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“Hawke, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Just... stop.”
Hawke did not stop. He leaned more heavily on Anders and waved his opposite hand, the arm still slung around Fenris’ shoulders. It never failed to impress Anders that the elf was always steady enough to support Hawke even after drinking just as much.
“Do so know,” Hawke exclaimed. “Cats don’t... They’re just not proper pets. They don’t like people.”
“They don’t like you because you have all the grace and subtlety of a bronto. Cats like a gentler hand than your big, slobbery mutt,” countered Anders.
They had reached the steps to Hightown, and Hawke half groaned, half growled and shifted his weight onto Fenris, while Anders carefully extricated himself from under his massive arm.
“Yeah, well, you can... go home and sleep well. While I go with my best friend Fenris, who agrees with me. Don’t you, Fen?”
Anders rolled his eyes and waved goodbye to both men before disappearing off towards the sewers. The last thing he heard as he went, and which had him raise his eyebrows incredulously, was Fenris rumbling, “The mage does have a point there, Hawke.”
Anders stretched lazily, digging the toes of his boots into the sand. People tended to look at him strangely when he said it, but Hawke’s little killing trips to the Wounded Coast were his favourite. With the fresh salty air and the open sky, it was the exact opposite of the Deep Roads; and Anders could appreciate that.
Merrill sidled up to him, leaving Hawke and Fenris to loot by themselves.
“For your coat,” she declared and held out a raven feather. He looked into her earnest, blood-spattered face and took the feather from her equally bloody hand. With a grimace, he healed a no doubt maleficar-related cut while he was there, and she beamed.
“Thank you! I know one feather isn’t much, but if you keep collecting... Your coat is so nice, but it could be floofier, like a real bird.”
“Thank you, Merrill,” he said politely and, upon noticing Merrill’s wide-eyed hopeful and Hawke’s narrow-eyed warning look, tried to stick it in between the other feathers decorating his pauldrons. Her face lit up, and she skipped away after Hawke. Anders followed with a sigh and heaved another when the feather promptly fell off. A quick glance ahead told him that neither Merrill nor Hawke would have noticed, and behind him was only Fenris. He wouldn’t tell. Not Merrill. Still he turned to make sure, only to see Fenris straighten hastily and hide something behind his back. Anders quirked a questioning eyebrow but shrugged when the only response was the usual scowl. It wasn’t his problem if the elf was secretly hoarding feathers.
“Sweet Maker, Fenris!” Anders pressed a hand to his pounding heart and tried to ignore the clawed gauntlets digging painfully into his upper arms. After all, Fenris didn’t have to catch him after running into him at top elf speed; never let it be said that Anders was an ungrateful person.
“Apologies,” Fenris muttered after righting Anders, and bent to pick up the package he had dropped.
Anders stared at it. “What...”
Fenris glared at him.
“What are you buying fish for?” Anders finally blurted out.
Fenris’ glare intensified. “I am not.”
“Please.” Anders tapped his nose. “While the size of this is mainly for decorative purposes, the smell is hard to miss. Plus the mad dash up the stairs from the docks is a bit of a giveaway as well. Really, I’m surprised that your bluffing ability doesn’t seem to extend beyond card games.” He shook his head in mock disappointment at the elf, who was giving the little parcel a look of betrayal and disgust.
“Look, I’m not judging you. Well... I do judge you for some things, but not a secret love for fish and feathers. I won’t even comment on how much I hope it’s not anything sexual.” Anders watched in amazement as Fenris looked up at him in mortified horror, a blush creeping steadily from his nose to his ears.
Then the moment was over, and Fenris’ mask slid back into place.
“I am sure you had somewhere to be, mage. Don’t let me keep you.” With those words and a polite nod he was gone, and only the lack of tingly feeling told Anders that Fenris had in fact run and not sneakily lyrium ghosted back to the safety of his mansion.
The sound of rain, which had lulled him to sleep slumped over his desk, had changed, from a soothing patter to fierce hammering, heavy enough to hit his door even.
Anders frowned. The rain never reached his door. He opened his eyes and lifted his head, pulling the latest page of his manifesto off his cheek. The hammering continued.
Definitely not rain. He stumbled to the door and threw it open. Before his sleep-addled mind had fully caught up with the sight that met him, a bundle of fur was pushed into his arms, and Fenris whispered, “Help her!”
