joke. It felt like something stirring in him, something awake in his skin under the lyrium, something he was not sure he was capable of thinking any more about.
It was all preoccupying enough that he felt spurred to test her, brave enough to test himself - just to be sure. At a bend in one tunnel, as they wound towards a narrowing fissure into the next chamber, Fenris backed himself against the wall, making space and gesturing so that she could pass him and head through first. She nodded and squeezed past him - her hand on his shoulder for unnecessary leverage, her face leaned over him, her thigh brushing warm and gentle past his own - before she was gone into the next room. Fenris shivered, swallowed hard, and let go of any last shred of denial.
Now, that just left the unfathomable question of what to do about it - if he could do anything besides ignore it. Hadn’t he been considering leaving Kirkwall? He chided himself, tried to narrow his focus back to the job. If he'd never see her again, was there any point at all to interrogating this situation any further, let alone encouraging it?
And then - one night before bed - she ambushed him at the campfire, and handed him the book.
The pride was evident on her face, in the angle of her shoulders; she tapped the cover smartly, raising her eyebrows.
"Shartan," she said.
The Liberator? He stared at her. “What about him?”
She tapped the book again. “I think it’s his writing. Found it in Lowtown a few weeks ago, and thought you might appreciate it.” Fenris could tell that she was trying too hard to be casual. She was beaming a little, despite herself. “Forgot I’d brought it with me to give to you, til now. So… here it is.”
Her expectant delight was heartbreaking. He sought a response that would convey the several threads running concurrently through his mind - I can’t, this isn’t, you shouldn’t - but failed utterly, and managed only a mumbled "Thank you".
That night, after he was sure she and the others had fallen asleep, Fenris sat in his bedroll with his legs crossed, holding the book in his lap, staring at it. He ran his fingers across the cover, across the embossed markings on the front. One of them probably meant “Shartan”, he supposed. But beyond that he had no place to start, no mooring at all.
No mooring, also, with how to feel about such a gift. No reference point. He had on occasion exchanged minor gifts with his fellow slaves in Danarius’ household where possible: an extra portion at mealtime, supplies for training - practical gestures of support. Quiet. Observed.
Hawke and Varric’s comrades-in-arms were the first actual friends that he had made. On his own. As a person. And this was not practical in the least. Just a gesture. I see you, it said. I see you, and I think of you, and you’re in my life, and here is something for you to have.
He supposed this should feel normal. He supposed it should feel... less. But he clutched the book in his hands and it felt heavy, as if it was full of so much more than words he could not read.
She saw the book, she thought of him: a man in her life. A friend. A former slave from Tevinter, who might appreciate reading the words of a hero much like him, she thought he might appreciate, she thought of him when she saw it, she thought of him. A gesture from a person for a person.
He opened the cover to the first page and dusted the tips of his fingers across the words, thin markings as meaningless as decoration. He flipped it to somewhere in the middle - same symbols, new configuration. The dizzy shame of inability rose in him as he cast his eyes down the illegible script, perfectly printed for eyes that were not his.
He was purpose-built, he thought icily, and the blueprint had not required this skill - its absence a part of the design of dependence. He had run up against the lack many times - the added difficulty to communicating, purchasing things, navigating. Maker knew how much easier the long road would have been could he have properly used a map.
Fenris paged through the book, this sudden icon of his embarrassment, and felt furious with Danarius, with circumstance, with everyone who had ever treated him ill. It was not right that he be made to feel this foolish, that he could not do this basic thing that Hawke had fairly assumed he, an adult man, could do. Simple. Normal.
He snapped the book shut and felt the anger round on Hawke, for dredging up all this, for having the privilege to assume - and then deflated almost immediately, sour with himself. She did not know, and had meant well. Meant well for him, intended something for him. He pressed his palm to his forehead, eyes crushed closed, and let out a long breath.
She’d thought of him.
He supposed, given it would be a difficult secret to keep, he would have to speak with her. And perhaps, as she had tried to give him something, he would have to give her something in return - some understanding, some clarity. He would share this piece of himself. It was, he thought darkly, the least he could do.
He dreamt that night of Shartan - at least, he supposed it was - the way you know things in dreams. A man with questions he had no answer for, a barrier he was not yet brave enough to cross, and holy fire lighting the way through a fierce winter storm.
The next day, Fenris found Hawke alone by one of the communal fires that had been lit toward the center of camp. She was seated on a low, flat stone, rearranging the contents of one of her packs on the rock next to her. Her dark hair was in her eyes, her deft fingers working the knot on a small pouch of dried fruit. She looked up and smiled as he approached, clearing her things off the rock, gesturing towards the empty space for him to sit - which he did. He did not care at the moment to examine the thrill he felt at her gladness to see him.
“Ah!” She seemed delighted to notice he had the book with him. “Have you started it? Old Shartan have anything interesting to say?” Her eyes were a shocking blue in the firelight, the only thing around for miles that was not red, red, red. A little sip of clear water. Another feeling he did not care to examine; he broke his gaze away to look back down at the book.
“Slaves are not permitted literacy,” he said simply after a long moment, and held it out to hand it over to her. She nodded for him to continue in a way that did not communicate understanding - perhaps she thought he was relaying a fact from Shartan’s writing? But he forced himself to meet her eyes, furrowed his brow and smiled a grim smile - and he saw the realisation, and the embarrassment, and then the pity, and his stomach turned.
“Oh, Fenris, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-“
“You would not have known, it-“
“Here I was so pleased with myself, should have thought for one bloody moment-“
“That is enough.” He felt it snap out harsher than he meant it, and tried to soften his next words, as he pushed the book more insistently back toward her. “What I mean is - your intention is more appreciated than I can say. That you thought of... that you thought is enough.”
He was surprised when she pressed her fingers into the spine, pushing it back towards him.
“Keep it. You’ll learn.”
Fenris blinked at her.
“Hawke, I...” He trailed off, unable to think of a suitable response. He could not tell if she was teasing him. It was a cruel joke if so. But she shrugged as if it was the most casual thing in the world, and turned her attention back to the rations she had been rearranging.
“You know Varric does some writing. Isabela too, though, she may be... less helpful now that I think about it.” Hawke frowned into the middle distance as she worked through that thought, and shook it aside. “I would hate to see her response to a request for any kind of ‘private lesson’. Anyway, I’m sure among the lot of us there’d be enough help if you wanted it.”
He was very still, and very warm, and thought this over carefully. His pulse had quickened, at some point.
“I would not want to trouble you with such an effort.”
She laughed at that - actually laughed.
“An effort! Maker, Fenris. It would be my pleasure to have an excuse to spend time doing literally anything that isn’t fighting bandits or camping in the wilderness or traipsing through the bloody Deep Roads.” She smiled at him, sincerely, blue eyes, and clapped him lightly on the shoulder. The warmth flared hotter, and he let himself decide it was just the lyrium. “Plus, it's a capital excuse to keep at your wine cellar.”
He allowed himself some eagerness as he considered the things that would open to him. The reduced difficulty of everyday tasks in the city. The shedding of an old shame. The useful things about Danarius he might be able to learn from the quantity of books at the manor.
And then, picturing his room there, his mind drifted to the bench by the fire. A bottle of wine to share, leaned together over the book in his lap. The press of her thigh against his, not remotely ignorable. They’d have to sit close to make out the words. Small print. Dim light.
“I should like that,” he breathed, grateful for how easy she had made it to accept.
Funny to think of the manor in Kirkwall, and make plans for when they returned there, when he had been intending to leave the city. Funny to make any plans at all - to be free to do so. Freer still to change them.