Without a word or thought, Anders put the unconscious cat down on a table. He peeled off the carefully wrapped bandage to get a look at the deep wound in her flank and began to clean it. He had a vague sense of Fenris hovering anxiously beside him but focussed on nothing but his healing until he could smooth thick black and white fur over the barely visible scar that remained.
Only when Fenris exhaled audibly did Anders turn to him and blinked when he realised the elf was as badly off as the cat and barely keeping upright.
“Maker, Fenris, please lie down there. Or sit. Just don’t... don’t stand.”
It was testament to how shaken Fenris was that he complied immediately and allowed Anders to examine and heal him without objection. His eyes were glued to the cat; and while he cleaned a cut on Fenris’ forehead, Anders said, “She’ll be fine. Perhaps still a little wobbly from blood loss once she wakes up, but back to chasing feathers and eating disgusting fish in no time.” He felt Fenris’ face heat up under his hand and the grim mouth twitch slightly.
“Thank you, mage,” he said quietly.
Anders smiled and gave his patient another quick once-over to make sure all injuries were taken care of. “You’re welcome. What’s her name? And how did you end up with a cat?” Very hesitantly he sat down next to Fenris, and a little sigh of relief escaped him when there was no snapping or snarling.
Fenris’ smirk at that made him flush, but thankfully there were no comments. “Her name is Cara. And I ended up with her the way I understand it happens most of the time. There were mice, and then there was a cat. The mice went, but the cat stayed.”
Anders thought back to the feather incident, which had been months ago, and looked at the cat’s soft, shiny fur that spoke of a good diet and daily brushing. The image his mind conjured of grim, scowling Fenris sitting in the ruins of his vast mansion and lovingly grooming the small cat nearly made him tear up.
“Perhaps the mice were just an excuse,” he suggested. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
“Yes, please.”
Anders went to his little private area behind the clinic to prepare the tea. He stopped in the doorway on his way back, almost dropping the two steaming mugs he was carrying. Apparently he had to adjust his image of Fenris-with-cat slightly.
Cara had evidently woken up, and Fenris was kneeling in front of the table, scratching behind her ears and talking quietly in rapid Tevene. Anders didn’t understand a word of what he was saying; but judging by the tone, the cat was getting a frantically worried scolding. Fenris stopped talking and stood as soon as he noticed Anders, giving him a glare that dared him to say anything about what he had just witnessed.
Anders rolled his eyes and set the mugs down on the table before dropping to his knees himself. He was hardly the person to judge someone for overly affectionate behaviour in the face of cuteness, he thought as he started cooing.
“The little kittycat is awake, yes she is! How are you feeling, little fluffwhisker? Ohhh yes, you’re going to be all right, aren’t you?” Curious green eyes blinked at him, and Cara sniffed the hand that he was offering before enthusiastically headbutting it. He gasped when she rolled onto her back and meowed at him, the tiniest and squeakiest meow he had ever heard from an adult cat. He carefully touched the fur covering her belly, and apparently it had not been a trap as she purred and stretched all her limbs to give him better access.
Fenris had pulled up a cot and sat down, sipping his tea and tickling Cara under her chin. Anders peered up at him and was startled to see an uncharacteristically soft expression on his face, which closed off again when he noticed Anders looking.
With a wince, Anders heaved himself to his feet and sat on the cot with Fenris, resuming his stroking when Cara squinted at him and meowed. He stared at the lyrium-lined hand buried in the silky fur alongside his and cleared his throat.
“I didn’t even know you liked cats.”
“Hadriana had a cat,” Fenris replied absentmindedly. “I hated it.”
“Oh.” Anders hadn’t been there, but Hawke had told him about the incident with the woman a little over a month ago, and he wondered if whatever had happened tonight was a consequence of it - perhaps Danarius had got word of his apprentice’s death and sent more forces to retaliate. "Because it was hers, or...?”
Fenris smiled slightly. “Because even the most resigned slave is bitter every once in a while; and who better to direct your anger at than the one member of the household you can hate with impunity? Precious little Augustus will never tell mistress that you glared at him. I will also admit that envy played a part at times. There was a creature that wore a collar like myself, but so much softer.” He swallowed. “One that had beds made of the richest velvet and chose to curl up on the floor with me instead, purring all night, soothing all my aches and pains.”
This time Anders’ eyes did well up, both for Fenris and because the memory of burying his face in Mr Wiggums’ fur while the cold and dark threatened to swallow him entered his mind.
“What happened to Augustus?” he asked, studiously avoiding Fenris’ gaze and trying not to blink.
Fenris said nothing. Anders' breath hitched.
“If I say he went to live on a nice farm in... Nevarra, will you stop crying?”
“Probably not,” Anders whispered.
Fenris sighed. “Hadriana came to poke me awake one night and caught us... snuggling. She may have been fond of the beast, but she hated me more. He... was not granted a swift death. I had to watch.”
A small sob escaped Anders, and he gave up on the pretence of not crying. Let Fenris think him weak, it didn’t matter.
He looked down through the blur of tears in surprise when Fenris’ hand shifted and cool fingers tentatively stroked the back of Anders’ hand. Not daring to look up and acknowledge the gesture for fear that it would stop, he took a shuddering breath.
“There was a cat... in the... when I was in solitary. Mr Wiggums,” he began haltingly. “He kept me company at night when it was especially dark and quiet, stayed with me on the days when no one came down to my cell. He was the only reason I came out of there somewhat functional, even if I was half cat myself by the time for lack of other contact.”
Cara stretched once more and stood, and, on almost steady legs, hopped off the table to begin to exploring the clinic. Anders kept his eyes trained on her, still unsure if he should say something about the fact that Fenris had now linked their fingers.
“Need I ask what happened to him?”
Anders did glance up for a moment then, only to see that Fenris was gazing down at their hands with a faintly puzzled expression.
“That depends. How likely a guess is ‘kitty abomination’ if I don’t say it?”
Green eyes snapped up to stare at him incredulously. “Excuse me?”
Anders shrugged one shoulder with a wry smile. “He had a bit of a temper. Well, ‘a bit’... the templars called him the Terror of the Tower. It was always quite satisfying to see the scratches and bite marks.” His smile faded. “That night, a few of them were visiting my cell to... to do what cruel people do when they are not held accountable for their actions. Mr Wiggums arrived shortly after them, and what started out as either one of his usual furious attacks or an admirable defence of my person - I like to think it was the latter - somewhat... got out of hand. As much as I’ve joked about this since, because what else can you do, back then it was the most horrifying thing I had ever witnessed. It was... You know what it’s like; you’ve seen plenty abominations. Imagine this happening to a cat.”
Fenris opened his mouth, closed it again, expression almost comically shocked. “I... had no idea animals could... Did he... it... turn on you?”
“I’m sure he would have eventually. They managed to cut him down, but not before he got three of them, and rather messily as well.”
Fenris squeezed his hand a little tighter, his eyes following Cara, who was still inspecting the room inch by inch, her tail twitching.
“I had never seen her angry before tonight,” he murmured. “I’m sure it was less on my than on her own behalf because they had cornered both of us, but still, without her distracting them...”
“Hunters?” Anders asked. He scooted closer when Fenris nodded and, with a hesitant sideways glance, leaned into him slightly.
“I had been careless, and they surprised me. I know you call my armour next to useless every time you heal me, but I can assure you that it would have made a difference when facing several opponents with a housecat at my side.”
“I know that.” The fingers of Anders’ free hand ghosted over a spot on Fenris’ arm where he had healed a gouge earlier that normally would have been covered.
Fenris bit his lip with a frown.
“Thank you for saving her. Us. Both of us,” he said eventually, letting go of Anders and standing. “It was... it was a comfort to be able to trust that if I came here, you would help.”
“Always. Are you... you can stay if you want, you know.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Fenris shook his head. “We will go home, but thank you.” He scooped Cara up, who purred happily at the contact and made herself comfortable in his arms.
With a wistful smile, Anders stood as well and gave her a goodbye scritch.
“You can visit,” Fenris suddenly blurted out, and Anders looked up to see his gaze averted and ears bright red. “I know that... you told Hawke that you miss having a cat. If you want, you can come and visit... Cara.”
A long forgotten flutter that he had not thought he would ever feel again spread through Anders’ stomach, and he pulled away, his hand brushing against the arm cradling Cara.
“I would like that. Thank you, Fenris.”
The ears turned impossibly redder, and Anders caught a fleeting smile before Fenris and his furry charge disappeared through the clinic door.